Per un’antropologia della povertà. Osservazioni etnografiche a Torino

Abstract

Drawing our inspiration from Simmel’s classic reflections on the poor and Paugam’s analytic work on the “elementary forms of poverty,” this essay aims to offer some reflections on the experience of poverty through constant reference to our ethnographic researches among unemployed and homeless people in Turin. What emerges is that the Italian and the local systems of welfare are not well suited to respond to the experience of downward social mobility and that, as Simmel noted long ago, the poor are still expected to sacrifice part of their rights and social personhood to receive assistance and help.