ABSTRACT
The concrete question "What causes hunger, homelessness, and ill-health?" yields substantially different answers from those we get from the question "What causes poverty?” This chapter shows that a postmodern discursive approach yields a more satisfactory view of the poverty problem. It establishes a link between postmodern discourse theory and the theoretical framework of the nexus of production relations. The chapter describes the concept of socially constructed scarcity. It explores two Foucaldian notions of power—"disciplinary" power and "nonsovereign" power—to think about nontraditional "solutions" to poverty, and details the postmodern view of poverty. Postmodern contentions can help one to make explicit the codependent relationship between social science and society. P. M. Roseneau's distinction suggests that much of the hostility shown toward postmodern theorizing has arisen from a failure to appreciate the distinction between the affirmatives and the skeptics.
