December 2011
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42 Reads
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10 Citations
Archaeologies
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Publications (3)
September 2011
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118 Reads
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25 Citations
Historical Archaeology
This introduction summarizes major new themes raised by articles in this special issue on the archaeology of poverty and processes of impoverishment. First, definitions of poverty are discussed, progressing from simple dictionary definitions to the more complex considerations in articles analyzing the cultural construction of poverty through discourse on impoverishment as a relational process involving fluid power dynamics at the intersections of classes, races, ethnic groups, and genders. Impoverishment is a complex process involving the interaction of capitalism, patriarchy, and racism to produce structurally a set of economic, social, and political positions defined by terms with different meanings. Poverty is culturally constructed through ideological discourse as an individual failing and a stigmatized identity. The historical criminalization of poverty is traced as an important context for the articles. This introduction discusses key ideas brought out in these studies and also offers some historical perspective on the Western construction of poverty and its study by historical archaeologists.
September 2011
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12 Reads
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13 Citations
Historical Archaeology
The study of poverty in historical archaeology has not yet developed a productive engagement with the complex political economy of impoverishment. A primary concern with culture and representation has instead supported the production of often essentialized subjects who ultimately mirror the problematic foundations of the "culture of poverty" thesis. This paper critiques the processes of constructing impoverished subjects and considers the notion of a "poverty of culture" as a relational position for analysis. Working in close collaboration with members of an impoverished African American community in Setauket, New York, alternative readings of poverty, culture, heritage, and archaeology are discussed. These alternatives serve as the foundations of a community-driven project informed by indigenous meanings and interests in the archaeological past in order to challenge the marginalization of this part of the broader local community.
Citations (3)
... (accessed February 16, 2016) (Fig 1). Since the early 1830s, the poor state of sanitation in Limehouse, including problems of open sewers, badly maintained and blocked waterways, along with overburdened sanitation systems that brought significant parts of the rest of the East End's human waste through the locality before being emptied into the nearby Thames, prompted a range of petitions, investigations and improvement initiatives (Marriott 2012; see also : Allen 2008;Jeffries 2006 Establishing the relationship between the objects found in these privies and those people who lived in adjacent houses was initially a key concern for us, since, true to the ethnographic approach advocated by Mayne and Lawrence (1999), we were eager to contextualize the archaeological finds, building out from an understanding of the household within which they were used to investigate the wider meanings and functions of the objects and the nature of the locality from which they originated. However, after census returns, rate books and other sources that detail household occupancy were consulted, it was clear that we were dealing with a transient community. ...
- Citing Article
September 2011
Historical Archaeology
... Measures such as these contributed to increasing differentiation between the 'deserving and 'undeserving' poor, a growing secularization of charity (especially in Protestant countries following the Reformation) and the criminalization of poverty more generally. The post-medieval era also witnessed a steady proliferation of almshouses and workhouses in both Europe and colonial North America underpinned by new beliefs in the reformatory power of labour (Huey 2001;Spencer-Wood and Matthews 2011). ...
- Citing Article
September 2011
Historical Archaeology
... Above all, we need to find the ways in which archaeologists are able to resist the commercialization and bureaucratization of our discipline, then cultivate, strengthen and support those areas that might contribute to a degrowth future. Much of what is described above overlaps to some degree with concepts of 'public archaeology' (Matthews, McDavid and Jeppson 2011;Moshenka 2017) and 'community archaeology' (Marshall 2002;Truscott 2016), including the building of communities within the discipline (Carman 2018). Arguably in some cases the notion of collaboration with communities has been coopted for the purposes of a colonialist business-as-usual approach that treats community as another tick-box to clear the way for development (Carman 2011;La Salle and Hutchings 2018). ...
- Citing Article
December 2011
Archaeologies