Rethinking poverty

Abstract

For the past hundred years thinking about poverty has been stuck within an empiricist framework that has concentrated on the measure ment of poverty to the neglect of theory and explanation. This has had very limiting effects on the way that both poverty and the poor have been understood. It is time to re-think how poverty is looked at and analysed in order to locate it within its proper political perspective, not only to arrive at more meaningful measurement but also to help de velop a strategy to overcome it.