This paper examines recent contributions to the analysis of poverty,
particularly those emphasising the constraints on the poor posed by social
relations and institutions that systematically benefit the powerful. It proposes
an analytic framework for study of the causes of poverty, responses to poverty
and the consequences of those responses. This framework is then applied to
a case study from rural South Africa. The case study underlines the
importance of understanding the processes linking poverty at the local level
with the regional and national political economy. It also suggests that
responses to poverty in this case may be unsustainable.