The construction of the Reality of Poverty for The Poor (A comparative study on women and men supported by the Imam Ali's population charity)

The significance of poverty as a social problem is indicated by the fact that it has attracted a lot of attention among social scientists, in particular, and social thinkers in general. Sociology, has dealt with this social problem with different approaches and methods. This article is based on a qualitative research, using in-depth interviews in order to find out how the poor people look at and conceive their daily life and their poverty. The main questions had the following themes: definition of poverty by the poor, reasons of their poverty in their view, process of their impoverishment, ways of adapting to situation of poverty, transference of poverty, ways they use to get rid of poverty, their social depravation, and their expectations from the society. While the poor who were studied were divided into two equal groups of men and women, the findings can be best compared between these two groups. The differences and similarities between women and men’s conception of poverty was one of the main questions of this research. The interviews which were conducted with the constructionist approach of Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann towards reality had the following The poor define poverty as a hard life. The reason of their poverty is conceived as a combination of God’s will and other objective factors. They have reached their present situation of poverty through a process which had one of the three incidents of illness, addiction and bankruptcy at its beginning. Their actions, in the face of their poverty, involved a variety of adaptive ways which were studied in relation to housing, medical care, pastime, and their children’s expectations. Social depravation among others is the most outstanding consequence of poverty which causes the socialization of the children of the poor being directed towards ways of liberating them from poverty. Considering these findings, the construction of the reality of poverty including the ‘life story’ and the ‘interpretation of the world around us’ was obtained.