Poverty Knowledge in South Africa

Grace Davie is Associate Professor of History at Queens College, City University of New York. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Southern African Studies, Waging Nonviolence, YES! magazine, and OD Practitioner.

• Part I. Lay Knowledge Meets Human Science, 1855–1940: The Co-production of the 'Poor White Problem': 1. Before poverty measurement: conjuring worlds without want; 2. The human sciences in interwar South Africa: William Macmillan, I. D. MacCrone, and the Carnegie Commission; Part II. The Limits of Invention, 1940–70: Social Reform and Quantitative Objectivity: 3. The minimum standards moment: Edward Batson and the Poverty Datum Line (PDL); 4. Rethinking governmentality: urban planning, rural betterment, and the apartheid state; Part III. The People's Facts: Epistemic Mobility and the Negotiated Settlement, 1970–2005: 5. Agitation through quantification: white student activists in the era of black consciousness; 6. From people's power to corporate power: poverty research and the transition to democracy; 7. Baselines and battle lines: social surveying after apartheid; Conclusion; Epilogue.