ABSTRACT
Poverty Law and Legal Activism: Lives that Slide out of View concern the origins and fates of Critical Legal Studies. Poverty is the leading edge of a movement of thought that holds together engagements with welfare rights, democracy and activism. Drawing on Baran and Sweezy, and compressing a great deal of analysis of poverty and class, new left theorists argued that – despite their ethnic diversity – "the poor were united by deprivation or near-starvation levels of income". Activism is understood through the network of themes. Moving from a discussion of philosophy to an engagement with poverty and political activism is only strange if one sees philosophy as primarily an academic concern. Quite to the contrary, questions of poverty and activism can only be understood if framed through philosophy. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
