Poverty, Work, and Freedom: Political Economy and the Moral Order

by David P. Levine, S. Abu Turab Rizvi

Overview

The poor seem easy to identify: those who do not have enough money or enough of the things money can buy. This book explores a different approach to poverty, one suggested by the notion of capabilities emphasized by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. In the spirit of the capabilities approach, the book argues that poverty refers not to a lack of things but to the lack of the ability to live life in a particular way. The authors argue that the poor are those who cannot live a life that is discovered and created rather than already known. Avoiding poverty, then, means having the capacity and opportunity for creative living. The authors argue that the capacity to do skilled work plays a particularly important role in creative living, and suggest that the development of the ability to do skilled work is a vital part of solving the problem of poverty.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521848268
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/30/2005
Pages:	172
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.29(h) x 0.83(d)

About the Author

David P. Levine is Professor of Economics at the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver. He has published numerous articles and nine books in economics and political economy, most recently Normative Political Economy: Subjective Freedom, the Market and the State (2001). He has also published in the field of applied psychoanalysis.

S. Abu Turab Rizvi is Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Vermont. His research, concerning microeconomics and its history, has been published in the Cambridge Journal of Economics, History of Political Economy, and the Review of Political Economy.

Table of Contents

Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction; Part I: 2. The classical period; 3. Poverty policy; 4. Income, basic needs and capabilities; Part II: 5. Needs, work and identity; 6. Creativity and freedom; 7. Work and freedom; 8. Work and satisfaction; 9. Psychology of work; Part III: 10. Beyond the moral order; Conclusion; References.

Editorial Reviews

"The view of poverty expressed in this book is interesting and thought provoking. The authors put forth a carefully constructed argument linking poverty to the lack of freedom and meaningful work." - Dell Champlin, Western Washington University

From the Publisher