Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain's Underclass

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Poverty Safari ends with some honest self-reflection by McGarvey. Although he speaks out against the social, political, and economic injustices that enable and perpetuate poverty, he suggests that the despair and powerlessness felt by many in disadvantaged working class communities has become a crutch to lean upon whilst blaming the difficulties that they face on circumstances and powers beyond their control.

Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain’s Books: Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain’s

Darren McGarvey very openly explores his own struggles with addictions. Could Poverty Safari be read as a guide on how to deal with addiction? This then presents another challenge for EPs. As well as seeking to use our professional voice to support and advocate for marginalised and disadvantaged communities, are we also a profession that really listens to the communities that we serve? Are we a profession that seeks to facilitate and empower the solutions that local people advocate to their identified needs? I’m not sure I have the answers to these questions yet, but they’re certainly worth considering. And for that reason, I’d really recommend reading this book which doesn’t shy from asking them. McGarvey has a lot of great things to say about the “poverty industry”; the dangers of centralized bureaucracy; hypocrisy among the left; the class divide; the sense of powerlessness of the working classes; not to mention his honest reflections on his own resentment, sense of victimhood, hypocrisy and personal change. Most of these themes come throughout the book, but the strongest and most central one – the personal responsibility he took to turn his life around – I’d have loved him to have talked about much more, both in his own life, and in the context of his own current work with the disaffected. It’s almost like McGarvey knows that this point will be met with groans from the left (with whom he identifies), so he has to spring it on them at the very end, after they’ve read all that they can agree with.Some good things - the critique on the left for the most part was facts, cancel culture is dead out (not about it), facts poverty is not properly analysed and the part stress plays in all aspects of life. I pretty much lost interest in the book when this happened... McGarvey goes to a school for problem kids. Two boys are particularly troubled. He's going to meet with them to try to set them straight. He is a kind of social worker / rapper / icon. Poverty Safari - Understanding the anger of Britain's underclass" (2017). With the Guardian finding this to be 'one of the best accounts of working-class life'. McGarvey also wants those who seek to understand poverty within the UK to actually listen to those who live within it. To listen not only to their frustrations, but to also listen to and empower the solutions that they advocate rather than continue with the well-intentioned (or self-serving) patronisation of these communities from the outside.

Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain’s

Poverty Safari' caught my eye on the library shelf, then the blurb convinced me to read it. McGarvey grew up in poverty in Glasgow, and I've been thinking that this year I want to read more about Scotland. Since I live here and all. While the book definitely gives an insight into life in a deprived part of Glasgow, it also has a great deal to say about poverty more generally. McGarvey is an articulate and considered writer, analytical and compassionate in his dissection of poverty as he and others have experienced it. He also confronts the fact that for his book to be saleable, he had to describe the traumas of his childhood:Poverty Safari challenges you to think about why you think what you think and what impact that might have on your perceptions of, and actions within, society. In an increasingly polarised nation, the capacity for self-reflection and introspection are those that will enable us to reach compromise.