Elementos para la crítica de la economía política de la pobreza

Abstract

This paper presents a critique of the traditional approach or political economy of poverty (PEP), which is the basis of the new focus (or paradigm in the making) of poverty and human flourishing recently developed by the author (of which a summary is included).The critique analyses utilitarianism, the opulence approach or real income approach, the neoclassical theory of consumer behaviour, Sen and Nusbaum’s capabilities approaches, the definitions of poverty and the object of study of PEP (the concepts of needs, satisfiers and resources). In the last two cases the critique is external and stems from the newly developed approach that shows the multiple reductionism in which PEP incurs and why it is unavoidable within the prevailing paradigm.