Representaciones de pobres y pobreza en los agentes de la Política Social argentina

Abstract

Notwithstanding the relevance of the conceptual representations of policy officers involved in both the design and implementation of social policies with regard to poverty, little academic attention has been addressed to them. In this work we assess their relevance in order to understand how prevailing and alternative conceptual or ideological paradigms of poor people and poverty at large, contribute to produce and eventually to perpetuate policy interventions and meanings with regard to the persons and situations to which policies are addressed. Our main goal is to build a typology of these representation as well to discuss the ways they influence social policy-making and implementation. Three categories of representations are thus identified: institutional transformative, institutional traditionalist, and essentialist.