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Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain's Underclass – The Orwell Prize Winner
The Sunday Times top ten bestseller.
Winner on the Orwell Prize 2018.
Darren McGarvey has experienced poverty and its devastating effects first-hand. He knows why people from deprived communities all around Britain feel angry and unheard. And he wants to explain . . .
So he invites you to come on a safari of sorts. But not the kind where the wildlife is surveyed from a safe distance. This book takes you inside the experience of poverty to show how the pressures really feel and how hard their legacy is to overcome.
Arguing that both the political left and right misunderstand poverty as it is actually lived, McGarvey sets out what everybody – including himself – could do to change things. Razor-sharp, fearless and brutally honest, Poverty Safari is an unforgettable insight into modern Britain.
235 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 2, 2017
607 people are currently reading
6570 people want to read
About the author
Darren McGarvey
7 books166 followersDarren McGarvey (born 1984), aka Loki, grew up in Pollok, Glasgow. He is a writer, performer, columnist and former rapper-in-residence at Police Scotland's Violence Reduction Unit. He has presented eight programmes for BBC Scotland exploring the root causes of anti-social behaviour and social deprivation.
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January 14, 2018
I strongly recommend this book for anyone looking for fresh thinking on poverty in modern Britain/Scotland. The author is very honest about his own experiences and thinking, but of course doesn't guarantee that he's right on everything, and the reflective nature of his writing is both a strength and weakness of the book means that he ends up contradicting himself more than once. IMO, this is a book encouraging the reader to challenge their own ego and assumptions, so if you are reading this in the hope of a pat on the back, you will probably be disappointed. If you want food for thought, this is a feast.
I could join the chorus of voices saying that the perception of what middle class people do and think is unfair, but the point isn't to paint middle-class people that way, but rather to illuminate that is how many people from "the lower classes" (the author's terminology) think of "the middle-class". It would be very easy wallow in my personal offence, but it's more useful to think about why those assumptions exist, and serves as a reminder that no-one likes to be on the receiving end of negative generalisations. If you keep reading, McGarvey describes one time he got that very wrong. Instead, focus on the descriptions of his own experiences and the grinding challenges of poverty that are about more than not having much money and are rarely articulated. Too often the impacts of a disadvantaged background are glossed over as irrelevant because we have the occasional example of someone from a poor background ‘made good’. We don’t need to feel bad about having a more privileged background, but we should be honest enough to acknowledge that it helped us to get where we are now. Again, it may be tempting for the reader to decide that many of McGarvey’s problems as coming from a dysfunctional family, rather than a poor one, and thus under-estimate the impact of poverty, but the two are intrinsically linked. I feel like this was so obvious to the author that he didn’t articulate it quite as clearly as some cynics may require.
The strength of this book is the criticism of the tribal nature of politics. Too much time spent on trying to prove yourself right and your political rivals wrong for the sake of ego, rather than thinking about what we could do now if only we listened to each other a bit more and occasionally admitted we were wrong and your opponents might have the odd good idea and not be inherently evil. I thought this might have been a good place to mention voting systems, and the campaigns by the Electoral Reform Society and Make Votes Matter to ditch the archaic FPTP and to bring in fairer systems that reward collaborative working and let more of the small voices be heard, but there is only so much you can mention in a single book. Instead, there is a very worthwhile discussion of the perils of confirmation bias, and cognitive dissonance, which impressively, presumably deliberately, doesn't use the terms.
There is a warning to well intentioned 'middle-class' campaigners who might rely too heavily on academic or specialist language from their own particular area of interest that alienate the wider community, although there are a few passages of this book where the author could benefit from his own advice, because they read like he's trying to impress his sociology tutor.
The McGarvey warns against investing too much energy and faith to the delivery of political silver bullets, because even if you do think that a change of government/the end of capitalism/Brexit/nationalism/Corbyn/Trump/not Trump will solve many of your problems, you could still be waiting for a long time, and if you aren't prepared to work within the current political system, then it become just another protest movement that wants to keep people angry for the benefit of the movement, not the community. When you think you have nothing to lose, then hoping for the banks to fail sounds like fun, but in reality, the poorest would still end up suffering the most.
The other big theme is that of personal responsibility. The author believes that his life got a lot better when he stopped trying to externalise blame for all of his problems. In taking responsibility for his own diet, lifestyle and mental health, his own quality of life improved considerably. This is obviously a lot more complicated than it sounds, and much more difficult for those who grow up in poverty, but the point being that it didn't take a big political change. He throws down the gauntlet to the reader to take responsibility for the things we do have control of, especially those things which contribute to our health in our day to day lives. He reminds well intentioned people that they may become complicit in perpetuating problems by appearing to suggest that external factors are the key. Yes, better town planning and sensible regulation could make it easier for people to live healthy lives, but that only takes us so far.
My criticism would be the ease with which McGarvey dismisses some apparently abstract concerns that he thinks are mainly of interest to the middle-classes. He rightly insists that the views and interests of working class communities should be considered in decision-making, and that we should be less dogmatic in what we assume is for the best, but is sometimes quick to dismiss other points of that at times veer towards Gove’s “we’ve had enough of experts”. It feels a bit churlish to complain about this, given how often he admits to getting things wrong, and his willingness to learn, but it still jars.
However, this book isn’t pretending to have all of the solutions, nor should it be judged according to how ‘fairly’ it presents all points of view. This book seeks to present a particular point of view that is too often overlooked, and does it well. I hope it becomes widely read.
I could join the chorus of voices saying that the perception of what middle class people do and think is unfair, but the point isn't to paint middle-class people that way, but rather to illuminate that is how many people from "the lower classes" (the author's terminology) think of "the middle-class". It would be very easy wallow in my personal offence, but it's more useful to think about why those assumptions exist, and serves as a reminder that no-one likes to be on the receiving end of negative generalisations. If you keep reading, McGarvey describes one time he got that very wrong. Instead, focus on the descriptions of his own experiences and the grinding challenges of poverty that are about more than not having much money and are rarely articulated. Too often the impacts of a disadvantaged background are glossed over as irrelevant because we have the occasional example of someone from a poor background ‘made good’. We don’t need to feel bad about having a more privileged background, but we should be honest enough to acknowledge that it helped us to get where we are now. Again, it may be tempting for the reader to decide that many of McGarvey’s problems as coming from a dysfunctional family, rather than a poor one, and thus under-estimate the impact of poverty, but the two are intrinsically linked. I feel like this was so obvious to the author that he didn’t articulate it quite as clearly as some cynics may require.
The strength of this book is the criticism of the tribal nature of politics. Too much time spent on trying to prove yourself right and your political rivals wrong for the sake of ego, rather than thinking about what we could do now if only we listened to each other a bit more and occasionally admitted we were wrong and your opponents might have the odd good idea and not be inherently evil. I thought this might have been a good place to mention voting systems, and the campaigns by the Electoral Reform Society and Make Votes Matter to ditch the archaic FPTP and to bring in fairer systems that reward collaborative working and let more of the small voices be heard, but there is only so much you can mention in a single book. Instead, there is a very worthwhile discussion of the perils of confirmation bias, and cognitive dissonance, which impressively, presumably deliberately, doesn't use the terms.
There is a warning to well intentioned 'middle-class' campaigners who might rely too heavily on academic or specialist language from their own particular area of interest that alienate the wider community, although there are a few passages of this book where the author could benefit from his own advice, because they read like he's trying to impress his sociology tutor.
The McGarvey warns against investing too much energy and faith to the delivery of political silver bullets, because even if you do think that a change of government/the end of capitalism/Brexit/nationalism/Corbyn/Trump/not Trump will solve many of your problems, you could still be waiting for a long time, and if you aren't prepared to work within the current political system, then it become just another protest movement that wants to keep people angry for the benefit of the movement, not the community. When you think you have nothing to lose, then hoping for the banks to fail sounds like fun, but in reality, the poorest would still end up suffering the most.
The other big theme is that of personal responsibility. The author believes that his life got a lot better when he stopped trying to externalise blame for all of his problems. In taking responsibility for his own diet, lifestyle and mental health, his own quality of life improved considerably. This is obviously a lot more complicated than it sounds, and much more difficult for those who grow up in poverty, but the point being that it didn't take a big political change. He throws down the gauntlet to the reader to take responsibility for the things we do have control of, especially those things which contribute to our health in our day to day lives. He reminds well intentioned people that they may become complicit in perpetuating problems by appearing to suggest that external factors are the key. Yes, better town planning and sensible regulation could make it easier for people to live healthy lives, but that only takes us so far.
My criticism would be the ease with which McGarvey dismisses some apparently abstract concerns that he thinks are mainly of interest to the middle-classes. He rightly insists that the views and interests of working class communities should be considered in decision-making, and that we should be less dogmatic in what we assume is for the best, but is sometimes quick to dismiss other points of that at times veer towards Gove’s “we’ve had enough of experts”. It feels a bit churlish to complain about this, given how often he admits to getting things wrong, and his willingness to learn, but it still jars.
However, this book isn’t pretending to have all of the solutions, nor should it be judged according to how ‘fairly’ it presents all points of view. This book seeks to present a particular point of view that is too often overlooked, and does it well. I hope it becomes widely read.
July 30, 2018
After reading a number of articles both by and about Darren McGarvey, I must admit that I went into Poverty Safari with high expectations. It’s perhaps because of these expectations that I came away from the book feeling a little disappointed.
Before I go any further with actually reviewing the content of Poverty Safari, allow me first to state that McGarvey writes extremely well. The first few pages of his book are dedicated to his love of writing, and walk the reader through how, from a very young age, McGarvey enjoyed learning and using new words, in ways which would often put him at odds with his environment, where eloquence was usually viewed as the preserve of the privileged middle and upper classes and therefore treated with scorn. McGarvey, in a way that makes the reader feel like chuckling and smiling sadly at the same time, recounts how he was called gay by his male classmates when he dared call the hair of a female classmate “beautiful” (although I can confirm that, even when growing up in my cushy middle and high schools, homophobic slurs were often the insult of choice). This love of words, which led McGarvey to become a rap artist performing under the name Loki, is felt throughout Poverty Safari, transmitting vividly the writer’s experiences and thoughts through the pages.
