齐格蒙特·鲍曼在《工作、消费、新穷人》一书中认为随着西方资本主义国家进入消费社会,穷人的涵义发生了变化。在消费社会里,穷人不是指物质产品匮乏的绝对穷人,而是指“有缺陷的消费者”。鲍曼分析了新穷人产生的原因,主要有观念层面上消费美学的兴盛、政策层面上福利国家的衰落、生产层面上全球化的发展。他认为新穷人对社会而言成为无用的人,他们已难以像过去那样团结起来把自身的苦难变为公共关怀。“新穷人”思想对当代中国社会穷人问题具有理论和现实两个维度的参考价值。 In his book Jobs, Consumption, and the New Poor, Sigmund Bowman argues that as western capitalist countries move into the consumer society, the meaning of the poor has changed. In a consumer society, the poor do not refer to the absolute poor who lack material goods, but to “the defective consumer.” Bowman analyzed the causes of the new poor, mainly the rise of consumption aesthetics at the conceptual level, the decline of the welfare state at the policy level, and the globalization at the production level. He considered the new poor to be worthless to the community, and they have become less able to unite as they did in the past to turn their suffering into public concern. “The New Poor ” thought has the reference value of theory and reality to contemporary Chinese social poor problem.