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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the concept of dignity drawing on primary data into extreme poverty in Bangladesh. We argue that relationality is constitutive of dignity, and that dignity frames the terms on which extreme poor people navigate security and wellbeing.

Paper long abstract:

Over the years, poverty analysis has attempted to ‘move beyond the statistics’ to focus on and better capture the experience of poverty. In this paper, we argue that the concept of dignity offers an important lens to better understand not only poverty experiences but the dynamics that reproduce poverty intergenerationally. Drawing on primary qualitative longitudinal data from Bangladesh, we build on a local understanding of dignity to highlight how being denied dignity constrains options to resist poverty and legitimises social processes of ostracisation. Our intersectional analysis strengthens the argument that relationality is constitutive of dignity, and adds further weight to arguments that call for a shift away from individualistic explanations of poverty to more political explanations