http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3533-1064
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ABSTRACT
Although ‘relative poverty’ is a phrase of immediate recognition, wide circulation and an ever increasing acceptance in the last half century, the concept itself remains surprisingly undertheorised. This paper wishes to try and remedy this discursive deficiency by proposing an ontological elucidation of the nature of our needs. The author re-visits the dispute between Amartya Sen and Peter Townsend — a duel of crossed wires (if not sabres), which can be seen as representative of the various theoretical takes on the nature of relative poverty. While the dispute itself ended with an unfortunate misunderstanding between the two scholars, whose different disciplinary affiliations have done nothing but replicate the rift, the author nonetheless foregrounds the commonality between the two thinkers – their respective identification with Adam Smith. By exploring points of differences and convergence with Adam Smith’s own ontology of needs, which the author reconstructed elsewhere, the paper hopes to offer insights into the ontology of ‘relative poverty’ as well as to suggest that taking this ontology seriously would lead us inevitably to a re-examination of ‘economic methodology’.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Toru Yamamori is a professor in the Faculty of Economics, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan. He was a research associate at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge (2004–2009), and a visiting scholar at the Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge (2013–2015). He is the winner of the 2017 EAEPE Kapp prize.
ORCID
Toru Yamamori http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3533-1064
Notes
* This is a revised version of a paper presented at the 13th INEM conference in San Sebastian on 29th August 2017. It elicited valuable comments by participants there, for which I am thankful. As I am also thankful to members of the Cambridge Social Ontology Group. Discussions there during 2013–2015 facilitated the development of parts of the argument in this paper. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Julian Reiss and two anonymous referees whose constructive comments have guided me in the revision process.
1 Sen initially presented the notion of ‘capability’ as an interpretation of the concept of need (Sen, Citation1982, ch. 16). However, later he rather posits capability against need. For the details on the relation of capability to need and on how we could understand Sen’s prima facie contradictory statements as logically coherent, see Yamamori, Citationforthcoming.
2 Gordon summarises his position as follows: ‘The notion of absolute poverty as defined by Sen can be considered to be simply a more severe poverty threshold than that defined by Townsend’. (Gordon, Citation2006, p. 35). Similar misunderstanding is found in some sociology and social policy literature, such as Brady Citation2003, while others have steered clear from it (e.g. Goedemé and Rottiers Citation2011).
3 Some mention the concept developed by Townsend, but with misrepresentation. For example, Sabina Alkire, whose work provides some of the best expositions of the development of Sen’s approach to poverty issues, summed up ‘Townsend’s argument for descriptions of relative poverty’ as descriptions ‘which combine objective condition with “feelings of deprivation”’ (Alkire Citation2002, p. 156). (She presented it as a summary of Sen’s argument against Townsend’s, which it isn’t.) While there are many valuable commentaries on poverty that use Sen’s capability approach, many of them focus on the operationalisation of the capability approach, not on the nature of its ontology, which is the focus of this paper.
4 https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm (last accessed on 27th November 2017).
5 http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Income_distribution_statistics (last accessed on 27th November 2017).
6 For example, Kangas and Ritakallio Citation2007.
7 This means that Smith did not construe the poverty line as being fixed over time and place. And Sen’s and Townsend’s citation means that they didn’t either. See section 5 of Yamamori Citation2017 for a detailed discussion of the evolutionary nature of need in Smith.
8 This point is repeated in Sen Citation1990, Citation2002. While he acknowledges the epistemological limitation an individual might have with regard to his or her needs, he relies on ‘public reasoning’ for articulating justice, and included in the perimeter of justice of course is the identification of one’s needs (Sen Citation2004, Citation2009a; Yamamori Citation2003).
9 The epistemological limitation of need can go in two directions: ‘upwards’ (people whose needs are met cannot see this fact) and ‘downwards’ (people whose needs are not met cannot see this fact). While Smith only referred to the former, both Sen and Townsend recognise the latter. I would like to thank a reviewer who suggested the need for clarification on this point.
10 Yamamori Citation2000 tries to understand this and to shed light on the commonality between the two, albeit without the ontological analysis adopted here.
11 I am not saying that Townsend’s and his followers’ understanding of Sen’s point is correct. It is wrong as I have shown. Here I am pursuing a terminology that would not be less likely to be misunderstood by them.
12 I would like to thank a reviewer who suggested the need for emphasis on this point. While Townsend has not given us his express opinion on Adam Smith (other than through his citation from the Wealth of Nations as shown in section 4 of this paper), Sen has been vocal about his view on Smith. Around the occasion of the 250 anniversary of the publication of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he published several papers on Smith (Sen Citation2009b, Citation2010, Citation2011). In these papers Sen critiques the dominant interpretation of Smith among mainstream economists, considering it ‘abuse’ to interpret Smith’s thought as ‘self-interest theory’: the idea that self-interest is, as it were, both our dominant motivation and sufficient condition for a good society. For Sen, Smith is not an advocate of the unregulated market economy:
Smith also discussed the need for various institutions that can do what the markets may not be able to achieve. He was deeply concerned about the incidence of poverty, illiteracy, and relative deprivation that might remain despite a well-functioning market economy. (Sen Citation2011, p. 266. The emphasis mine).
13 The genealogy of ‘conspicuous consumption’ that Veblen explains in his 1899 book is a complicated construct based on several unique hypotheses (Veblen Citation1899/1918). However, I take the liberty of using this term outside of its original context, as many economists do, including Duesenberry.
14 All three citations are from Lansley and Mack Citation2015, p. 8.
15 This statement by John B. Davis is in his introduction to the book on need that he co-edited with E. J. O’Boyle. While O’Boyle contributes to the incorporation of absolutist and relativist views (O’Boyle Citation1990, Citation1999), the view Townsend and Sen envisage is unfortunately entirely out of his sight.
16 Polanyi c.Citation1958–60, Kapp Citation1950, Citation1954, Lawson Citation1997, Citation2015, Hodgson Citation2013.