However, a book, and especially a non-fiction work such as Poverty Safari, cannot be considered on the style of its writing alone, and it is unfortunately in its structure and in some of its content that this book falls slightly short. To be fair to McGarvey, he does warn us of the ramshackle structure of his debut book, calling it a “series of rants” which seek to shed light on the anger and stress which are so pervasive amongst Britain’s white working class, rather than a political manifesto or an in-depth analysis of the causes and effects of phenomena such as substance abuse, splintered families, and a lack of education on successive generations of the socio-economically oppressed.
But in a book where we are forced, unflinchingly, to look into a world which is alien to many and invisible to many more, to present so few solutions feels like a missed opportunity. There are plenty of matter-of-fact descriptions of McGarvey’s harrowing childhood, in which he was horrifically abused by his mother. There are also pertinent explanations of white working class people’s anger at their marginalisation from society, and of the political and societal crises which this marginalisation has engendered. Yet when it comes to offering a solution, the most punching advice McGarvey can offer is that “poor people need to take more responsibility for their actions” – a worthy call for working class individuals to look inward rather than outward for self-betterment, to be sure, but perhaps a bit limited when considering the scale of some of the issues Poverty Safari touches upon. There is also a call from the left to work with diverging political forces rather than seeking to shut down, or “punch up,” in progressive leftist parlance, dissenting viewpoints. Again, a worthy call for increased dialogue, but slightly problematic in a political context where it is populist right-wing forces, not the progressive left, who have made concerted and systematic efforts to dismantle democratic structures and the free speech they are built upon. I would really liked to have seen McGarvey engage more with some of the solutions he is calling for, and perhaps approach them critically (like he brilliantly tackles his response to a middle-class artist’s Glasgow project), rather than simply touch upon then while wrapping up his book’s threads. But who knows, maybe this will come in his later work.
In short, I enjoyed Poverty Safari overall, but felt that it could have been fleshed out more in parts. A final point to wrap up: where McGarvey is at his weakest is where he is seen raging against occult forces who are apparently attempting to shut him down. One of the forces he targets is the “cultural left,” made up of the dominant forces in the media, the arts and the higher education sector, a term which sounds awfully like Jordan Peterson’s “Cultural Marxist” cabal which is intent on shutting down free speech and imposing an ultra-politically correct dystopia on the world. Another target, confusingly, is the Guardian, which strikes me as odd given that he has written multiple columns for the paper and given that it is through a Guardian article that I discovered McGarvey’s work and his book. I don’t see the Telegraph or the Daily Mail (I thought the progressive left dominated media?) giving McGarvey a platform…
Before I go any further with actually reviewing the content of Poverty Safari, allow me first to state that McGarvey writes extremely well. The first few pages of his book are dedicated to his love of writing, and walk the reader through how, from a very young age, McGarvey enjoyed learning and using new words, in ways which would often put him at odds with his environment, where eloquence was usually viewed as the preserve of the privileged middle and upper classes and therefore treated with scorn. McGarvey, in a way that makes the reader feel like chuckling and smiling sadly at the same time, recounts how he was called gay by his male classmates when he dared call the hair of a female classmate “beautiful” (although I can confirm that, even when growing up in my cushy middle and high schools, homophobic slurs were often the insult of choice). This love of words, which led McGarvey to become a rap artist performing under the name Loki, is felt throughout Poverty Safari, transmitting vividly the writer’s experiences and thoughts through the pages.
However, a book, and especially a non-fiction work such as Poverty Safari, cannot be considered on the style of its writing alone, and it is unfortunately in its structure and in some of its content that this book falls slightly short. To be fair to McGarvey, he does warn us of the ramshackle structure of his debut book, calling it a “series of rants” which seek to shed light on the anger and stress which are so pervasive amongst Britain’s white working class, rather than a political manifesto or an in-depth analysis of the causes and effects of phenomena such as substance abuse, splintered families, and a lack of education on successive generations of the socio-economically oppressed.
But in a book where we are forced, unflinchingly, to look into a world which is alien to many and invisible to many more, to present so few solutions feels like a missed opportunity. There are plenty of matter-of-fact descriptions of McGarvey’s harrowing childhood, in which he was horrifically abused by his mother. There are also pertinent explanations of white working class people’s anger at their marginalisation from society, and of the political and societal crises which this marginalisation has engendered. Yet when it comes to offering a solution, the most punching advice McGarvey can offer is that “poor people need to take more responsibility for their actions” – a worthy call for working class individuals to look inward rather than outward for self-betterment, to be sure, but perhaps a bit limited when considering the scale of some of the issues Poverty Safari touches upon. There is also a call from the left to work with diverging political forces rather than seeking to shut down, or “punch up,” in progressive leftist parlance, dissenting viewpoints. Again, a worthy call for increased dialogue, but slightly problematic in a political context where it is populist right-wing forces, not the progressive left, who have made concerted and systematic efforts to dismantle democratic structures and the free speech they are built upon. I would really liked to have seen McGarvey engage more with some of the solutions he is calling for, and perhaps approach them critically (like he brilliantly tackles his response to a middle-class artist’s Glasgow project), rather than simply touch upon then while wrapping up his book’s threads. But who knows, maybe this will come in his later work.
In short, I enjoyed Poverty Safari overall, but felt that it could have been fleshed out more in parts. A final point to wrap up: where McGarvey is at his weakest is where he is seen raging against occult forces who are apparently attempting to shut him down. One of the forces he targets is the “cultural left,” made up of the dominant forces in the media, the arts and the higher education sector, a term which sounds awfully like Jordan Peterson’s “Cultural Marxist” cabal which is intent on shutting down free speech and imposing an ultra-politically correct dystopia on the world. Another target, confusingly, is the Guardian, which strikes me as odd given that he has written multiple columns for the paper and given that it is through a Guardian article that I discovered McGarvey’s work and his book. I don’t see the Telegraph or the Daily Mail (I thought the progressive left dominated media?) giving McGarvey a platform…
April 19, 2019
Pish!!
Sometimes I wonder why I seem to swim against the tide of popular opinion about some books. With Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey, I'm swimming against a tsunami of praise that suggests the author is some kind of generational spokesman. I really object to the praise heaped upon this book is that it feels like a whole lot of misplaced middle-class projection.
I laud McGarvey for his open discussion of the deep and severe trauma he experienced in his family growing up, and I have no doubt that had grave repercussions for his initial trajectory into an early adult life blighted by addiction and destructive behaviour. My difficulties are when McGarvey tries to generalise from his experiences to society as a whole.
My background is very similar to McGarvey's. I come from a Central Scotland working-class background of low expectations and dark undercurrents in everyday life. I would put forward that his personal history of familial abuse was a huge driver of his difficulties in life, rather than poverty per se. Many, MANY of the people I knew as a kid and at school went on to have lives much less chaotic and poverty-stricken than the households they grew up in. The difference between them and McGarvey was that although they had no money, they also had less trauma.
I was aghast at how McGarvey made no mention of the deep and enduring sexism that blights the lives of the women of Scotland. He gives a cursory nod to the domestic abuse of his grandmother, but gives her no voice within his book, despite the fact that she was one of the more constant supports for him.
To me, the whole book was incredibly narcissistic and facile. The way that McGarvey dismisses all the professional middle-class support workers who try to help him out - of course, he would have no concept that some of those support workers would come from backgrounds just like his, because he was too self-centred to think of that.
As for the anecdote he provides of the different class-based motivations for the emotional upset of children in a playgroup - well, all I can say is that if this really happened, McGarvey has no business working with vulnerable people and children. If he has no awareness that children with "Bearsden accents" can feel emotionally upset, and that only working-class children have feelings that are worthy of attention, then I actually despair!
It worries me that people with no experience of the social background of McGarvey feel he is speaking some great truth. I can say that I grew up with lots of people that felt an acute sense of personal agency, who have done great things in their community. To dismiss all of that, to say that people in poverty need to try harder and stop blaming structural reasons for their predicament is quite frankly offensive to me.
Sometimes I wonder why I seem to swim against the tide of popular opinion about some books. With Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey, I'm swimming against a tsunami of praise that suggests the author is some kind of generational spokesman. I really object to the praise heaped upon this book is that it feels like a whole lot of misplaced middle-class projection.
I laud McGarvey for his open discussion of the deep and severe trauma he experienced in his family growing up, and I have no doubt that had grave repercussions for his initial trajectory into an early adult life blighted by addiction and destructive behaviour. My difficulties are when McGarvey tries to generalise from his experiences to society as a whole.
My background is very similar to McGarvey's. I come from a Central Scotland working-class background of low expectations and dark undercurrents in everyday life. I would put forward that his personal history of familial abuse was a huge driver of his difficulties in life, rather than poverty per se. Many, MANY of the people I knew as a kid and at school went on to have lives much less chaotic and poverty-stricken than the households they grew up in. The difference between them and McGarvey was that although they had no money, they also had less trauma.
I was aghast at how McGarvey made no mention of the deep and enduring sexism that blights the lives of the women of Scotland. He gives a cursory nod to the domestic abuse of his grandmother, but gives her no voice within his book, despite the fact that she was one of the more constant supports for him.
To me, the whole book was incredibly narcissistic and facile. The way that McGarvey dismisses all the professional middle-class support workers who try to help him out - of course, he would have no concept that some of those support workers would come from backgrounds just like his, because he was too self-centred to think of that.
As for the anecdote he provides of the different class-based motivations for the emotional upset of children in a playgroup - well, all I can say is that if this really happened, McGarvey has no business working with vulnerable people and children. If he has no awareness that children with "Bearsden accents" can feel emotionally upset, and that only working-class children have feelings that are worthy of attention, then I actually despair!
It worries me that people with no experience of the social background of McGarvey feel he is speaking some great truth. I can say that I grew up with lots of people that felt an acute sense of personal agency, who have done great things in their community. To dismiss all of that, to say that people in poverty need to try harder and stop blaming structural reasons for their predicament is quite frankly offensive to me.
April 27, 2025
If this had been a book about trauma, or addiction recovery, or – as is usually the case – both, I would have no problem. If that had been the focus, McGarvey would have had some solid insight and told a compelling and difficult story including some truths a lot of people really do not want to hear: mainly that, when it comes to addiction and your own bad behaviour, you’re the one who has to sort it out. As somebody who has had a traumatic upbringing and also struggled with various addictions in the past, this is known fact. It’s a harsh truth and nobody likes learning it, but at least it is the truth.
Unfortunately, for reasons utterly unbeknown to me aside from maybe that’s what will sell, McGarvey has taken the lessons he has learned from these areas and applied them, generally, to poverty. To put it bluntly, these lessons do not translate well. It becomes abundantly clear why the book has praise from The Sunday Times (a Conservative-aligned newspaper), The Guardian (a worthy paper for news, but delusionally middle-class when it comes to social issues), J. K. Rowling (notorious arse), and the Daily Mail (right-wing rag). I was suspicious when I saw these sources highlighted, but it quickly made sense. Now I have no choice but to be blunt.
This book is a vitriolic treatise against the poor, repeating the beloved refrain of Britain’s right-wing: that poor people could just… stop being poor… if only they stopped being so lazy and aggressive and needy and self-pitying and appreciated what everyone is trying to do for them! Have they tried not blaming others for their problems, and giving up pretending that their oppression is systematic and instead accept that it’s actually because they’re all lazy shites? Christ, it’s the same disgusting nonsense levelled at Black people – no, you haven’t been deliberately trapped as second-class citizens over generations of ruling and legislation and deliberate deprivation, and also unfairly targeted by the law and discriminated against in all sectors of society! Don’t be silly! You’re just too lazy and too angry!
McGarvey has clearly made some impressive progress in recovering from his trauma, but unfortunately I don’t think he’s all the way there yet. His hatred for the working class and his profound and disturbing lack of empathy for the people he should know best of all reek of extreme and unacknowledged trauma. C-PTSD, the form of post-traumatic stress that comes not from individual traumatic experiences but from long-term, sustained, inescapable life-threatening situations – such as domestic abuse of any kind, childhood neglect, war, being kidnapped or held hostage, and so on – is a nasty beast and many people don’t realise they have it. It is insidious and affects a person to their core, closer to a personality disorder in how it touches everything. In fact, many people with C-PTSD are often misdiagnosed as having borderline personality disorder. It makes it very difficult to function as a regular, compassionate human being. And McGarvey’s hatred and judgement of the poor hits me as the reaction of somebody who is profoundly traumatised and should have done a lot more therapy before writing this book. It has done massive damage to the cause of the poor, and I cannot believe it’s received the praise it has. Probably because it’s exactly what people want to hear about the poor, as it absolved them of all guilt and all responsibility to fix it.
On the front cover, Nick Cohen of The Guardian gushes that it’s “one of the best accounts of working-class life I have ever read.” This baffles me, as 70% of the book is McGarvey’s philosophising and railing about the poor, raising perhaps two good points in the whole book (the fact that sugar addiction is real and has horrific affects on people’s mental and physical health, and the fact that call-out culture is terrible and totally ineffective). Another 27% or so is a memoir about McGarvey’s horrific childhood, which he openly admits he only put in there as “misery lit” to “trick” the middle-class into publishing it. (Dear God I am embarrassed just typing that out.) The remaining 3% consists of the couple of pages where he actually talked to a working-class person. I think he talked to a couple of kids, and then a person running a youth club, and that was it. So this account of working-class life comes from one man, who had a terrible family life but also had over a dozen organisations working with him to help him through his issues as a youth, and giving him grants to do his art, and interviewing him for the BBC, and then… the BBC commissioned documentaries from him? This is not the typical working-class experience. Most of us don’t have dozens of people bending over backwards to help us; we don’t have the BBC knocking on our door for regular interviews; we don’t have an aunt as a sitting politician; we don’t get handed grants for our music and art. So why was McGarvey given such a platform? Because he hates the poor. He’s the perfect person to put on a platform because he’s saying all the things the establishment want to hear – poor people are lazy and they can get out of poverty if they just worked on themselves – and, because he grew up poor himself, he can hide behind it.
As well as all this, the book is just full of utter nonsense. This is already long enough, so I’m going to just rapid-fire a selection of utter and total balderdash that I discovered in this godforsaken book:
• McGarvey opens up by telling us how he doesn’t read books. I’m sorry, but it’s not oppression by the intelligentsia to state that if you don’t read books on the subject you’re going to be writing about, your book will probably not be great. If you don’t read books, fine! That is your choice. But to open with a rant about how he never reads books but he’s still smart because he uses big words speaks to me of extreme insecurity. With good reason, as this book is utterly terrible. McGarvey would have benefited greatly from reading around on his subject and, if this “journalism” of his was going to consist of avoiding interviews as much as possible with his subjects, it would have given him a varied foundation of working-class life. “I know greater books than this have been written about poverty,” he concludes in his Introduction. “I just haven’t read any.” This is the weirdest flex I’ve ever seen by a writer, and also he’s painfully right. If he’d tried reading some, I’m sure he would be rightfully embarrassed by his own.
• There is an entire section of the book where McGarvey decides that the boys on his school bus with him make fun of him because he used the word “beautiful,” and their tiny working-class minds didn’t understand what the word meant, got frightened, and called him gay. The word “beautiful” apparently creates panic in the group like a troop of baboons spotting a leopard. Unfortunately, as anyone who has been a teenage boy or who has interacted with them knows, this is not the case. McGarvey was called gay because he called a girl’s hair beautiful, and as we all know, noticing such things like hairstyle is gay. That’s it.
• For all the terrible things his mother did, one of the things McGarvey uses to highlight her neglect is that she wasn’t adequately worried about him when he was found near an open window as a child. Why was he by the window? He was pushing the cat out of it, “somehow.” He doesn’t remember how he pushed the cat but he knows he deliberately did. Why was his mother not worried about him? Because the cat fucking died. She was hysterical about the loss of her pet because McGarvey fucking killed it. This woman did terrible things, but McGarvey’s cold account of this incident, his confusion over why his mother was upset, and the glaring omission of his age (making me think he was old enough to know better and this was a deliberate act) was absolutely chilling. (Later, McGarvey is equally avoidant of why he was “invited to leave” the family home. He brushes over the reasons by stating that times were tough and it has an effect on families, but if his dedication is anything to go by, it seems none of his siblings are talking to him. I won’t judge, because trauma makes us do terrible things. But if you’re writing a book like this you need to be honest. These omissions are obvious and damning, and it’s clear that McGarvey does not want to say anything that will damage his reputation as a Reformed Poor.)
• McGarvey states ADHD is a “stress condition.” This is blatantly false. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder. You are born with it. While ADHD makes it difficult to deal with stress, and its symptoms can be exacerbated by it, it is something a person is born with and it is not caused by stress. This is blatantly false misinformation, and while McGarvey doesn’t read, I think a quick Google search would be within his power. This fact is on the preview of the Wikipedia article. You don’t even have to click it. Glaring errors like this, said with such confidence, throw everything else McGarvey says into question.
• McGarvey constantly claims that his addiction was down to selfishness and not trauma, seemingly not realising that trauma and addiction go hand in hand and that extreme selfishness like what he describes is literally a symptom of trauma. Trauma destroys your ability to relate to people; it is profoundly alienating. With this loss of relation, empathy follows. You can’t have empathy for people you feel completely separate from, nor can you find the energy for it when you’re that deeply traumatised. This is another known fact about trauma, and McGarvey has clearly done no research into the nature of addiction, its co-morbidity with trauma, and the fact that the selfishness of addicts was there before they became an addict. The loneliness and trauma that led to the isolation necessary for the selfishness to happen was there beforehand and will be there even if they get clean. But it’s no surprise that McGarvey leaves this out, because it goes against his bootstraps narrative.
I have very rarely been so angry at a book. I am tempering my anger somewhat as it is clear that McGarvey is not in the place he thinks he is, and when he realises this, it’s going to be messy. But it’s difficult to have sympathy when he wrote a book like this – a punching down of the highest degree. He might dress it up in paragraphs of philosophising that really don’t say much, but when he drives his point home it’s obvious: poor people are poor because they let themselves be. It’s like he forgot everything he ever saw growing up. It’s disgusting, it’s treachery of the highest order, and I don’t know what’s worse: does he know he’s been used like this, and he needs the cash, or does he genuinely think these people support him and that what he’s saying is acceptable? The first is cold, and the second is heartbreaking. He has been taken advantage of once again, and they have slapped his name on a book filled with vitriol against the very people he may genuinely wish to help.
Some introspection would have been very useful before writing this book. He has ideas but they’re jumbled; he has learned, but he has misplaced and misattributed what. I am being completely honest here when I say that this could have been avoided, his thoughts could have been organised, and personal insight could have been had if he read books. If you are a thinker – and McGarvey very much is, and is clearly unafraid to face hard and unpleasant truths about himself – books are the key. The dangers of imbibing harmful stereotypes and false conclusions and mixing up journalism with opinion are horrifically clear in this book. It is monstrous and deeply, deeply depressing. I hope McGarvey finds growth and insight in the future, and learns to stop hating himself so brutally.
As for everyone else, go and read one of those better books he brags about not reading. I know I will be.
(EDIT: Reader, I did. Please read Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class instead. Mr McGarvey, if you're reading this (I'm not sure of your stance on reading online comments) please read this one. Or at least get an audiobook version or something. And then withdraw your garbage from shelves post-haste. Thanks.)
Unfortunately, for reasons utterly unbeknown to me aside from maybe that’s what will sell, McGarvey has taken the lessons he has learned from these areas and applied them, generally, to poverty. To put it bluntly, these lessons do not translate well. It becomes abundantly clear why the book has praise from The Sunday Times (a Conservative-aligned newspaper), The Guardian (a worthy paper for news, but delusionally middle-class when it comes to social issues), J. K. Rowling (notorious arse), and the Daily Mail (right-wing rag). I was suspicious when I saw these sources highlighted, but it quickly made sense. Now I have no choice but to be blunt.
This book is a vitriolic treatise against the poor, repeating the beloved refrain of Britain’s right-wing: that poor people could just… stop being poor… if only they stopped being so lazy and aggressive and needy and self-pitying and appreciated what everyone is trying to do for them! Have they tried not blaming others for their problems, and giving up pretending that their oppression is systematic and instead accept that it’s actually because they’re all lazy shites? Christ, it’s the same disgusting nonsense levelled at Black people – no, you haven’t been deliberately trapped as second-class citizens over generations of ruling and legislation and deliberate deprivation, and also unfairly targeted by the law and discriminated against in all sectors of society! Don’t be silly! You’re just too lazy and too angry!
McGarvey has clearly made some impressive progress in recovering from his trauma, but unfortunately I don’t think he’s all the way there yet. His hatred for the working class and his profound and disturbing lack of empathy for the people he should know best of all reek of extreme and unacknowledged trauma. C-PTSD, the form of post-traumatic stress that comes not from individual traumatic experiences but from long-term, sustained, inescapable life-threatening situations – such as domestic abuse of any kind, childhood neglect, war, being kidnapped or held hostage, and so on – is a nasty beast and many people don’t realise they have it. It is insidious and affects a person to their core, closer to a personality disorder in how it touches everything. In fact, many people with C-PTSD are often misdiagnosed as having borderline personality disorder. It makes it very difficult to function as a regular, compassionate human being. And McGarvey’s hatred and judgement of the poor hits me as the reaction of somebody who is profoundly traumatised and should have done a lot more therapy before writing this book. It has done massive damage to the cause of the poor, and I cannot believe it’s received the praise it has. Probably because it’s exactly what people want to hear about the poor, as it absolved them of all guilt and all responsibility to fix it.
On the front cover, Nick Cohen of The Guardian gushes that it’s “one of the best accounts of working-class life I have ever read.” This baffles me, as 70% of the book is McGarvey’s philosophising and railing about the poor, raising perhaps two good points in the whole book (the fact that sugar addiction is real and has horrific affects on people’s mental and physical health, and the fact that call-out culture is terrible and totally ineffective). Another 27% or so is a memoir about McGarvey’s horrific childhood, which he openly admits he only put in there as “misery lit” to “trick” the middle-class into publishing it. (Dear God I am embarrassed just typing that out.) The remaining 3% consists of the couple of pages where he actually talked to a working-class person. I think he talked to a couple of kids, and then a person running a youth club, and that was it. So this account of working-class life comes from one man, who had a terrible family life but also had over a dozen organisations working with him to help him through his issues as a youth, and giving him grants to do his art, and interviewing him for the BBC, and then… the BBC commissioned documentaries from him? This is not the typical working-class experience. Most of us don’t have dozens of people bending over backwards to help us; we don’t have the BBC knocking on our door for regular interviews; we don’t have an aunt as a sitting politician; we don’t get handed grants for our music and art. So why was McGarvey given such a platform? Because he hates the poor. He’s the perfect person to put on a platform because he’s saying all the things the establishment want to hear – poor people are lazy and they can get out of poverty if they just worked on themselves – and, because he grew up poor himself, he can hide behind it.
As well as all this, the book is just full of utter nonsense. This is already long enough, so I’m going to just rapid-fire a selection of utter and total balderdash that I discovered in this godforsaken book:
• McGarvey opens up by telling us how he doesn’t read books. I’m sorry, but it’s not oppression by the intelligentsia to state that if you don’t read books on the subject you’re going to be writing about, your book will probably not be great. If you don’t read books, fine! That is your choice. But to open with a rant about how he never reads books but he’s still smart because he uses big words speaks to me of extreme insecurity. With good reason, as this book is utterly terrible. McGarvey would have benefited greatly from reading around on his subject and, if this “journalism” of his was going to consist of avoiding interviews as much as possible with his subjects, it would have given him a varied foundation of working-class life. “I know greater books than this have been written about poverty,” he concludes in his Introduction. “I just haven’t read any.” This is the weirdest flex I’ve ever seen by a writer, and also he’s painfully right. If he’d tried reading some, I’m sure he would be rightfully embarrassed by his own.
• There is an entire section of the book where McGarvey decides that the boys on his school bus with him make fun of him because he used the word “beautiful,” and their tiny working-class minds didn’t understand what the word meant, got frightened, and called him gay. The word “beautiful” apparently creates panic in the group like a troop of baboons spotting a leopard. Unfortunately, as anyone who has been a teenage boy or who has interacted with them knows, this is not the case. McGarvey was called gay because he called a girl’s hair beautiful, and as we all know, noticing such things like hairstyle is gay. That’s it.
• For all the terrible things his mother did, one of the things McGarvey uses to highlight her neglect is that she wasn’t adequately worried about him when he was found near an open window as a child. Why was he by the window? He was pushing the cat out of it, “somehow.” He doesn’t remember how he pushed the cat but he knows he deliberately did. Why was his mother not worried about him? Because the cat fucking died. She was hysterical about the loss of her pet because McGarvey fucking killed it. This woman did terrible things, but McGarvey’s cold account of this incident, his confusion over why his mother was upset, and the glaring omission of his age (making me think he was old enough to know better and this was a deliberate act) was absolutely chilling. (Later, McGarvey is equally avoidant of why he was “invited to leave” the family home. He brushes over the reasons by stating that times were tough and it has an effect on families, but if his dedication is anything to go by, it seems none of his siblings are talking to him. I won’t judge, because trauma makes us do terrible things. But if you’re writing a book like this you need to be honest. These omissions are obvious and damning, and it’s clear that McGarvey does not want to say anything that will damage his reputation as a Reformed Poor.)
• McGarvey states ADHD is a “stress condition.” This is blatantly false. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder. You are born with it. While ADHD makes it difficult to deal with stress, and its symptoms can be exacerbated by it, it is something a person is born with and it is not caused by stress. This is blatantly false misinformation, and while McGarvey doesn’t read, I think a quick Google search would be within his power. This fact is on the preview of the Wikipedia article. You don’t even have to click it. Glaring errors like this, said with such confidence, throw everything else McGarvey says into question.
• McGarvey constantly claims that his addiction was down to selfishness and not trauma, seemingly not realising that trauma and addiction go hand in hand and that extreme selfishness like what he describes is literally a symptom of trauma. Trauma destroys your ability to relate to people; it is profoundly alienating. With this loss of relation, empathy follows. You can’t have empathy for people you feel completely separate from, nor can you find the energy for it when you’re that deeply traumatised. This is another known fact about trauma, and McGarvey has clearly done no research into the nature of addiction, its co-morbidity with trauma, and the fact that the selfishness of addicts was there before they became an addict. The loneliness and trauma that led to the isolation necessary for the selfishness to happen was there beforehand and will be there even if they get clean. But it’s no surprise that McGarvey leaves this out, because it goes against his bootstraps narrative.
I have very rarely been so angry at a book. I am tempering my anger somewhat as it is clear that McGarvey is not in the place he thinks he is, and when he realises this, it’s going to be messy. But it’s difficult to have sympathy when he wrote a book like this – a punching down of the highest degree. He might dress it up in paragraphs of philosophising that really don’t say much, but when he drives his point home it’s obvious: poor people are poor because they let themselves be. It’s like he forgot everything he ever saw growing up. It’s disgusting, it’s treachery of the highest order, and I don’t know what’s worse: does he know he’s been used like this, and he needs the cash, or does he genuinely think these people support him and that what he’s saying is acceptable? The first is cold, and the second is heartbreaking. He has been taken advantage of once again, and they have slapped his name on a book filled with vitriol against the very people he may genuinely wish to help.
Some introspection would have been very useful before writing this book. He has ideas but they’re jumbled; he has learned, but he has misplaced and misattributed what. I am being completely honest here when I say that this could have been avoided, his thoughts could have been organised, and personal insight could have been had if he read books. If you are a thinker – and McGarvey very much is, and is clearly unafraid to face hard and unpleasant truths about himself – books are the key. The dangers of imbibing harmful stereotypes and false conclusions and mixing up journalism with opinion are horrifically clear in this book. It is monstrous and deeply, deeply depressing. I hope McGarvey finds growth and insight in the future, and learns to stop hating himself so brutally.
As for everyone else, go and read one of those better books he brags about not reading. I know I will be.
(EDIT: Reader, I did. Please read Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class instead. Mr McGarvey, if you're reading this (I'm not sure of your stance on reading online comments) please read this one. Or at least get an audiobook version or something. And then withdraw your garbage from shelves post-haste. Thanks.)
July 5, 2018
I gave up at the 75% mark.
McGarvey opens the book with a warning. He doesn't read much. And he likes big words. So he's going to write the sort of book he would like to see in the world -- one you don't have to read in chronological order, and you can jump around to whatever section you want to read.
And you get what he promises. Disjointed chapters that run along without any connection. We flit from topic to topic, without any sense of building. And McGarvey uses the word "outwith" several times in what felt like a deliberate attempt to force me to use a dictionary. (I don't think I've ever seen that word before.)
I can't say he didn't warn me. But, in my defense, I was reading the book electronically. Jumping around isn't exactly easy, in that format. And I just don't read that way.
This book is maybe 5% safari, and 95% theory and explaining of things. Not what I signed up for. Somewhere in the middle of the book, MacGarvey himself makes a joke that he sold the book as a "misery memoir" -- making fun of himself for talking so much theory and not so much personal anecdotes. Ha ha -- where's my misery memoir, dude?!?
The title is supposed to be a cruel barb. The rich drive through poor places on poverty safari. But I thought McGarvey was going to take us out of the car and show us things. He doesn't.
McGarvey ignores a fundamental writinh rule: show, don't tell.
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.
We get maybe five sentences of dialogue from these kids. I'm enthralled. Then McGarvey ends the chapter. We're back to talking theory again.
WHAT? NO! GO BACK! TELL ME ABOUT THE KIDS!
No such luck. MacGarvey is now deep into lecturing on how we need to open a dialogue with racists in order to engage them. He explains this clearly and with nuance, but my mind is still with the two boys. Tell me about the boys. Stop summarizing and theorizing and tell me about the boys.
I have always hated sociology. Take an entire subculture and claim they are a homogeneous blob. I find it offensive and dull. If you genuinely want to teach me about the poor, show me examples. McGarvey does this, somewhat, but he seems uncomfortable doing so. Msybe he worries he's being exploitative. He's much happier telling you about how the liberal middle class do gooders think they can parachute in to poverty country and fix things their way. His criticism is valid, but again, theoretical, not tied to any concrete examples, and pretty dull.
This may be another case of me picking up a book by a celebrity that I don't know. Maybe his fans are delighted to read his thoughts. Not knowing the guy at all, I found his thoughts boring.
Several times I thought about telling my brother, a social worker, about this book. The text actually reads like a manual for social workers. "Here are some things to think about while organizing a community!"
As a book for a layperson just kind of curious about poverty and theory and maybe wanting concrete examples of that world -- the book falls flat.
McGarvey opens the book with a warning. He doesn't read much. And he likes big words. So he's going to write the sort of book he would like to see in the world -- one you don't have to read in chronological order, and you can jump around to whatever section you want to read.
And you get what he promises. Disjointed chapters that run along without any connection. We flit from topic to topic, without any sense of building. And McGarvey uses the word "outwith" several times in what felt like a deliberate attempt to force me to use a dictionary. (I don't think I've ever seen that word before.)
I can't say he didn't warn me. But, in my defense, I was reading the book electronically. Jumping around isn't exactly easy, in that format. And I just don't read that way.
This book is maybe 5% safari, and 95% theory and explaining of things. Not what I signed up for. Somewhere in the middle of the book, MacGarvey himself makes a joke that he sold the book as a "misery memoir" -- making fun of himself for talking so much theory and not so much personal anecdotes. Ha ha -- where's my misery memoir, dude?!?
The title is supposed to be a cruel barb. The rich drive through poor places on poverty safari. But I thought McGarvey was going to take us out of the car and show us things. He doesn't.
McGarvey ignores a fundamental writinh rule: show, don't tell.
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.
We get maybe five sentences of dialogue from these kids. I'm enthralled. Then McGarvey ends the chapter. We're back to talking theory again.
WHAT? NO! GO BACK! TELL ME ABOUT THE KIDS!
No such luck. MacGarvey is now deep into lecturing on how we need to open a dialogue with racists in order to engage them. He explains this clearly and with nuance, but my mind is still with the two boys. Tell me about the boys. Stop summarizing and theorizing and tell me about the boys.
I have always hated sociology. Take an entire subculture and claim they are a homogeneous blob. I find it offensive and dull. If you genuinely want to teach me about the poor, show me examples. McGarvey does this, somewhat, but he seems uncomfortable doing so. Msybe he worries he's being exploitative. He's much happier telling you about how the liberal middle class do gooders think they can parachute in to poverty country and fix things their way. His criticism is valid, but again, theoretical, not tied to any concrete examples, and pretty dull.
This may be another case of me picking up a book by a celebrity that I don't know. Maybe his fans are delighted to read his thoughts. Not knowing the guy at all, I found his thoughts boring.
Several times I thought about telling my brother, a social worker, about this book. The text actually reads like a manual for social workers. "Here are some things to think about while organizing a community!"
As a book for a layperson just kind of curious about poverty and theory and maybe wanting concrete examples of that world -- the book falls flat.
January 17, 2020
'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:
The title is very apposite and well-chosen, inviting the reader to consider their voyeuristic attitude. Successive chapters examine both the material and psychological impacts of poverty, as well as how these are perpetuated. I found on the commentary on the effects of violent environments on children particularly powerful. I also wish more non-fiction writing displayed this level of self-awareness and insight:
It's difficult to condense the main points of 'Poverty Safari', because it approaches its topic from such a variety of directions: class, economics, built environment, politics, mental health, food, and education, among others. The chapters link together neatly to create an original and profound examination of poverty in Scotland, and Britain in general. It's tempting as is for me, and likely many others who've never experienced real poverty either, to carelessly blame Tory policies since Thatcher for its persistence. McGarvey refuses to be so reductive:
I also really liked his perspective on social media and the need to critically consider beliefs and opinions you inherited or accreted thoughtlessly. I try to do this, but honestly it's so exhausting that I've taken to prioritising and not having an opinion at all on many issues. If I can't give something the attention and thought it needs, I've decided it's better not to take a view. Moreover, a lot of things that 'go viral' are so trivial that they just don't seem worth caring about. Surely it isn't actually necessary for everyone to have an instant opinion on everything.
This, in a later chapter, recalls Stoic philosophy:
McGarvey is an excellent writer from a background that, as he says in the introduction, caused him to internalise, 'People like me don't write books'. He's succeeded admirably in contradicting that. His voice is distinctive and his ideas thought-provoking; I'd like to read more from him and, in general, more books discussing poverty from such an informed and pragmatic perspective.
There's no way someone like me would have been given the opportunity to write a book like this had I not draped it, at least partially, in the veil of a misery memoir. Okay then, first, we need to create the illusion of objectivity. It seems the most effective way to do this would be to completely dehumanise my family and me, to look at our experience through a statistical lens.
The title is very apposite and well-chosen, inviting the reader to consider their voyeuristic attitude. Successive chapters examine both the material and psychological impacts of poverty, as well as how these are perpetuated. I found on the commentary on the effects of violent environments on children particularly powerful. I also wish more non-fiction writing displayed this level of self-awareness and insight:
Now let me say that I'm aware some may disagree that these two cases are connected. Some may even think it vulgar that I have chosen to contrast them in this way. But equivalences like this are precisely how many of us arrive at our opinions. What I've just done is what people generally do when they turn on the news; observing complicated matters from a distance, we rush to conclusions about the nature of society and our place within it. These conclusions become the basis of new beliefs whether they are true or false.
It's difficult to condense the main points of 'Poverty Safari', because it approaches its topic from such a variety of directions: class, economics, built environment, politics, mental health, food, and education, among others. The chapters link together neatly to create an original and profound examination of poverty in Scotland, and Britain in general. It's tempting as is for me, and likely many others who've never experienced real poverty either, to carelessly blame Tory policies since Thatcher for its persistence. McGarvey refuses to be so reductive:
When one political party blames another for the problem, it creates a false impression in the public mind that this complex issue is within the competence of one political actor or group to solve. This is a dangerous oversimplification. An oversimplification which forces us to cast one another as heroes and villains in the long-running saga of poverty, often based on our unconscious bias, false beliefs, and, increasingly, our resentments. Just like stress creates a demand for relief through alcohol, food, and drugs, so too does our refusal to get serious about grappling with the complexity of poverty; creating a demand for the sort of political juvenilia that reduces every person to a caricature and every issue into a soundbite. These partisan rivalries are now so toxic that the idea of getting round the table with your opponents, in good faith, is almost laughable. Proposing such an idea is regarded widely as naive.
I also really liked his perspective on social media and the need to critically consider beliefs and opinions you inherited or accreted thoughtlessly. I try to do this, but honestly it's so exhausting that I've taken to prioritising and not having an opinion at all on many issues. If I can't give something the attention and thought it needs, I've decided it's better not to take a view. Moreover, a lot of things that 'go viral' are so trivial that they just don't seem worth caring about. Surely it isn't actually necessary for everyone to have an instant opinion on everything.
This, in a later chapter, recalls Stoic philosophy:
It's counter-intuitive to accept responsibility for certain things, particularly when our circumstances are beyond our control. This is especially true if we have suffered abuse, neglect, and oppression. But striving to take responsibility is not about blame, it's about honestly trying to identify which parts of the puzzle are within our capacity to deal with. This approach is far more radical than simply attributing responsibility for every ill in society to a 'system' or a vaguely defined power dynamic - something we lefties have gotten all too good at. Aspiring to take responsibility is not about giving an unjust system a free pass, it's about recognising that we are part of that system and are, on some level, complicit in the dysfunction. [...] It has to be asked, what quality of resistance to societal injustice was I actually bringing to the table, given the fact that I lacked insight into even the most basic truths of my own life.
McGarvey is an excellent writer from a background that, as he says in the introduction, caused him to internalise, 'People like me don't write books'. He's succeeded admirably in contradicting that. His voice is distinctive and his ideas thought-provoking; I'd like to read more from him and, in general, more books discussing poverty from such an informed and pragmatic perspective.
December 4, 2017
Everyone should read this book.
Rather histrionic, perhaps, but the truth. Shocking, visceral, angry and anger-inducing, Poverty Safari shines a light into the darkest corners of society, highlighting the forgotten, the overlooked. If we have anything about us, we should see this book as a rallying call; it is surely time, as Grenfell still smoulders and the queues at the food banks snake ever longer, to examine where we as a society are going wrong.
Fluently and beautifully written, Poverty Safari is challenging and enlightening and a very, very important book - and an urgently timely one.
My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Rather histrionic, perhaps, but the truth. Shocking, visceral, angry and anger-inducing, Poverty Safari shines a light into the darkest corners of society, highlighting the forgotten, the overlooked. If we have anything about us, we should see this book as a rallying call; it is surely time, as Grenfell still smoulders and the queues at the food banks snake ever longer, to examine where we as a society are going wrong.
Fluently and beautifully written, Poverty Safari is challenging and enlightening and a very, very important book - and an urgently timely one.
My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
April 10, 2019
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.
Darren McGarvey is a voice I enjoyed hearing from, one that is not often afforded the chance to make an extended case for his beliefs in public. He engages with a vast array of societal challenges from poverty and mental health, to intersectionality and identity politics, wedding those themes to personal experience to provide a clearer picture of the progress, or lack of progress, that is currently being made in marginalised communities.
His words on blame, generalisation and assumption are particularly poignant and call for a reappraisal of your convictions, regardless of your political stance. Read, reflect, and re-evaluate your judgements with genuine consideration for the perspectives of others; there is no debate on the utility of this maxim purported by Loki.
Darren McGarvey is a voice I enjoyed hearing from, one that is not often afforded the chance to make an extended case for his beliefs in public. He engages with a vast array of societal challenges from poverty and mental health, to intersectionality and identity politics, wedding those themes to personal experience to provide a clearer picture of the progress, or lack of progress, that is currently being made in marginalised communities.
His words on blame, generalisation and assumption are particularly poignant and call for a reappraisal of your convictions, regardless of your political stance. Read, reflect, and re-evaluate your judgements with genuine consideration for the perspectives of others; there is no debate on the utility of this maxim purported by Loki.
September 16, 2019
An interesting book and I am glad that I read it. Many of the arguments within it are not new, but are no less valid because of that. I agree wholeheartedly that a major stress that many people feel is a lack of control in the lives, and anything which can help them take individual control of their lives will be to their benefit, and ultimately to the benefit of us all. The points made about the importance of listening other peoples point of view were worth making too. The danger here is that many of the points in the book are contradictory and the criticisms in the book of those employed in trying to alleviate the burden of others, appears really unjust.
Much of the book is based on personal anecdote, which means that at the end of the day it has the feel more of a self-help book than of an agenda-setting call to arms. The points made will be familiar to anyone who has worked through psychotherapy, or lived in poverty. The problem is that I found much overlap in the answers offered with the Norman Tebbit "get on your bike" approach to sorting it all out. That left me a bit squeamish about the solutions offered.
Much of the book is based on personal anecdote, which means that at the end of the day it has the feel more of a self-help book than of an agenda-setting call to arms. The points made will be familiar to anyone who has worked through psychotherapy, or lived in poverty. The problem is that I found much overlap in the answers offered with the Norman Tebbit "get on your bike" approach to sorting it all out. That left me a bit squeamish about the solutions offered.
