I use Royce’s book Poverty and Power when teaching a sociology course focused on social class. In a clear and up-to-date manner, Royce challenges common myths about social class in the U.S., and presents data and corresponding arguments that reveal structural causes of poverty, rooted in economic, political, social, and cultural systems.
— Laurel R. Davis-Delano, Professor of Sociology, Springfield College
Clear, accessible, and powerfully argued, Poverty and Power offers readers a deeply informed exploration of how we tend to explain poverty in the United States and how those dominant explanations differ from what we know about the reality of being poor in America. There may be no better single-volume introduction to the issue than this compelling and comprehensive book.
(Previous Edition Praise)— Stephen Pimpare, Casey School of Public Policy, University of New Hampshire
The single most comprehensive structural exploration of inequality and poverty.
— Rick Eckstein, Villanova University
Edward Royce’s Poverty and Power provides a comprehensive look at the reasons why poverty persists in the United States and why it is so often taken for granted by many Americans. Royce's compelling argument identifies the cause of poverty as rooted in inequalities in power and politics and shows the inadequacies of individualistic, cultural, and human capital theories of poverty.
(Previous Edition Praise)— Ellen Reese, University of California, Riverside
Poverty and Power is an essential text for students interested in understanding the intersection of structural poverty and the unequal distribution of power in the U.S., and how the former is perpetuated by the latter.
— Arturo Baiocchi, California State University, Sacramento
At a time when America is facing a crisis of inequality and rising poverty, Edward Royce's Poverty and Power is a critical guide to understanding the true causes of economic hardship in our country and to avoiding falling for the false and misleading ideas about poverty that are so popular in the mass media. Poverty is a problem created by political power—Royce shows how it's done, and how it can be undone.
(Previous Edition Praise)— Gordon Lafer, Professor, University of Oregon
Poverty and Poweris the best one-stop-shop I have found for helping students to understand how inadequate our understandings of poverty are in the U.S. and how central power is to fostering—and, ultimately, to addressing—poverty.
— Michael Barram, Saint Mary's College of California
This updated edition of Poverty and Power remains the single most comprehensive exploration of structural inequality I have ever read. The book brilliantly excoriates our prevailing belief that poverty and inequality result from individuals' poor decisions or bad personal attributes. For my colleagues, Poverty and Power has become the 'go-to book' for undergraduate and graduate classes that examine the economic, cultural, political, and social layers of systemic inequality.
(Previous Edition Praise)— Rick Eckstein, Villanova University
Poverty and Power is an excellent textbook that not only provides rigorous analysis of the ongoing socio-economic issues in the United States, but challenges students to think more critically at how structural and institutional norms reinforce poverty.
— Randy Goldson, Temple University