while social norms shape public understanding of the root causes of poverty and of potential remedies to reduce poverty social norms are themselves underpinned by deeper ethical perspectives which refer to the social arrangements and institutions in a just society taking account of the interests of persons from an impartial standpoint ethical perspectives are therefore deeper and more general than social norms by extension an understanding of ethical perspectives should help us better understand poverty reduction policies in fact social norms might well engage several ethical perspectives at once this is the case in the notion of ideology and political processes usually engage ethical perspectives in competition with each other and the direction of the arrows might be reversed where policies or political processes inform social norms