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This paper presents a novel analysis about the capabilities of academic researchers and academic poverty. Adopting the capability approach, which Amartya Sen developed to address concerns such as poverty, inequality and development, we shift the focus of analysis and discussion around evaluating academic research and academics in the social sciences from measures of so-called 'quality', 'impact' or 'excellence' to the capabilities of academics. For us, the conceptualization and evaluation of academic research is a question about what academics have reasons to value, and about their ability to achieve valuable beings and doings. It is also about determining what might constitute academic poverty, and what academics are required to do in order to avoid that poverty. Relating our analysis to debates around universities, in particular about quasi-market pressures, we identify the possibility of basic capabilities in academic research, namely: the capabilities that are necessary to fulfill basic academic needs. Our proposition is that there is academic poverty when an academic researcher is not capable of fulfilling basic academic needs, such as: adhering to standards of coherence, robustness and rigour; searching for and disseminating the spirit of the truth. Moreover, if the academic has the capabilities to fulfill those basic academic needs and yet chooses not to do so, she renders herself in a state akin to academic poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amartya Sen has sought to maintain a dialogue with mainstream economics on inequality—a continuing theme in his writing. This paper suggests this dialogue has involved costs. The first and second sections outline where Sen has located himself in the epistemological range that defines acceptable knowledge in the general economics discourse and takes Sen's epistemological principles into the analysis of economic inequality. The third section links Sen's work on causes of famine with his work on inequality and shows how this has given a particular slant to the development of capabilities theory with a focus on the lower end of the inter-personal inequality distribution. The fourth section focuses on the need also for development ethics at the top end of the inequality distribution and economic opulence. The conclusion makes the case for further critical reflection on the top end of the inter-personal distribution and opulence as vital elements in the capabilities approach to improving the human condition, even if this means a greater distancing from mainstream economics than Amartya Sen has found acceptable in the past. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]