Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain's Underclass

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Combination of world events/work making me exhausted to my bones (but free Palestine always 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸) coupled with the writing style that I found clunky and jarring and hard to read at times. The first few pages of his book are dedicated to his love of writing, and walk the reader through how, from a very young age, McGarvey enjoyed learning and using new words, in ways which would often put him at odds with his environment, where eloquence was usually viewed as the preserve of the privileged middle and upper classes and therefore treated with scorn. He reveals various traumatic recollections from his childhood regarding his alcoholic mother, who would eventually succumb to cirrhosis of the liver as a result of her drinking, dying at only 36 years old. The first half is an interesting enough account of life in deprivation and the role of state institutions and public policy but then comes the political messaging that we shouldnt get too preoccupied with the economicy and overthrowing capitalism but focus on what poverty does to the mind, body and soul, to quote "As if somehow these day-to-day problems are less consequential to the poor than the musings of Karl Marx.

Poverty safari: understanding the anger of Book review - Poverty safari: understanding the anger of

As a result, the allocation of funds and resources intended to help poor communities become a structural barrier due to the explicit and implicit strings that are attached. McGarvey also takes aim at politicians, policy makers and even charitable organisations that seek to work with disadvantaged communities. This approach is far more radical than simply attributing responsibility for every ill in society to a 'system' or a vaguely defined power dynamic - something we lefties have gotten all too good at. Not because of how it's written, this is one of the most eloquent and clearly written books I've ever read.A blistering analysis of the issues facing the voiceless and the social mechanisms that hobble progress, all wrapped up in an unput-downable memoir.

Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey | Waterstones Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey | Waterstones

It's tempting as is for me, and likely many others who've never experienced real poverty either, to carelessly blame Tory policies since Thatcher for its persistence. I try to do this, but honestly it's so exhausting that I've taken to prioritising and not having an opinion at all on many issues. This is obviously a lot more complicated than it sounds, and much more difficult for those who grow up in poverty, but the point being that it didn't take a big political change. McGarvey is able to connect with his students because his own life has been shaped by the dual forces of poverty and violence.Hailing from the same neck of the woods as Frankie Boyle, Pollok in the southside of Glasgow, McGarvey is a powerful blend of confronting honesty with a common sense approach to politics, falling somewhere between Owen Jones and Akala. He indicates a broad understanding of intersectionality as a social theory that highlights the discrimination of individuals and groups, although he misses the key idea that social and political identities may combine to create specific forms of discrimination and privilege. The book is divided into 32 short chapters, self-deprecatingly described by McGarvey as a “series of loosely connected rants that give the appearance of a book” (p.