Locating Impoverishment is a report on the social structures and practices that create and sustain poverty, and the possibilities to dismantle them.
The report clarifies how the structures and institutions work that impoverish people and presents the roots of impoverishment recognised in seven communities in Indonesia, Tanzania and Zambia. In these studies, local people describe scarcity in their lives and how they earn their living. They also reflect on how their living conditions could be improved. The report also draws on international experiences that could be part of the solutions sought in the communities studied.
The concept of impoverishment underlines that poverty is not created by itself. Poverty is the outcome of structures that feed societal inequality, it is maintained by people’s active deeds or inactivity. The ending of impoverishment can be successful only if these structures and practices will be dismantled.