Declaredly a brief skate over a vast field of debates about poverty (p. 26), The Idea of Poverty serves well as an introductory study of poverty and associated concepts. Aimed at the general reader, the book would also serve well as a primer or core text in specialist education. The author's aims are to uncover what poverty is and what should be done about it. The weight of the book is more on the former than the latter, the material being a natural extension of the author's previous attempts to bring conceptual perspicuity to the field (Gordon and Spicker, Reference Gordon and Spicker1999).

The book has 16 chapters arranged over seven parts. The great majority of the book, the first five parts, is given to conceptualising poverty. It covers definitions, material need, economic position, social relationships and the moral discourse around poverty. The last two parts seek explanations for poverty and examine responses to poverty and policies to tackle it.

Canonical poverty thinking is succinctly introduced in Chapter 1 to establish what poverty is, who the poor are, and to consider who defines poverty. Absolute and relative measures of poverty follow. Chapter 3 presents shifting viewpoints in researching poverty, arguing that limitations rest on the character of the idea of poverty, not in the process. Spicker argues that, as poverty measurements are inexact, we need retain some scepticism over figures and indicators. Yet, we need to be tolerant as they still contain useful information and valid measurement should be matched by adequate policy response. In considering material need (Chapter 4) the author brings risk into the picture – that poverty is not only about those who are in need but also about those who might become needy. An examination of the spatial distribution of poverty and poverty of place debates (Chapter 5) precedes consideration of the distribution of economic resources in regard to income, inequality, consumption and wealth (Chapter 6). Discussions of class and formal economy (Chapter 7), social exclusion (Chapter 8), welfare dependency (Chapter 9) and poverty and politics (Chapter 10) follow. Poverty as a moral concept – more specifically the moral dimensions of poverty and the condemnation of the poor are discussed respectively in Chapters 11 and 12.

The penultimate Part 6 quickens the pulse with catchy titles such as why are people poor (Chapter 13) and why poor countries stay poor (Chapter 14). However, there is no easy answer and no ‘eureka’ moment here. Concluding this chapter it is declared, perhaps arguably, that not all probable causes help in finding possible answers – the way out of a problem is not best found by tracing the way in. The final part of the book contains general information and musings about the way in which Governments and societies respond to poverty, with a focus on contemporary growth and poverty reduction strategies, international actors and policies. The reader walks away with the idea that while it is impossible for anti-poverty strategies to not miss aspects of the problem, something needs to be done – that ‘it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness’.

Issues abound – as with every good book – with some arising from the necessary selectivity in the volume. Especially, the author is summarily cursive about or dismissive of noted explanations of poverty, whether structural, such as the feminisation of poverty, or functionalist, citing no one more modern than Herbert Spencer.

A more fundamental issue may lie in the pick and mix approach to Wittgenstein's philosophy.Footnote ¹ The opening and central argument hinges on the application of the philosophers anti-essentialist position to the concept of poverty. So far, so good. However, this approach perhaps does not support all that the author wishes to achieve with it. While the lack of an essence to poverty would mean we cannot encapsulate its many and varied ordinary uses in an all-embracing scientific definition, it does not follow that we must use multi-dimensional approaches, which suffer similar descriptive shortfalls anyway. According to Wittgenstein (Reference Wittgenstein1952), philosophy itself leaves everything as it is and does not privilege one line of enquiry over another.

The multi-dimensional approach itself brings challenges as well as benefits to the study of the subject – the anti-essentialist argument applying equally to other related concepts such as need, deprivation, class, exclusion that are its bread and butter. It also applies to the whole field of ethics. So, as we must and do pragmatically accept both competing methodologies – crude scientific reductionism and the intricacies of multi-dimensional approaches – according to a Wittgensteinian position, we also may have to accept the lack of certainty in any moral judgement on poverty.