Abstract

BAYON, María Cristina. The Construction of the Other and the Discourse of Poverty: Narratives and Experiences from the Periphery of the Mexico City. Rev. mex. cienc. polít. soc [online]. 2015, vol.60, n.223, pp.357-376. ISSN 0185-1918.

Besides the material sources of poverty, it is necessary to understand the symbolic and relational dimensions that contribute to create, maintain, and reproduce deprivation. Based on the ethnographic work carried out in an area of high concentration of poverty in Mexico City's suburbs, this article aims at dismantling the myths, stereotypes and stigmas of the poor and their locations uttered by the official discourse on poverty. This work examines from a sociological perspective how the most disadvantaged segments coexist, resist and adapt to a dominant discourse that stigmatizes them in a daily and systematic way. The processes and social mechanisms through which the poor are constructed as the others (the otherness) are explored, as well as their implications for the experience of poverty, social policies and social coexistence. It is also examined how the dominant discourse on poverty, which blames and demonizes the poor, contributes to legitimize, consolidate and reproduce social distances, thus hiding the political and economic nature of inequality, in a context were the latter is basically tolerated.

Keywords : poverty; discourse; the otherness; stigma; inequality; Mexico.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )