abstract: 'The Grenfell Tower fire that took place in a council owned high-rise

  housing block in the early hours of 14 June 2017 in the London Borough

  of Kensington and Chelsea represented the worst fire in Britain for many

  decades. This article draws, in part, on the example of Grenfell Tower

  to interrogate some of the most pressing issues of our time around

  poverty, inequality and austerity. After a period of quiet, poverty now

  features more regularly in popular and political conversations. This is,

  in part, due to the proliferation of foodbanks that in many ways have

  become the public face of poverty in contemporary Britain. Additionally

  the increased popularity of so-called `poverty porn'' exemplified by

  programmes such as Benefit Street have provoked public and political

  debate about the realities of poverty and its causes and consequences.

  Punitive policies towards out of work benefits claimants, austerity

  measures and the proliferation of low paid and insecure work mean

  poverty has been extended to more and more people, yet at the same time

  it is a condition that is frequently stigmatised, misrepresented and

  misunderstood. Whilst evidence shows increased stereotyping and

  stigmatisation of those experiencing poverty and other related

  disadvantages, there is also evidence that the British general public on

  the whole tend to care about fairness, equality of opportunity and that

  they dislike extremes of income and wealth, although importantly they

  also generally underestimate the realities of both. It was these

  extremes of inequality that Grenfell thrust so violently into the public

  imagination with many newspapers visually capturing the gulf between

  rich and `poor'' in their pictures of the burnt out shell of Grenfell set

  against a typical block of luxury apartments of the sort that are

  proliferating in London and other cities in Britain and that,

  particularly in London, often cost in excess of a million pounds or

  more. This article looks at examples of how critical work is being done

  by those in power to manipulate and frame the terms of the discussion

  around poverty, inequality and economic insecurity and its causes and

  its consequences.'
affiliation: 'Shildrick, T (Corresponding Author), Newcastle Univ, Sch Geog Polit
  \& Sociol, Newcastle Upon Tyne NE1 7RU, Tyne \& Wear, England.

  Shildrick, Tracy, Newcastle Univ, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Tyne \& Wear, England.'
author: Shildrick, Tracy
author-email: tracy.shildrick@ncl.ac.uk
author_list:
- family: Shildrick
  given: Tracy
da: '2023-09-28'
doi: 10.1177/0038026118777424
eissn: 1467-954X
files: []
issn: 0038-0261
journal: SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
keywords: inequality; poverty; power; stigma
language: English
month: JUL
number: '4'
number-of-cited-references: '72'
pages: 783-798
papis_id: 614b2062080328b492823f830543829a
ref: Shildrick2018lessonsgrenfell
times-cited: '46'
title: 'Lessons from Grenfell: Poverty propaganda, stigma and class power'
type: Article
unique-id: WOS:000446040900004
usage-count-last-180-days: '3'
usage-count-since-2013: '27'
volume: '66'
web-of-science-categories: Sociology
year: '2018'