"Poverty Politics- Current Approaches to its Production and Reduction” is a research program directed by Professor Vigdis Broch-Due, who holds a special professoriate in International Poverty Studies at the Faculty of Social Science, University of Bergen. The program is located at the Department of Social Anthropology. The programs' objective is a multi-disciplinary investigation of how poverty is produced historically in different social, cultural, political and economical settings. The first stage of the program (2004-2007), funded by a grant from The Research Council of Norway, has come to a successful completion. We are now in the process of planning the next stage of what has proved to be a very engaging research endeavor, bringing together international scholars and locally based students around the vexed questions that surround poverty in all its cultural diversity". 

At this site you can learn more about the thematical focus of the project, read the participants’ project descriptions, learn more about poverty related issues from various sources and be updated on the latest news and publications from the project. If you have any questions, please do not hestitate to contact us.

What's new?

Summer Research School

Poverty Politics is offering a PhD course on the first edition of the Bergen Summer Research School on Global Development Challenges, to be held in Bergen, Norway, 7-17 August, 2008. The theme for 2008 is Global Poverty, and our course is entitled "Global Reconfigurations of Poverty and the Public: Anthropological perspectives and ethnographic challenges". The course is developed by professor Vigdis Broch-Due  who has invited the following course leaders to run the course with her.
- Professor Jean Comaroff , Professor of Anthropology and of
Social Sciences, University of Chicago.
- Professor Akhil Gupta , IDP South Asian Studies Department
of Anthropology and International Institute, UCLA
- Associate Professor Alice O'Connor , Associate Professor,
Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara

PhD-students and Junior Researchers from the whole world are invited to apply. We think this will be an excellent opportunity to acquire new knowledge and meet with PhD-candidates and experts in an international unique setting.
For more informattion of the course visit our website.

You will find the application form and more information about
the BSRS on the official website. The deadline for submitting the application form is April 15, 2008. "

Towards a more nuanced understanding of poverty

- The imperatives and dynamics of the world of poverty are little understood but evermore pressing, says Professor Vigdis Broch-Due. For the past four years, she has been in charge of the research project entitled Poverty Politics: Current Approaches to its Production and Reduction. Read more

Documentary shown at Bergen International Film Festival

Iselin Åsedotter Strønen wrote her master thesis about grass root movement in Venezuela as a part of the Poverty Politics Project. Now she has made a full-length documentary based on her fieldwork experience, entitled The People and the President- a Portrait of the Bolivarian Revolution. The film was recently screened at BIFF 2007. Read more

Conflict and Displacement in Northern Kenya

Thor Erik Sortland carried out his fieldwork in Samburu and Laikipia districts in northern Kenya. Being chased by an elephant, getting sick with malaria and participating in a circumcision ritual as godfather, are some of the many experiences he carries with him back to Norway. Read more  

International workshop: "Place versus Path". Reconfiguring nomads to fit the state.

The Poverty Politics project is organizing an international workshop the 7th to the 10th of June 2007. The workshop takes place at Hotel Admiral in Bergen and will gather 17 scholars who are among the leading experts on pastorialism in Africa from various universities and research institutions across the world.
Read more

A Religious NGO with Microcredit Programmes in Embu and Mbeere, Kenya

Leah Junge went back to her home country Kenya for fieldwork. There she critically examined how microfinance initiatives affect people at a local level. Being a “native anthropologist” she also encountered particular challenges of representation. Read more

Når bistandspakka ikkje verkar

"Vi ønskjer å sjå på årsakene til at fattigdommen i land i den tredje verda ikkje vert redusert trass i tjukke bunkar med handlingsplanar og politiske vedtak". Det sier Vigdis Broch-Due, Nordens eneste professor i fattigdomsforsking og leder for Poverty Politics-prosjektet. Les mer

Contested use of Guatemalan rainforest

After several years of teaching at the Department of Social Anthropology, Margit Ystanes is now going back to Guatemala where she did fieldwork for her major (hovedfag) in Social Anthropology. This time she will carry out a 9 months fieldwork for her PHd project. Read more

The production of poverty through gifts and charity

Based on her fieldwork in a small Indian fishing village, Kristina Jones shows how development initiatives have created new forms of poverty and inequality between people. Read more

Managing cultural heritage in India

It started with an idea he got at a holiday trip to India. Later, Stian Krog returned to do fieldwork in Hampi, a small village state of Karnataka. Read more

Poverty Politics produces documentary

In the ethnograpic documentary, Producing Poverty, Professor Vigdis Broch-Due explores how colonial structures which continue up until present time, has condemned people like the Turkana pastoralists in Kenya to social exclusion andl poverty. Read more

Where the sea meets the land

Dr. Stephanie Kane walked around in Bergen a lot during her stay as a guest lecturer at Department of Social Anthropology. She has a particular interest in port cities and is currently studying water management in Buenos Aires.Her goal is to understand how different people, institutions and laws interplay in the management of urban water front. Read more

- We lack a language for talking about helplessness

Famous anthropologist Fredrik Barth has lived and worked in small scale communities throughout the world for several decades. I asked him how he had seen these communities change in the course of the last decade's economic globalisation. Read more

Studying food security in Malawi

"Despite different national and international efforts to alleviate hunger and poverty, Malawi is still suffering from food crisis and inequality", says Jessica Mzamu. She is writing her PhD under the Poverty Politics project. Read more

Fieldwork in progress

Joakim Ophaug, Masters student participating in the Poverty Politics project, is currently conducting his fieldwork in Bangalore, India. You can follow him through his blog.

Sri Lankan children between the tsunami and the civil war

Berit Angelskar came to Sri Lanka in order to explore how development assistance was directed towards children and youth in the aftermath of the tsunami. However, the violent conflict at the island escalated while she was there and became a central part of her analysis. Read more