January 21, 2020
Winner of the Orwell Prize in 2018, this is a book written in a fine Orwellian tradition of honesty, originality and clarity. Like Orwell, Darren McGarvey 'has a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts', giving insight with pathos and identifying hypocrisy deftly. Also like Orwell, McGarvey is not afraid to take on the Left and find credit where it is due in would-be opponents, whilst riling against the theft of personal agency characteristic on this side of the political divide.
On the 70th anniversary of Orwell's death, it is comforting to know that books he likely would have loved continue to be published.
On the 70th anniversary of Orwell's death, it is comforting to know that books he likely would have loved continue to be published.
Read
August 30, 2019Removed my initial rating of three stars and leaving this unrated. It’s not bad, but it’s definitely not what it was sold as in the blurb. I’m on holiday and sans laptop, so this’ll be a quick bullet point review:
- this book is (as McGarvey describes it himself) part “misery memoir” about his childhood growing up with an alcoholic mother in a poor area of Glasgow, sharing his own personal anecdotal experiences of what poverty means in late 20th century Scotland (he was 33 at the time of writing - in 2017).
- it is also part (and, honestly, predominantly) personal manifesto on why working class people are the way they are and act the way they do, and how the issues they face could be ameliorated by those (middle class people) in power/politics. It’s not that McGarvey doesn’t have a number of good points.. but this isn’t what I - or many others, judging from the reviews on Goodreads - expected this to be.
- the title “Poverty Safari” implies that he will travel the U.K. interviewing those who are working class and living in poverty, no? The title is actually taken from the name of a project by an artist, and when McGarvey actually meets people in these circumstances (as he often does through his job as a rapper who works closely with young offenders and people in prisons etc) we get a few sentences on their viewpoint then skip on to a new chapter. Frustrating!
- this book is (as McGarvey describes it himself) part “misery memoir” about his childhood growing up with an alcoholic mother in a poor area of Glasgow, sharing his own personal anecdotal experiences of what poverty means in late 20th century Scotland (he was 33 at the time of writing - in 2017).
- it is also part (and, honestly, predominantly) personal manifesto on why working class people are the way they are and act the way they do, and how the issues they face could be ameliorated by those (middle class people) in power/politics. It’s not that McGarvey doesn’t have a number of good points.. but this isn’t what I - or many others, judging from the reviews on Goodreads - expected this to be.
- the title “Poverty Safari” implies that he will travel the U.K. interviewing those who are working class and living in poverty, no? The title is actually taken from the name of a project by an artist, and when McGarvey actually meets people in these circumstances (as he often does through his job as a rapper who works closely with young offenders and people in prisons etc) we get a few sentences on their viewpoint then skip on to a new chapter. Frustrating!
January 12, 2019
My wife shared the Kindle edition of Poverty Safari with me, maybe a year ago. I managed to completely ignore it until I needed to do some research last month and since then have been working my way slowly through.
I found this a difficult book to read. Not because of how it's written, this is one of the most eloquent and clearly written books I've ever read. The book starts simply enough with Darren McGarvey telling his story of a life lived in poverty. I finally opened the book hoping to understand poverty better and now I do. At least, if I'm aiming to be as honest as the author, at a distant theoretical level. I understand as much as anyone who has never lived through his or similar experiences can understand. I found I could only read a few pages at a time, frequently finding myself lost in thought as my own memories were sparked.
I was never in poverty, but I've lived alongside those who were. While I might not have been poor, I've felt helpless and frustrated and unsure why I couldn't change my situation. I found myself seeing my own life through different eyes, helped by Darren's considered honesty, his willingness to examine his own experiences fron multiple perspectives.
I also found this book difficult to read because I kept getting angry while reading it. Not Darren's fault, just emotions being triggered. If I can learn a lesson from his story, it will be to examine why I got so angry.
All this may not seem like much of a recommendation, if so I'm sorry. You should read this book. Please read this book. It is incredibly well written. Is not too much to say that Darren has a mastery of the English language that would make this book perfect to study at school or university alongside any other author. But the real beauty in the book is the analysis of his life, his community, the society he grew up in, politics, the charitable sector, and ultimately his willingness to change his views as he carried out this analysis.
I found this a difficult book to read. Not because of how it's written, this is one of the most eloquent and clearly written books I've ever read. The book starts simply enough with Darren McGarvey telling his story of a life lived in poverty. I finally opened the book hoping to understand poverty better and now I do. At least, if I'm aiming to be as honest as the author, at a distant theoretical level. I understand as much as anyone who has never lived through his or similar experiences can understand. I found I could only read a few pages at a time, frequently finding myself lost in thought as my own memories were sparked.
I was never in poverty, but I've lived alongside those who were. While I might not have been poor, I've felt helpless and frustrated and unsure why I couldn't change my situation. I found myself seeing my own life through different eyes, helped by Darren's considered honesty, his willingness to examine his own experiences fron multiple perspectives.
I also found this book difficult to read because I kept getting angry while reading it. Not Darren's fault, just emotions being triggered. If I can learn a lesson from his story, it will be to examine why I got so angry.
All this may not seem like much of a recommendation, if so I'm sorry. You should read this book. Please read this book. It is incredibly well written. Is not too much to say that Darren has a mastery of the English language that would make this book perfect to study at school or university alongside any other author. But the real beauty in the book is the analysis of his life, his community, the society he grew up in, politics, the charitable sector, and ultimately his willingness to change his views as he carried out this analysis.
October 7, 2018
Admittedly, I was a little suspicious when I notices the endorsements by the Financial Times and this being a Sunday Times bestseller. But as I am trying to be more open minded (lol, kidding, I am not, open mind just invites all sorts of propaganda) I gave this a go.
"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'.
The first half is an interesting enough account of life in deprivation and the role of state institutions and public policy but then comes the political messaging that we shouldnt get too preoccupied with the economicy and overthrowing capitalism but focus on what poverty does to the mind, body and soul, to quote "As if somehow these day-to-day problems are less consequential to the poor than the musings of Karl Marx." And then he goes on to say "Well, I suppose we could start by being honest: There will be no revolution. Not in your lifetime. This system will limp on and so must we." He then has some advice for people on the left "the question is no longer how do we radically transform the system, but also how do we radically transform ourselves".
Essentially asking the left to internalize the core of neoliberal ideology "there's no such thing as a society". (This is the line at which I stopped reading the book.)
I guess if he actually had read Marx, he would have realized how insanely flawed and useless this approach is.
And if I had stuck with my closed mindesness of not reading anything on poverty which is endorsed by the Financial Times, I could have spared myself from this rubbish.
"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'.
The first half is an interesting enough account of life in deprivation and the role of state institutions and public policy but then comes the political messaging that we shouldnt get too preoccupied with the economicy and overthrowing capitalism but focus on what poverty does to the mind, body and soul, to quote "As if somehow these day-to-day problems are less consequential to the poor than the musings of Karl Marx." And then he goes on to say "Well, I suppose we could start by being honest: There will be no revolution. Not in your lifetime. This system will limp on and so must we." He then has some advice for people on the left "the question is no longer how do we radically transform the system, but also how do we radically transform ourselves".
Essentially asking the left to internalize the core of neoliberal ideology "there's no such thing as a society". (This is the line at which I stopped reading the book.)
I guess if he actually had read Marx, he would have realized how insanely flawed and useless this approach is.
And if I had stuck with my closed mindesness of not reading anything on poverty which is endorsed by the Financial Times, I could have spared myself from this rubbish.
January 18, 2021
Poverty Safari is a fascinating read, and one that took me by surprise. Instead of being another book about austerity and cliché Tory-bashing, the book also highlights the faults of the left just as much: virtue-signalling, call-out culture, tribalism, and patronising the working class. The book is a gritty, graphic insight into the author's life growing up in Glasgow - and forced me to acknowledge my own privileges and stereotypes that I wasn't aware I held (in particular with the sensitive topics of Brexit/racism/xenophobia etc). Rather than being doom-mongering, Poverty Safari also presents realistic ways that bridges between groups can be created and tackle systemic inequality.
February 14, 2020
"write what you know" is solid advice. McGarvey makes statistics touchable by the misfortune of his own family. Take all the tags from "alcohol" to "teenage" and out of 5 persons, 3 or more will apply.
It's his bitter proof against the populist right as well as the Left, whose socioeconomic abstractions cannot appeal anymore.
He cannot exactly offer solutions and if you are not British, more Guardian style statistical context would be welcome...
... Update : Owen Jones' "Chavs: the demonization of the working class " gives just that. These two compliment each other.
It's his bitter proof against the populist right as well as the Left, whose socioeconomic abstractions cannot appeal anymore.
He cannot exactly offer solutions and if you are not British, more Guardian style statistical context would be welcome...
... Update : Owen Jones' "Chavs: the demonization of the working class " gives just that. These two compliment each other.
May 26, 2019
Another book to challenge my way of thinking and leftish leanings. So much of this makes sense, and is compelling reading. It left me feeling pessimistic, however, despite all the reviews saying the contrary. The chasm between middle and working class experiences and expectations is so very wide, I don't see how things will ever change.
February 25, 2020
An incredibly thought provoking book. In my opinion worth far more than 5 stars. A must read for everyone,in particular those of us on the left. The author challenges a lot of long held beliefs in a sometimes brutal way.
November 6, 2019
“Class issues are concealed beneath a progressive veneer as identity politics becomes another vehicle for the socially mobile to dominate every aspect of public life.”
Hailing from the same neck of the woods as Frankie Boyle, Pollok in the southside of Glasgow, McGarvey is a powerful blend of confronting honesty with a common sense approach to politics, falling somewhere between Owen Jones and Akala. McGarvey is rarely the type of voice that gets to be taken seriously in the mainstream media, the closest you would get, would be the likes of Irvine Welsh, James Kelman or Tom Leonard.
He gives a voice to the forgotten under class, exploring many of the roots and causes of poverty, and the immensely complicated nature of them and obviously the solutions are far from straight forward. This is about the millions of people who feel excluded and locked out of the political decision making process and as a result have learned to mistrust and reject it and all of those people associated with it.
Of course this is learned behaviour, passed down through the generations, and clearly this is a level of distrust that successive governments and prime ministers have well earned. He talks about the insidious role of the poverty industry, a murky business of bureaucracy and not speaking up against the status quo, “Where success is when there remain just enough social problems to sustain and perpetuate everyone’s career. Success is not eradicating poverty but parachuting in and leaving a ‘legacy’.”
