ABSTRACT
Modern social institutions deploy discourses of poverty as technologies of governance that produce and manage the poor vis-à-vis the non-poor. Broadly speaking, discourses are normalized or regulated ways of speaking that define and produce objects of knowledge (e.g., the poor, poverty). In doing so, the discourses produced by modern institutions govern the way something is talked about and how related practices are conducted. In The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, Foucault maintains that it is in discourse or a family of concepts that power relations are inscribed. Discourses are made up of discursive practices. These practices are the rules by which discourses are formed, rules that determine what can be said and what must remain unsaid, and who can speak with authority and who must listen (Foucault, 1972). Thus, modern institutions exercise power by governing through discursive practices. Says Foucault:
