Poverty Research and its Discontents: Review and Discussion of Issues Raised in Dimensions of Poverty. Measurement, Epistemic Injustices and Social Activism (Beck, V., H. Hahn, and R. Lepenies eds., Springer, Cham, 2020)

• Published date: 01 June 2021
• Author: Svenja Flechtner
• Date: 01 June 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12498

© 2021 The Authors. Review of Income and Wealth published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of

International Association for Research in Income and Wealth

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Poverty Research and its Discontents: Review and Discussion of Issues Raised in

Dimensions of Poverty. Measurement, Epistemic Injustices and Social Activism (Beck, V., H.

Hahn, and R. Lepenies eds., Springer, Cham, 2020)

by Svenja Flechtner*

School of Economic Disciplines,University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany

Edited volumes have low prestige in economics. Fortunately, the anthology

Dimensions of Poverty. Measurement, Epistemic Injustices and Social Activism,

compiled by Valentin Beck, Henning Hahn, and Robert Lepenies (2020), proves

that edited volumes can be more than a loose collection of chapters unworthy of

becoming journal articles. The editors have produced an important collection of 20

chapters around the conceptualization, understanding, and measurement of pov-

erty, which brings together debates from economics, philosophy, political science,

public policy, and sociology. The outcome is more than simply the sum of its parts:

there is something to be learned both from individual chapters and, specially, from

their cross-fertilization.

The volume is concerned with the conceptualization and measurement of

poverty. Yet, this topic is placed within the context of two other important and

timely debates (see Figure1). First, the volume establishes a link between the qual-

ity of poverty research and the perspectives that feed into it. A central theme here

is epistemic injustice following Fricker (2007): it is argued that Global South per-

spectives are often undervalued or outright ignored. This is at the detriment of

research quality because, in the view proposed, poverty research must carefully

consider particular societal contexts. Hence the inclusion of scholars from diverse

backgrounds and with society-specific knowledge “is not only a question of fair-

ness (…) but also highly instructive” (Beck et al., 2020, p. 11). Various contribu-

tions also emphasize the importance of the views of those who live in poverty

themselves, as well as of those who work in policy-making and poverty reduction

outside academia. Second, the volume discusses how the way in which academics

conceptualize, define, understand, and measure poverty has important implica-

tions for the actual lives of people living in poverty. In the words of one contribu-

tor, “[c]onceptual issues are not merely abstract and fringe discussions; they have

an impact and influence on how reality is perceived, how it is shaped and how it

should be changed. Concepts drive actions” (Schweiger, 2020, p. 163).

On the topic of poverty, the anthology brings good and bad news. The bad

news first: there will never be a definitive answer to the question of how to con-

ceptualize or measure poverty, and we will never be done researching poverty.

There are too many dimensions to poverty, too many normative judgments to be

Review of Income and Wealth

Series 67, Number 2, June 2021

DOI: 10.1111/roiw.12498

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-

NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is

properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Note: The author thanks Thesia Garner for helpful comments and suggestions

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