Poverty's Bonds: Power and Agency in the Social Relations of Welfare

Henry G. MacLeod teaches sociology at both Trent University and the
University of Waterloo.

Patrick Burman is deeply concerned about the weakening of the social
bonds “between Canada’s disadvantaged and better-off citizens,”
or, more specifically, the willingness of the latter to help the former.
In Poverty’s Bonds, he employs an interpretative and critical
sociology to challenge popular stereotypes that view the poor as lazy or
morally flawed. He dismisses for lack of evidence the notion of
widespread welfare fraud, while acknowledging how the public’s
endorsement of this idea has served to weaken the social bonds between
the poor and the nonpoor and to heighten popular support for welfare
reform.

Burman uses interviews with service providers and with low-income
recipients to develop a useful typology of the social relations of
welfare. His book describes at length five different social forms that
characterize the relationships between service providers and recipients,
ranging from charities and government bureaucracies to anti-poverty
activists. The author also applies concepts from the work of Foucault,
Habermas, and Bourdieu, and draws upon current writings on welfare,
pauperism, the social economy, and the acceptance of inequality as a
fact of industrial society.