Critical Social Review on Community Poverty: Mabela, KrooBay and Kuntorloh Communities in Freetown, Sierra Leone

Abstract

Long ago, scholars noted an inseparable link between poverty and the community, especially in works and social discourses concerning sustainable development and structural adjustment, although it is concluded that this link has not been explored systematically (Fur, 1991). The cost of the community is sometimes affected by the level and degree of poverty experienced by people living in urban communities. Bolay (2000) believes that slums are ‘characterised by the precarious nature of their habitat; and that beyond this, it can genuinely be seen as ‘hut house’ of cultural creativity, economic invention, and social innovation.’ This position underpinning slum dwellers has been translated as one that connects them to communal resources. In this regard, this article is grounded on two contradictory conceptual and social postulates: the Orthodox and the New Thinking Schools. Proponents of these schools acknowledge the fact that there is a degree of linkage between poor people and the community. However, the divergence in perception between the two ideologies lies in their conception of poor people in relation to the community surrounding them. For the Orthodox, the poverty-stricken situation of slum urban dwellers forces them to exploit and degrade the community. This, in turn, results in their impoverishment in a downward spiral. Scholars of the New wave of Thinking refute this stance by considering poor people as having the capability of salvaging the environment by adding value to it. For them, communal problems stem from some natural occurrences external to the community. A major characteristic of views from scholars on poverty and the community is that they take poor people as the causal variable who are forced by appalling circumstances to exhaust the communal resources.