Stress and Poverty

The word stress is everywhere and highly overused. Everyone is stressed, it seems, all the time. Looking into the meaning of stress in the natural science and the humanities, this book explores cellular stress as cause of and in correlation with what humans experience as stress. When do we psychologically feel stress and when do we show physiological evidence of stress in our brain? Stress is a deviation from what feels normal and healthy. It can be created by social or economic factors and become chronic, which has substantial impacts on the individual and society as a whole. Focusing on poverty as one chronic inducer of stress, this book explores how the lack of pressure-free time, the hardships and unpredictability of everyday life and a general lack of protection lead to destructive toxic stress. This pressure affects cognitive and social functioning, brain development during childhood and may also result in premature aging. How can the sciences inform our understanding of and our response to stress? What can be done about toxic stress both on a personal level and in terms of structures and policies? The book is written for anyone interested in stress, its causes and consequences, and its relationship to poverty. 

Michael Breitenbach is a retired full professor of Genetics at the University of Salzburg in Austria. He has published 230 research and review papers and edited more than 10 books in the fields of the genetics of aging and stress response. He has received a number of national and international honors for his work in genetics, including being elected as a fellow of the AAAS. His main interest in research in the last 30 years has been the utilization of the yeast genetic system to study basic eukaryotic molecular biology, in particular the mechanism and the results of oxidative stress.  Elisabeth Kapferer holds a doctoral degree in German literature studies. She is member of the research staff at the Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research at the University of Salzburg, Austria. Her research activities, which include several (co-)authored and (co-)edited publications, focus on poverty and social exclusion in wealthy societies. Her main research interests are representations of poverty in the arts, public discourse on poverty, and poverty-related disparities in education and health. She is member of the scientific advisory board of the Austrian Health Promotion Fund (Fonds Gesundes Österreich).Clemens Sedmak holds doctoral degrees in philosophy, theology and social theory. He is professor of social ethics at the Keough School of Global Affairs and concurrent professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, IN. He is also Co-Director of the Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research, University of Salzburg, Austria. He works at the intersection of poverty studies and ethics. Recent Publications include The Practice of Human Development and Dignity, co-edited with Paolo Carozza, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 2020, and Subsidiarität: Tragendes Prinzip menschlichen Zusammenlebens, with W. Blum, H. P. Gaisbauer, Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet 2021.