ABSTRACT
In the study of poverty in the United States, the causes and even the meanings of poverty are disconnected from the causes and meanings of “global poverty” in the “Global South.” The analysis of poverty has been exclusively domestic with little or no understanding of how the integration of the U.S. political economy and culture into the global economy has shaped the meaning and character of poverty in the United States. In other words, mainstream studies of U.S. poverty assume that the sources of poverty as well as the “discourses of poverty” (a system of statements made about poverty) are uniquely “American.” In which case, little or no attention is given to how globalization, referring specifically to global capitalism and its institutions, both cause and construct the meaning of poverty in the United States and throughout the world.
