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Disadvantage: A Brief Overview 49backs on mainstream society, where people are increasingly alienatedand ‘depersonalized’, where psychological conditions may become sounpleasant that people may actually wish to ‘escape from freedom’ (asFromm [1941] famously put it). Individuals and groups have certainlyacted on this desire, and some of the more egregious instances haveshown what a high price can be exacted. Seeing poor people as powerfuland virtuous has often arisen from a romanticized middle-class view.Rainwater labelled these four models the moralizing, medicalizing,normalizing and apotheosizing approaches. They are all essentiallydescriptive: they represent views of poverty, rather than explanationsof it. But there is a fifth and more instructive approach, a naturalizingperspective, and it is one that clearly relates to the ‘difference-deficit’controversy touched on in the previous section. On the one hand(Rainwater himself observed), a ‘biological determinism’ argues forinnate deficiencies of intelligence. The perceived utility of eugenicsand, more generally, a concern to look after people who cannotadequately judge for themselves, are elements that have traditionallyinformed the ‘benign totalitarianism’ associated with such a deterministicposition. The other broad theme emerging from a ‘naturalizing’ perspectiveon poverty is one that stresses cultural difference: a group’s lifestyle,socialization patterns, habits, values and attitudes are seen as adequate inthe immediate environment, understood to have developed in ways mostappropriate for that environment. A strong adherence to such a point ofview might imply that no intervention at all in the lives of the poor isindicated (recall those romanticized assessments of the strength andvigor of working-class life). However, the obvious facts of group contact,and the obvious advantages of moving beyond immediate environments,mean that the proponents of a ‘difference’ view can logically supportinterventions aimed at extending the range of opportunities open to thepoor, without condemning what they already possess, or do.In the next two chapters, I will flesh out this introductory overview,largely by presenting something of the history and development ofscholarly conceptions of ‘disadvantage’ (see also Edwards, 1989). It isalways useful to come to grips with the bases of important arguments; aswell, an historical summary makes particular sense here because thebroad themes have remained remarkably unaltered since they were firstformally presented in the literature (Edwards, 1999a). The most importantand the most controversial research arguments about disadvantagewere made some time ago, and this is why some of the references inwhat follows may seem a little dated. Although the scholarly caravanmay have moved on, however, from discussions of biological or