At one point he makes a fine point about the Platt family from the Isle of Wight, who received a suspicious amount of coverage and support from Murdoch’s “Sunday Times” because they were fined £60 for taking their child out of school to go on holiday to Florida. McGarvey explains that this trivial matter got coverage over a new law passed on tax credits, (a law which would greatly hurt the poorly paid workers of the UK), where women would be limited to claiming money for no more than two children, but he highlights a rape clause, where if the woman can prove that she was raped then she would be allowed to claim for a third child. He then imagines how the media would react if such a law was passed that hit the middle classes in the same way?... “Class is the elephant in every room”.
“My mother lived with us until I was about ten. During that decade, she left a life-altering trail of carnage in her wake; each year her behaviour was more bizarre and unpredictable than the next.”
He reveals various traumatic recollections from his childhood regarding his alcoholic mother, who would eventually succumb to cirrhosis of the liver as a result of her drinking, dying at only 36 years old. His story is one of triumph over the odds, overcoming demons and very much an inspiration to the millions of people who find themselves in equally distressing circumstances.
“Brexit Britain is a snapshot of how things sound when people who are rarely heard decide to grab the microphone and start telling everybody how it is.”
We see the effects that long term apathy, low self-esteem and self-doubt has on many communities, largely fuelled by the devastating cuts and cruel policies of a succession of neo-liberal governments which have continued to exploit and profit from the poor in many ways. He talks to inspiring people in the community, trying to change the negative and damaging culture, people like Cathy Milligan and Robert Fullertone, who are trying to affect change in places like the schemes of Castlemilk. He shows what can happen when people in the community unite and rally behind a shared cause such as the Pollok Free State movement of the mid-90s, which united against the building of the controversial M77 motorway. When talking about the arrival of the consumerist behemoth, Silverburn at Pollok, he says, “Gentrification is cool when you’re watching from a safe distance, but when it’s your cultural history that is being dismantled, it leaves a sour taste in the mouth.”
“As well as white male privilege, intersectionality should allow us to better understand the phenomenon of affluent students on the campuses of elite western universities attempting to control how the rest of us think and discuss our own experiences, claiming to speak on our behalf while freezing us out of the conversation.”
The book demonstrates the immense value that various social support mechanisms play in saving people and allowing them to thrive. The positive role they can and do play when the state creates the right environment for them to exist. We see here how the people who emerge from them can then go onto play a positive role in the community, giving back to the system that helped them, paying it forward and continue to improve communities for everyone. McGarvey often stresses the importance of personal responsibility in approaching these various problems, and how it is essential to deal with your own issues and confront your own shortcomings before you address wider issues.
"Poverty Safari" invites obvious comparisons to be made to many other great authors and books out there, going all the way back to Orwell and Hoggart travelling forward to the likes of Nick Davies, “Dark Heart”, Lynsey Hanley’s “Respectable” and Selina Todd’s “The People”, which cover much of the same terrain with compelling skill and sensitivity. McGarvey has come up with a deeply refreshing and powerful book, that mixes memoir with social politics and ultimately he has given a clear and resonant voice to the multitudes that are too often ignored, patronised and punished by the ruling political elite.
Hailing from the same neck of the woods as Frankie Boyle, Pollok in the southside of Glasgow, McGarvey is a powerful blend of confronting honesty with a common sense approach to politics, falling somewhere between Owen Jones and Akala. McGarvey is rarely the type of voice that gets to be taken seriously in the mainstream media, the closest you would get, would be the likes of Irvine Welsh, James Kelman or Tom Leonard.
He gives a voice to the forgotten under class, exploring many of the roots and causes of poverty, and the immensely complicated nature of them and obviously the solutions are far from straight forward. This is about the millions of people who feel excluded and locked out of the political decision making process and as a result have learned to mistrust and reject it and all of those people associated with it.
Of course this is learned behaviour, passed down through the generations, and clearly this is a level of distrust that successive governments and prime ministers have well earned. He talks about the insidious role of the poverty industry, a murky business of bureaucracy and not speaking up against the status quo, “Where success is when there remain just enough social problems to sustain and perpetuate everyone’s career. Success is not eradicating poverty but parachuting in and leaving a ‘legacy’.”
At one point he makes a fine point about the Platt family from the Isle of Wight, who received a suspicious amount of coverage and support from Murdoch’s “Sunday Times” because they were fined £60 for taking their child out of school to go on holiday to Florida. McGarvey explains that this trivial matter got coverage over a new law passed on tax credits, (a law which would greatly hurt the poorly paid workers of the UK), where women would be limited to claiming money for no more than two children, but he highlights a rape clause, where if the woman can prove that she was raped then she would be allowed to claim for a third child. He then imagines how the media would react if such a law was passed that hit the middle classes in the same way?... “Class is the elephant in every room”.
“My mother lived with us until I was about ten. During that decade, she left a life-altering trail of carnage in her wake; each year her behaviour was more bizarre and unpredictable than the next.”
He reveals various traumatic recollections from his childhood regarding his alcoholic mother, who would eventually succumb to cirrhosis of the liver as a result of her drinking, dying at only 36 years old. His story is one of triumph over the odds, overcoming demons and very much an inspiration to the millions of people who find themselves in equally distressing circumstances.
“Brexit Britain is a snapshot of how things sound when people who are rarely heard decide to grab the microphone and start telling everybody how it is.”
We see the effects that long term apathy, low self-esteem and self-doubt has on many communities, largely fuelled by the devastating cuts and cruel policies of a succession of neo-liberal governments which have continued to exploit and profit from the poor in many ways. He talks to inspiring people in the community, trying to change the negative and damaging culture, people like Cathy Milligan and Robert Fullertone, who are trying to affect change in places like the schemes of Castlemilk. He shows what can happen when people in the community unite and rally behind a shared cause such as the Pollok Free State movement of the mid-90s, which united against the building of the controversial M77 motorway. When talking about the arrival of the consumerist behemoth, Silverburn at Pollok, he says, “Gentrification is cool when you’re watching from a safe distance, but when it’s your cultural history that is being dismantled, it leaves a sour taste in the mouth.”
“As well as white male privilege, intersectionality should allow us to better understand the phenomenon of affluent students on the campuses of elite western universities attempting to control how the rest of us think and discuss our own experiences, claiming to speak on our behalf while freezing us out of the conversation.”
The book demonstrates the immense value that various social support mechanisms play in saving people and allowing them to thrive. The positive role they can and do play when the state creates the right environment for them to exist. We see here how the people who emerge from them can then go onto play a positive role in the community, giving back to the system that helped them, paying it forward and continue to improve communities for everyone. McGarvey often stresses the importance of personal responsibility in approaching these various problems, and how it is essential to deal with your own issues and confront your own shortcomings before you address wider issues.
"Poverty Safari" invites obvious comparisons to be made to many other great authors and books out there, going all the way back to Orwell and Hoggart travelling forward to the likes of Nick Davies, “Dark Heart”, Lynsey Hanley’s “Respectable” and Selina Todd’s “The People”, which cover much of the same terrain with compelling skill and sensitivity. McGarvey has come up with a deeply refreshing and powerful book, that mixes memoir with social politics and ultimately he has given a clear and resonant voice to the multitudes that are too often ignored, patronised and punished by the ruling political elite.
May 3, 2022
Part memoir, part clarion cry, this book serves as a powerful call to action for British class politics. Drawing on his own experiences of poverty, addiction and abuse, the author highlights the growing gulf between the social classes of the UK and demonstrates unequivocally the destructive impact of austerity policies on the life chances of an entire generation.
February 4, 2019
I feel quite conflicted about this book. In some ways it was incredibly powerful and provided a lot of insight into working class communities, child abuse and addiction, and the impacts that these can have on a person's life. The most effective parts were those directly discussing the author's life and the introspective analysis of his own agency over his life vs. his tendency to blame others or "the system". I thought a lot of the more general ideas and nuanced conclusions that he drew from his experiences were particularly important for someone like me to read, having zero personal experience of the life he was describing.
That said, some chapters of the book were broader reflections on society as a whole but a lot of the time just seemed to be sweeping generalisations with no reference to facts, stats, or interviews with other people. Discussion based on personal anecdote doesn't need any of these things, but without them the minute the scope is broadened it just feels like an opinion-based rant, which adds nothing to the book. It also seemed quite hypocritical, given that not dictating your values to groups you don't belong to is such a recurring (and totally valid) point that he keeps coming back to throughout the book.
Another gripe I have is that a lot of the very important terms that he uses all the time, such as poverty and working class, have no explanation of what he actually means by them and also just seem to be used to imply abusive, violent alcoholics and drug addicts. Whilst he was making lots of useful points about how all these things go together (because that was his experience), there was zero discussion of what they are as separate entities, which I feel just devalues a lot of what he has to say on the matter.
There are yet more terms that he uses without actually seeming to know what they mean at all; I had to stop reading his chapter about intersectionality to check the definition because what he was discussing bore so little resemblance to what I thought was meant by the term. A 30 second Google reassured me that I wasn't going mad and I hadn't been using the word incorrectly for years. You'd have thought he might also take those 30 seconds before writing a chapter long rant about it...? It seemed particularly rich coming from a white man who had thought to include nothing about the particular difficulties and experiences of working class women and people of colour.
Anyway, my own long opinion-based rant aside, I am very glad I read this book. It gave much food for thought (as you can see from the length of this review) and really did enrich my understanding of poverty in the UK, even if only really explaining one particular experience of it.
That said, some chapters of the book were broader reflections on society as a whole but a lot of the time just seemed to be sweeping generalisations with no reference to facts, stats, or interviews with other people. Discussion based on personal anecdote doesn't need any of these things, but without them the minute the scope is broadened it just feels like an opinion-based rant, which adds nothing to the book. It also seemed quite hypocritical, given that not dictating your values to groups you don't belong to is such a recurring (and totally valid) point that he keeps coming back to throughout the book.
Another gripe I have is that a lot of the very important terms that he uses all the time, such as poverty and working class, have no explanation of what he actually means by them and also just seem to be used to imply abusive, violent alcoholics and drug addicts. Whilst he was making lots of useful points about how all these things go together (because that was his experience), there was zero discussion of what they are as separate entities, which I feel just devalues a lot of what he has to say on the matter.
There are yet more terms that he uses without actually seeming to know what they mean at all; I had to stop reading his chapter about intersectionality to check the definition because what he was discussing bore so little resemblance to what I thought was meant by the term. A 30 second Google reassured me that I wasn't going mad and I hadn't been using the word incorrectly for years. You'd have thought he might also take those 30 seconds before writing a chapter long rant about it...? It seemed particularly rich coming from a white man who had thought to include nothing about the particular difficulties and experiences of working class women and people of colour.
