Title           : Poverty Knowledge in South Africa: A Social History of Human Science, 1855-2005
Author      : Grace Davie
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Year         : 2015

There is an idea that scientific knowledge is capable to solve social problems, including poverty. Social scholars and scientists (including economists) have been searching to answer ‘what is poverty’, ‘what are the causes’, and ‘how to solve it’. The discussion of poverty is extensive and still evolving, intensified by a perception towards knowledge as a problem which is shared among academics and experts. However, the discussion of poverty is a contestation whereas all different agencies cannot completely agree on how to define, measure, and solve poverty. Grace Davie’s Poverty Knowledge in South Africa: A Social History of Human Science, 1855-2005 (PKSA) is a historical investigation addressing that issue. As scientific research informs and represents the condition of people’s material, Davie traces how it looped back on society and enabled different groups to manifest political reaction.

The most appreciated element in PKSA is its dual vision. It treats poverty both as ‘a real and violent condition’ and as a ‘fluid and layered conceptual space’ (3). This way of seeing is salient because in raising critical questions about history and power, it needs to consolidate two inseparable worlds within one narrative. It is important to note that Davie does not intend to diminish the positivist method in approaching poverty issue. Her purpose is to explains poverty knowledge as a ‘historical dialectic’ (15) and sees poverty concept through the lens of power struggles. Statistics, household survey, and economic indicators do not exist in a vacuum, and by drawing from other historical works of South Africa, Davie gives a lucid tale of social interaction between different agencies, including with those scientific tools.

South Africa has a complex history, not only in the history of the society but also in the development of human science. The main concern for both tales is the colonial discourse and racial segregation (apartheid) in South Africa. By dividing the story into three periodical narratives, Davie provides different concepts for each. The first part uses the term co-production –– the embedded reality of everyday society with poverty knowledge — from science studies (STS) as the main conceptual for the story  (see Jasanoff 2005). Co-production enables an explanation about how everyday experiences and ideologies were embedded in the narrative of poverty knowledge. By conjuring the world without want (23), different agencies allowed flexibility on poverty concept, making possible for powerful groups to narrating a discourse within colonial practice and oppressive situation. This explanation is evident when different groups were each advocating a different approach to comprehend the ‘poor white’ and ‘poor black’ problem.

The second concept is the limits of invention. Davie starts with a ‘progress’ in scientific endeavor. She first focuses on Edward Batson, as a figure who strongly endorsed the ‘objectivity’ and ‘value-neutral’ science (105). With this kind of thinking, Batson practiced boundaries making, doubting qualitative observation, and treating poverty as a problem like in natural science (i.e. predictable). He then contributed to the minimum standards moment (poverty datum line – PDL) which fixated the colonial administrators to start questioning basic needs. Surveys on health and nutrition were conducted, and colonials concluded this survey with a missionary project to ‘help’ the population. However, there was another interest to restore the breached hierarchies. Investigating living conditions of the people and improving economic welfare was meant to prevent future disruptions. What I found interesting in this part is Davie’s rejection to totalise this practice under ‘colonial science’. She argues that ‘poverty datum line was an interactive technology born of laborious boundary work in the field’ (140). This means that PDL was not a one-way dictate imposed by the powerful, but also the result of protest politics, policies, and everyday life. As she continues this notion by exposing the role of grassroots society to challenge white economic hegemony by using statistics and cost-of-living data. Here, Davie raises a critical point: is the knowledge equal power at all when everyone can use it to make all sorts of arguments, for all kinds of purposes (174).

The final theme of PKSA is epistemic mobility, a term coined by Davie to refer to the pattern of oscillation between quantitative and qualitative methods which tended to keep poverty experts off balance (14). The battle of curiosity was not always in place compared to the battle to influence policymaking. Here, the debates between radicals and liberals happened through research promotion. Davie notes when the poverty lines began to be the tool of reformist and ready to be co-opted by the system, radicals urged more on life histories when doing research. Experts among two streams could not agree and remain divided. When the democratisation took place in late 1980s-early 1990s, nation building demanded hard evidence and technical knowledge. However, it still could not provide experts and politicians with the sufficient capacity to set policy agendas (217). In the 1990s, the post-apartheid state was no longer debating poverty in a contrasting manner, and politicians started to back to the notion that empirical facts must be separated from politics. Davie concludes that poverty knowledge after the 1990s becomes technically innovative yet still cannot settle the poverty question.

Taken all the three concepts together, PKSA is a successful study in providing a narrative of power and knowledge. She echoes Alice O’Connor’s (2001) departing point of poverty knowledge by focusing on the interaction of knowledge producers and critically challenges the process of, not only knowledge production, but also the impacts and purposes of poverty knowledge. Poverty knowledge, she says, does not become more politicised when politicians use it but it has always been political (178). This consistency on thinking about knowledge as a political process is necessary, as then it leads us to, not necessarily challenges the ‘objective truth’ of the knowledge, but to challenge the structure that allows the ‘truth’ becoming obscure. As the final remark, PKSA is clearly structured by putting synchronic analysis within the diachronic as well as does justice by taking account the positioning of radical scholars and progressive grassroots society.  In this case, finding the truth is as important as to advocate political intentions and goals for the betterment of society.