Researchers have studied the poor as individuals, as families and households, as members of poor communities, neighborhoods and regions, as products of larger poverty-creating structures. They have been analyzed as victims of crime and criminals, as members of minority cultures, as passive consumers of mass culture and active producers of a 'counterculture', as an economic burden and as a reserve army of labor - to mention just some of the preoccupations of poverty research. The elites, who occupy the small upper stratum within the category of the non-poor, and their functions in the emergence and reproduction of poverty are as interesting and important an object for poverty research as the poor themselves. The elites have images of the poor and of poverty which shape their decisions and actions. So far, little is known about those images, except as they are sketchily portrayed in popular stereotypes. The elites may well ignore or deny the external effects of their own actions (and omissions) upon the living conditions of the poor. Many social scientists may take a very different view. As poverty emerged and was reproduced, legal frameworks were created to contain the problems it caused with profound, and largely unknown, consequences for the poor themselves. In general, political, educational and social institutions tend to ignore or even damage the interests of the poor. In constructing a physical in frastructure for transport, industry, trade and tourism, the settlements of the poor are often the first to suffer or to be left standing and exposed to pollution, noise and crowding. Most important are the economic functions of poverty, as for lack of other options the Ix)or are forced to perform. activities considered degrading or unclean. The poor are more likely to buy secondhand goods and leftover foodstuffs, thus prolonging their economic utility. They are likely to use the services of low-quality doctors, teachers and lawyers whom the non-poor shy away from. Poverty and the poor serve an important symbolic function, in reminding citizens of the lot that may befall those who do not heed the values of thrift, diligence and cleanliness, and of the constant threat that the rough, the immoral and the violent represent for the rest of society. Physically, the poor and the non-poor are kept apart, through differential land use and ghettoization. Socially, they are separated through differential participation in the labor market, the consumption economy, and in political, social and cultural institutions. Conceptually, they are divided through stereotyping and media cliche. This separation is even more pronounced between the elites and the poor. According to the author, studying the elites also sheds light on poverty research because ______.