ABSTRACT
Exchanges in the late twentieth century about the nature, extent and causes of poverty continue to be dominated by the individualistic and structuralist perspectives. This is illustrated best by the liberal and neo-liberal approaches in the United States which continue to insist on identifying individual characteristics and sub-cultural phenomena as the prime sources of interest, but which also continue to encourage the view that what is at issue is the extent to which the poor accept free-market values, exert themselves to enter the labour market and are not discouraged from this by state patronage in welfare. It is also illustrated, at the other extreme, by those who in one way or another theorise a structural perspective. They draw on dependency theories of development, and theories of stratification, neo-colonialism and state policies in the widest sense rather than a narrow range of welfare state policies designed primarily to deal with the casualties of the market.