Anyway, my own long opinion-based rant aside, I am very glad I read this book. It gave much food for thought (as you can see from the length of this review) and really did enrich my understanding of poverty in the UK, even if only really explaining one particular experience of it.
June 15, 2020
150 pages of "how the system fucks working class people", 50 pages of "how liberals and the left are leaving working class people behind" and 20 pages of "I'm old and more financially secure so now i think socialism is bad and the system is actually okay, also here's some Jordan Peterson-tier personal responsibility shit". Laaaame. Way to let us down right at the end there.
I was struck, though, by the way that a lot of his arguments about systemic poverty's effect on the individual and the weaknesses of the contemporary left (esp re intersectionality) are basically Marxist arguments that don't know they're Marxist. This lack of theoretical reference confuses him, though, so he ends up saying stuff like "capitalism gives us a lot of cool shit and is setting the stage for what will come next", a basic Marxist point -- but he says that as an argument AGAINST the left. Basically, bro needs to read Marx. Would probably have inoculated him against his later pussification.
(I think part of my difficulty with this was that, Peterson stuff aside, I have a lot more in common with this guy politically than I do the leftists he criticises, but when he criticises "the left" I still take it personally. Maybe that's something to work on.)
Finally -- for the work of an admittedly untrained writer, this was surprisingly coherent. A few arguments are left very unsubstantiated and there are instances of clumsy phrasing, but these were exceptions in a book which is broadly effective in its explications of poverty and its recountings of personal traumas from a working class perspective. Just wish it had a rigorous framework of dialectical materialism underpinning it. But, alas.
I was struck, though, by the way that a lot of his arguments about systemic poverty's effect on the individual and the weaknesses of the contemporary left (esp re intersectionality) are basically Marxist arguments that don't know they're Marxist. This lack of theoretical reference confuses him, though, so he ends up saying stuff like "capitalism gives us a lot of cool shit and is setting the stage for what will come next", a basic Marxist point -- but he says that as an argument AGAINST the left. Basically, bro needs to read Marx. Would probably have inoculated him against his later pussification.
(I think part of my difficulty with this was that, Peterson stuff aside, I have a lot more in common with this guy politically than I do the leftists he criticises, but when he criticises "the left" I still take it personally. Maybe that's something to work on.)
Finally -- for the work of an admittedly untrained writer, this was surprisingly coherent. A few arguments are left very unsubstantiated and there are instances of clumsy phrasing, but these were exceptions in a book which is broadly effective in its explications of poverty and its recountings of personal traumas from a working class perspective. Just wish it had a rigorous framework of dialectical materialism underpinning it. But, alas.
September 16, 2023
Brilliant. Haunting, thought-provoking and compelling in equal measure, this devastatingly honest memoir merged with political and social polemic is essential reading for anyone even remotely interested in alleviating poverty.
What raises it to a level even higher than expected is the author’s relentless self-examination and readiness to fully explore his own beliefs, motivations and prejudices. As such, he is not interested in carping on about easy targets, such as Evil Tories or neoliberalism, and his approach is all the more valuable for that. I must admit to having re-examined some of my own beliefs and values as a result.
What raises it to a level even higher than expected is the author’s relentless self-examination and readiness to fully explore his own beliefs, motivations and prejudices. As such, he is not interested in carping on about easy targets, such as Evil Tories or neoliberalism, and his approach is all the more valuable for that. I must admit to having re-examined some of my own beliefs and values as a result.
December 7, 2019
“There is no question that the current economic system is riddled with contradiction, inequity and corruption. But in some sections on the left, you’d be forgiven for thinking that all was required was a quick coup d’etat and the seemingly insoluble problems we face as individuals, families and communities and countries would disappear. By encouraging people to believe that their immediate problems are beyond their own expertise, the very agency poverty deprived them of is denied.”
June 27, 2018
I’m sure the intention was sincere but, as other reviewers have said, this reads too much like a political statement to me. It has just won the Orwell Prize 2018 so congratulations to the author but I disagree with the comparisons to Wigan Pier which is far superior in every way, not least in the quality of writing.
December 26, 2017
This is important it doesnt pull punches , takes you on a tour of life beyond the newspaper headlines.
Its passionate , funny and yes angry . The writing is clipped but poetic .
Its passionate , funny and yes angry . The writing is clipped but poetic .
July 18, 2020
an honest account of a life shaped by poverty.
key takeaways:
- the reality of poverty and its lasting impacts on individuals
- the importance of involving the people whose causes we're championing in the decision-making process. good intentions only go so far.
- self awareness, critically cross-examining your own beliefs and being willing to admit wrongs + apologise.. always
- address the psychosocial drivers that underpin contentious views e.g. racism
- politics is not the antidote. what can we change within the current system?
the author also places a strong emphasis on personal responsibility / taking ownership of one's lifestyle, but I'm still not entirely sure how to go about engaging with that topic
key takeaways:
- the reality of poverty and its lasting impacts on individuals
- the importance of involving the people whose causes we're championing in the decision-making process. good intentions only go so far.
- self awareness, critically cross-examining your own beliefs and being willing to admit wrongs + apologise.. always
- address the psychosocial drivers that underpin contentious views e.g. racism
- politics is not the antidote. what can we change within the current system?
the author also places a strong emphasis on personal responsibility / taking ownership of one's lifestyle, but I'm still not entirely sure how to go about engaging with that topic
November 13, 2018
Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey unsettled me to my core. Part autobiography, part social commentary, McGarvey shares his experience of being born and raised by an alcoholic mother and a father who does his best in impossible circumstances, in one of the most deprived areas of Glasgow. Having worked as a food bank volunteer in the past, I thought I understood something of the stressful and chaotic lives the poorest in our society endure. However, McGarvey questions all I thought I knew. Eloquent and fiercely intelligent, at times his writing becomes a rant, but then perhaps if I were McGarvey I would rant too. Poverty Safari raises questions, rather than providing answers, but maybe that is point, to make readers consider deeply what it means to be poor.
February 16, 2019
A read that really had me questioning how I think about modern day class in Britain, as well as my own politics (which I wasn't expecting going into it). Particularly unexpected (and powerful as a result) were McGarvey's arguments in favour of personal accountability:
'You are no use to any family, community, cause or movement unless you are first able to manage, maintain and operate the machinery of your own life. These are the means of production that one must first seize before meaningful change can occur. This doesn't mean resistance has to stop. Nor does it mean power, corruption and injustice shouldn't be challenge. It simply means that running parallel to all of that necessary action must be a willingness to subject one's own thinking and behaviour to a similar quality of scrutiny. That's not a cop out; that's radicalism in the 21st century.'
I also enjoyed and empathised with McGarvey's criticism of the large-scale 'do-good' institutions:
'Many of these organisations, dependent on government to survive, become such vast bureaucracies that they are rendered inflexible and unpresosonse to what is really going on in the communities they are paid so handsomely to serve... They have become a problematic industry in themselves. Worse still, they are increasingly subordinate to government when they would function far better as a check on centralised power.'
'You are no use to any family, community, cause or movement unless you are first able to manage, maintain and operate the machinery of your own life. These are the means of production that one must first seize before meaningful change can occur. This doesn't mean resistance has to stop. Nor does it mean power, corruption and injustice shouldn't be challenge. It simply means that running parallel to all of that necessary action must be a willingness to subject one's own thinking and behaviour to a similar quality of scrutiny. That's not a cop out; that's radicalism in the 21st century.'
I also enjoyed and empathised with McGarvey's criticism of the large-scale 'do-good' institutions:
'Many of these organisations, dependent on government to survive, become such vast bureaucracies that they are rendered inflexible and unpresosonse to what is really going on in the communities they are paid so handsomely to serve... They have become a problematic industry in themselves. Worse still, they are increasingly subordinate to government when they would function far better as a check on centralised power.'
October 23, 2023
Never has it taken me so long to read 200 pages. Combination of world events/work making me exhausted to my bones (but free Palestine always 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸) coupled with the writing style that I found clunky and jarring and hard to read at times.
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.
Some critiques - erased all aspects of female experience WHOLLY. I think women and girls got one cursory mention. Also as per usual only quote male references a la Akala. He used intersectionality and his critique of it to further his own arguments but the way he described it made me think he didn’t quite get it - as he misses off class that Kimberly Crenshaw would kmt at. She literally includes class in her analysis and he says she doesn’t which is a bit :/ also the chapters where he discusses racism made me just about cringe and die inside although I thinkkkkk I understand where he’s coming from…
Overall it was good to read something outside of my echo chamber and force myself to question more deeply my firmly entrenched beliefs. And I think some of his critiques of the left are valid, particularly the parts about gentrification and inaccessibility of language that exclude the communities they wish to support.
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.
Some critiques - erased all aspects of female experience WHOLLY. I think women and girls got one cursory mention. Also as per usual only quote male references a la Akala. He used intersectionality and his critique of it to further his own arguments but the way he described it made me think he didn’t quite get it - as he misses off class that Kimberly Crenshaw would kmt at. She literally includes class in her analysis and he says she doesn’t which is a bit :/ also the chapters where he discusses racism made me just about cringe and die inside although I thinkkkkk I understand where he’s coming from…
Overall it was good to read something outside of my echo chamber and force myself to question more deeply my firmly entrenched beliefs. And I think some of his critiques of the left are valid, particularly the parts about gentrification and inaccessibility of language that exclude the communities they wish to support.
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October 29, 2024enkele hot takes over hedendaags links discours die ik wel kon appreciëren
heel interessante perspectieven, verweven met persoonlijke verhalen en verhalen uit zijn omgeving (Schotland) over armoede en het spinnenweb waarin je belandt - maar ook de zelfredzaamheid en eigen verantwoordelijkheid die nodig zijn om hier het beste van te maken (ipv te wachten op een 'revolutie')
heel eerlijk, heel oprecht, heel zelfbewust
aanrader voor linkiewinkies die te veel theorie lezen
heel interessante perspectieven, verweven met persoonlijke verhalen en verhalen uit zijn omgeving (Schotland) over armoede en het spinnenweb waarin je belandt - maar ook de zelfredzaamheid en eigen verantwoordelijkheid die nodig zijn om hier het beste van te maken (ipv te wachten op een 'revolutie')
heel eerlijk, heel oprecht, heel zelfbewust
aanrader voor linkiewinkies die te veel theorie lezen
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