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.
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