The Programs of “Combating Poverty” in the Government and Study Agendas. Conditions of Academic Production, Argumentary Paradigms and Conceptual Revisions

Abstract

In recent decades, a field of study linked to "anti-poverty programs" was consolidated, which contributed not only to recognize the factual phenomenon of the emergence of this social policy variant, but also constituted a benchmark that allowed analyzing other issues linked: the State, the territory, old and new actors involved. The intervention devices changed as the way to study them. Faced with the loss of sensitivity of the categories, the indicators and concepts traditionally used to capture and understand phenomena linked to the implementation of assistance programs at the local level, their networks and their effects, other analytical tools were deployed to understand new logics and new social actors, their practices and subjectivities. From the review of a broad bibliographic corpus and other documentary sources, the work relates those transformations and processes that happened simultaneously, mainly in the academic field (universities, study centers) and in other social spaces. It analyzes how various processes –somehow convergent– impacted on the revision of the research agendas on "anti-poverty programs" and at the same time contributed to the debates on the forms that should be given to these interventions.