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 poverty, 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 quality 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 perspectives 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 fairness (…) but also highly instructive” (Beck et al., 2020, p. 11). Various contributions 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 implications for the actual lives of people living in poverty. In the words of one contributor, “[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 conceptualize or measure poverty, and we will never be done researching poverty. There are too many dimensions to poverty, too many normative judgments to be made, too many different goals to which different measures attend, and all of this in constantly changing social contexts. The good news is that this volume is an excellent contribution to guide the search for useful concepts and to reflect on their manifold implications. We learn that poverty research has both “backward” and “forward linkages”, which expose the huge responsibilities of economists involved in poverty research.11 The author, as an economist, is most comfortable discussing these arguments with reference to economics and less so to other disciplines involved in the interdisciplinary anthology. The picture this volume paints, drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives, is clear: not only should we constantly reflect on how we shape our field in our daily work as academics, but also we must consider our role as academics in society (including in societies others than our own).

In the following, I discuss the volume’s three core topics—the conceptualization and measurement of poverty, epistemic injustices, and real-world implications—in light of recent debates and literatures.

编辑的卷在经济学中的声望很低。幸运的是，贫穷的维度。由Valentin Beck，Henning Hahn和Robert Lepenies（2020）编写的测量，认识论上的不公正和社会活动主义证明，编辑后的内容不仅仅是那些不适合成为期刊文章的章节的松散集合。编辑们围绕贫困的概念化、理解和衡量制作了 20 章的重要合集，汇集了来自经济学、哲学、政治学、公共政策和社会学的辩论。结果不仅仅是其各部分的总和：从各个章节，特别是从它们的交叉融合中，都可以学到一些东西。

本书关注贫困的概念化和衡量。然而，这个话题被置于另外两个重要且及时的辩论的背景下（见图 1）。首先，本书在贫困研究的质量与所提供的观点之间建立了联系。这里的一个中心主题是弗里克 ( 2007 )之后的认知不公正：有人认为，全球南方的观点往往被低估或完全忽视。这不利于研究质量，因为根据所提出的观点，贫困研究必须仔细考虑特定的社会背景。因此，包括来自不同背景和具有特定社会知识的学者“不仅是一个公平问题（……），而且具有很高的指导意义”（贝克等人，2020 年，第。11)。各种贡献也强调了生活在贫困中的人以及在学术界以外从事决策和减贫工作的人的观点的重要性。其次，本书讨论了学术界对贫困进行概念化、定义、理解和衡量的方式如何对生活在贫困中的人们的实际生活产生重要影响。用一位撰稿人的话来说，“[c] 概念问题不仅仅是抽象和边缘的讨论；它们对人们如何看待现实，如何塑造现实以及应该如何改变现实产生影响。概念驱动行动”（Schweiger，2020年，第163页）。

关于贫困的话题，选集带来了好消息和坏消息。首先是坏消息：对于如何概念化或衡量贫困的问题永远不会有明确的答案，我们永远不会完成对贫困的研究。贫困的维度太多，需要做出的规范判断太多，不同的衡量标准涉及太多不同的目标，所有这一切都发生在不断变化的社会环境中。好消息是，本书为指导寻找有用的概念并反思它们的多重含义做出了出色的贡献。我们了解到，贫困研究既有“向后联系”又有“正向联系”，这暴露了参与贫困研究的经济学家的巨大责任。11作为一名经济学家，作者最擅长参考经济学来讨论这些论点，而不是涉及跨学科选集的其他学科。 本卷描绘的图景，借鉴了跨学科的观点，很清楚：我们不仅应该不断反思我们作为学者在日常工作中如何塑造我们的领域，而且我们必须考虑我们作为学者在社会中（包括在其他社会中）的角色。我们自己的）。

在下文中，我将根据最近的辩论和文献讨论本书的三个核心主题——贫困的概念化和衡量、认知不公正和现实世界的影响。