| Sumario: | In contradistinction to Ravi Kanbur s (2003) summarization of a recent conference on qualitative and quantitative poverty analysis in which he proposed a typology of differences between ‘qual and quant’ approaches, I argue that key elements in this typology are derivative of more basic distinctions in the philosophy of social science between three research programs: empiricism/positivism, hermeneutics, and critical theory/critical hermeneutics. The point is not simply of academic interest but has practical implications for aspects of poverty analysis, including numeric transformation of data, assessment of the validity of empirical findings, and inferring policy implications from research results. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
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