Poverty reduces people from cultural and social beings to isolated individuals who are pre-occupied with the struggle to fulfil biological needs in order to survive. Poverty is uncivilising.
Take meals for example. On a socio-cultural level, meals are shared, and food for us is not merely nourishment but presents the occasion for gathering together, hospitality, sociability, affection, and sometimes, dressing up. Food is always a part of sociable occasions of ceremonial recognition.
Birthdays, going to college, getting a place at university, we use food to celebrate, mark rites of passage, milestones, start relationships, maintain relationships, gather our friends and family close.
To share means that we need to have an abundance – more than we need for ourselves, because food is fundamental to survival.
Poverty isn’t simply about material deprivation: it means conceptualising the world without the prospect of freedom and choice, and in increasing isolation. It excludes people from…
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Tory Britain! 