By Éric Gagnon Poulin, Laval University

Don’t study the poor and powerless because everything you say about them will be used against them – Laura Nader[1]

Poverty as a subject of study

Does studying poverty contribute to the reproduction of stigmas? The act of classifying, categorizing, defining, etc. is certainly a danger of reinforcing the hegemonic nature of the label of poverty. The question of the use of research data remains central. For whom and for what can these data be used? Anthropologist Michel Agier illustrates the dangers this represents. "This way ofdiscoveringthe poor in difference and distance [creates] itself a certain marginality. By reifying the ghetto paradigm to account for situations of poverty, one [recreates], in a new environment for the discipline, a distance between the anthropologist and his object" (Agier, 1995: 4). The researcher runs the risk of digging a theoretical gap between himself and his subject. "The intellectual discovery of the poor therefore allowed anthropology to reproduce in the city a relatively distant object and, in a certain way, romantic, marginal and exotic as was the image of anthropology itself in the social sciences" (Agier, 1995: 4).

As for me, that does not mean we should not study poverty, quite the contrary, but we must be aware of our positionality and the possible impact of our research. Agier believes the danger is isolating certain groups and reproducing stereotypes and prejudices, " […] by remaining inside the borders of exclusion, borders more or less visible of ghettos, or invisible limits of the theoretical constructions of marginality, instead of considering poverty as an entry to understanding society as a whole" (Agier, 1995: 5). The objective is not to try to understand poverty by isolating it, but rather to attempt to grasp the mechanisms that lead and keep certain people in poverty. These mechanisms cannot be understood otherwise than by considering the entire socioeconomic system in which poverty is embedded in Quebec.

Piron and Couillard invite researchers to " […] reflect on the way these institutions and their actors [governmentality] use knowledgesocial-scientific knowledge as raw substance or raw material for their taxonomies, categorizations, programs and interventions, sometimes in ways not foreseen or not intended by the authors of that knowledge" (Piron and Couillard, 1996: 7). Agier recognizes that "[a]ssociating a distinct cultural identity with a different socioeconomic condition is […] a temptation that remains present in studies on poverty, whatever the subjective motivations and theoretical inspirations of researchers. It is very often a matter of unearthing at all costs a specific cultural model" (Agier, 1998: 6). Therefore one must remain cautious in this exercise of categorization and theorization. Some of them, useful to the researcher before writing, do not have to appear as is in the final document and especially not out of their context. The term itself already carries its share of preconceptions. Indeed:The word poverty is, no doubt, a key word of our times, extensively used and abused by everyone " (Rahnema in Escobar, 1995: 31). To avoid the reproduction of classifications sometimes too hermetic that could reinforce the hegemonic nature of our conception of poverty, researchers speak less and less of "the poor", and more of "people in situations of poverty", the situation not being permanent and inevitable (Moore, 1978). "Thepoor as a substantialized identity, and the people of the poor as a universalized social category, are constructed by the classificatory operations of social science […] the universalizing and substantialist vocabulary of themargins and of exclusion " (Agier, 1998: 8).

For Davis, Kingsbury and Merry, one must also remain very critical of the use of indicators to measure poverty or any other development index, because the " […]production and use of indicators in global governance has the potential to alter the forms, the exercise, and perhaps even the distributions of power in certain spheres of global governance" (Davis, Kingsbury and Merry, 2012: 2). They recall that human development indicators are intimately linked to economic development indicators and must be analyzed together (Davis, Kingsbury and Merry, 2012: 39). According to them, this way of categorizing and quantifying serves to change experts' thinking about development and to attract public and political support for development policies directed to enhancing human "capabilities"" (Davis, Kingsbury and Merry, 2012: 43).Positionality and reflexivity

In the context of my research, I am particularly solicited by the community sector and social actors involved in the fight against poverty. I will therefore need to be aware of the issues related to my intellectual positioning. From the outset, I consider poverty to be a social injustice and that this situation, if it should occur, should only be temporary in a society that would provide the necessary tools for everyone to get by. "Certainly, every researcher has their 'biases' (as each field has its own), and one should never take the statements of any of us at face value without critical reflection" (Olivier de Sardan, 2004: 46). It is imperative to remain vigilant at every stage, from data collection to analysis, without however losing one's critical perspective on the subject. Some anthropologists, like Low and Merry (2010), believe that when it comes to respecting dignity and human rights, the involvement for better social justice should go without saying. They argue that our research results should be shared with our stakeholders and informants for their emancipation and with the general public notably through teaching. According to them, anthropology must be critical and use its tools to reveal power relations and social inequalities (Low and Merry, 2010: 209). At the same time, Pierre Bourdieu believes it is fair to question the dichotomy between the

scholarship and the commitment. "If it is true that the planet is threatened with serious calamities, do those who believe they know these calamities in advance not have a duty to come out of the reserve that scientists have traditionally imposed on themselves?" (Bourdieu, 2002: 133); what one could call action research, a " […] dialectic of knowledge and action whose aim is the creation of new knowledge that will become drivers of change" (Bouvette, 1984: 30).Funding

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This research,

Poverty and social inequalities in Chaudière-Appalaches: Lived experience and representations, is funded by theQuebec Fund for Research – Society and Culture (FRQSC) [Grant 201216].Notes

[1]

Nader in Philippe Bourgois, 1995, In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. Cambridge University Press.Bibliography

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Anthropology and Society, vol. 80, no. 2, pp. 29-42.COUILLARD, Marie-Andrée and PIRON, Florence, 1996, "Knowledge and governmentality".

Anthropology and Societies, vol. 20, no. 1.DAVIS K. E., B. KINGSBURY and S. E. MERRY, 2012, "Indicators as a Technology of Global Governance",

Law and Society Review, 46, 1: 71-104.ESCOBAR, Arturo, 1995,

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