CZ:Featured article/Current: Difference between revisions

From Citizendium
Jump to navigation Jump to search
imported>Richard Nevell
(→‎Cowdray House: expand description to match recent changes to the article)
imported>John Stephenson
(template)
 
(61 intermediate revisions by 4 users not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
== '''[[Cowdray House]]''' ==
{{:{{FeaturedArticleTitle}}}}
----
<small>
 
==Footnotes==
{{Image|Cowdray House, 2008.jpg|300px|right|The front of Cowdray House seen from the west}}
 
'''Cowdray House''' in [[Sussex]] is a 16th-century Tudor mansion which was badly damaged by fire in 1793. Construction began in the 1520s after Sir David Owen demolished a 13th-century manor house on the site and was completed by William Fitzwilliam in 1542. Though owned by the Viscount Cowdray, the building is maintained by the Cowdray House Trust, a charity established in 1996. In the early 20th century the ruins were opened to the public, however their continued decay meant that in the 1980s the site was closed for safety reasons. After a multi-million pound restoration project lasting two years, Cowdray House was reopened to the public in 2007.
 
===History===
The Bohun family owned Coudreye, and in 1273 Sir John Bohun began building a manor house there. The estates descended with the family until the late 15th century. When the Bohun line became extinct in the late 1490s Sir David Owen inherited the family property through his marriage to the daughter of the last John Bohun.<ref>Howard, Bridget (2009). ''Cowdray''. Midhurst: Cowdray Heritage Trust. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-85101-428-9.</ref> Beginning in around 1520, Owen set about demolishing the 13th-century manor house at Coudreye and building a grand house for himself. Owen did not live to see Cowdray completed, and died in 1535.<ref>Woodburn, Bill and Guy, Neil (2005&ndash;6). [http://www.castlestudiesgroup.org.uk/Cowdray.PDF "Cowdray House"], ''Castle Studies Group Journal'' vol 19. p. 32.</ref>
 
''[[Cowdray House|.... (read more)]]''
 
{| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" style="width: 90%; float: center; margin: 0.5em 1em 0.8em 0px;"
|-
! style="text-align: center;" | &nbsp;[[Cowdray House#References|notes]]
|-
|
{{reflist|2}}
{{reflist|2}}
|}
</small>

Latest revision as of 09:19, 11 September 2020

The Mathare Valley slum near Nairobi, Kenya, in 2009.

Poverty is deprivation based on lack of material resources. The concept is value-based and political. Hence its definition, causes and remedies (and the possibility of remedies) are highly contentious.[1] The word poverty may also be used figuratively to indicate a lack, instead of material goods or money, of any kind of quality, as in a poverty of imagination.

Definitions

Primary and secondary poverty

The use of the terms primary and secondary poverty dates back to Seebohm Rowntree, who conducted the second British survey to calculate the extent of poverty. This was carried out in York and was published in 1899. He defined primary poverty as having insufficient income to “obtain the minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency”. In secondary poverty, the income “would be sufficient for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency were it not that some portion of it is absorbed by some other expenditure.” Even with these rigorous criteria he found that 9.9% of the population was in primary poverty and a further 17.9% in secondary.[2]

Absolute and comparative poverty

More recent definitions tend to use the terms absolute and comparative poverty. Absolute is in line with Rowntree's primary poverty, but comparative poverty is usually expressed in terms of ability to play a part in the society in which a person lives. Comparative poverty will thus vary from one country to another.[3] The difficulty of definition is illustrated by the fact that a recession can actually reduce "poverty".

Causes of poverty

The causes of poverty most often considered are:

  • Character defects
  • An established “culture of poverty”, with low expectations handed down from one generation to another
  • Unemployment
  • Irregular employment, and/or low pay
  • Position in the life cycle (see below) and household size
  • Disability
  • Structural inequality, both within countries and between countries. (R H Tawney: “What thoughtful rich people call the problem of poverty, thoughtful poor people call with equal justice a problem of riches”)[4]

As noted above, most of these, or the extent to which they can be, or should be changed, are matters of heated controversy.

Footnotes

  1. Alcock, P. Understanding poverty. Macmillan. 1997. ch 1.
  2. Harris, B. The origins of the British welfare state. Palgrave Macmillan. 2004. Also, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
  3. Alcock, Pt II
  4. Alcock, Preface to 1st edition and pt III.