This lecture looks at the relationship between wealth, poverty, and inequality, by focusing on the experience of indigenous people. Two points are made. The first is that indigenous people show how poverty cannot be separated from the inequalities of power. Poverty is not just a condition that one falls into, that one is trapped into, or that one escapes from. Rather, poverty is intrinsically tied to the wider inequalities of power, the political and economic processes, and the social relations between people that make some very rich and leave others poor. The second point I will make is that deep, immersive ethnographic research into the lives and worlds of indigenous people, may help us radically reconsider our notions of affluence and wealth for a better, more equal world.
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