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The EU and OECD’s use of poverty lines set at a percentage of national average income is testimony to the widespread acceptance of Peter Townsend’s purely relative poverty definition. It has often been defended, including by Townsend, as a development of Adam Smith’s reference to ‘necessaries’ differing across social contexts. This article contends that Townsend’s definition is clearly inconsistent with Smith’s work but entirely consistent with a passage by Wilhelm Schulz which established the term ‘relative poverty’ and asserted that people’s material needs are proportionate to their nation’s economic output per head; Karl Marx quoted that passage in a short piece that criticised Smith. A recent defence of Townsend’s definition is its supposed international public endorsement in empirical studies of socially perceived necessities. A review of this evidence finds that publics, like Smith and British poverty researchers before Townsend – most notably Seebohm Rowntree – see the extent of material need as affected by social context but not proportionate to national average income. Publishing purely relative and absolute purchasing power poverty statistics together offers a way of portraying hardship levels that is balanced to reflect publics’ more narrowly relative understanding of material needs.

Poverty analysis is in the midst of a multidimensional “turn” due, in part, to the growing awareness of the limitations of relative income measures of poverty. In this paper, we argue that the conceptualisation of poverty remains a neglected aspect of this multidimensional turn to date, and demonstrate that the counter-intuitive results which flow from relative income analyses are not problems of measurement, but are entirely consistent with the conceptualisation of poverty under Peter Townsend’s dominant Poverty as Relative Deprivation framework. In response to these problems we articulate an alternative framework, Poverty as Capability Deprivation, drawing on Amartya Sen’s capability approach, and argue that this provides more persuasive explanations as to why some nations have greater poverty than others and why poverty remains a problem even in the richest nations. L’analyse de la pauvreté est au beau milieu d’un « tournant » multidimensionnel dû, en partie, à la prise de conscience croissante des limites des mesures de pauvreté en termes de revenus relatifs. Dans cet article, nous affirmons non seulement que la conceptualisation de la pauvreté reste un aspect négligé de ce tournant multidimensionnel, mais nous démontrons que les résultats contre-intuitifs qui découlent des analyses en termes de revenus relatifs ne sont pas des problèmes de mesure, mais sont avant tout congruents avec le cadre dominant de la pauvreté défini par Peter Townsend dans son ouvrage intitulé La Pauvreté comme Privation Relative. Pour résoudre ces problèmes, nous élaborons un cadre alternatif qui s’appuie sur l’approche des « capacités » d’Amartya Sen, La Pauvreté comme privation de capacité, et qui permet d’expliquer pourquoi certaines nations conservent un niveau de pauvreté plus élevé que d’autres et pourquoi la pauvreté demeure un problème même dans les nations les plus riches. Die Armutsdiagnose befindet sich inmitten einer multidimensionalen Wende, die zum Teil auf das wachsende Zugeständnis zurückzuführen ist, dass Einkommensmaßnahmen nur begrenzte Auswirkungen auf die Armut haben. In diesem Beitrag behaupten wir, dass die Konzeptualisierung der Armut im Rahmen dieser multidimensionalen Wende vernachlässigt wird und zeigen auf, dass die gegenintuitiven Ergebnisse, die auf relativen Einkommensuntersuchungen fußen, keine Messfehler sind, sondern sich durch Peter Townsends Konzeptualisierung der Armut, wie in seinem Werk „Poverty as Relative Deprivation“ beschrieben, erklären lassen. Zur Problemlösung tragen wir mit einem alternativen Raster bei, „Poverty as Capability Deprivation“ – Armut als Fähigkeitsentzug, aufbauend auf Amartya Sens Fähigkeitsansatz und argumentieren, dass dieser Ansatz besser erklärt, warum manche Nationen eine größere Armut als andere kennen und warum Armut selbst in reichsten Ländern ein Problem bleibt.

This article brings together analyses of the micro paradata ‘by-products’ from the 1967/1968 Poverty in the United Kingdom (PinUK) and 2012 Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK (PSE) surveys to explore changes in the conditions of production over this 45 year period. We highlight technical, social and professional role continuities and changes, shaped by the institutionalisation of survey researchers, the professionalization of the field interviewer, and economisation. While there are similarities between the surveys in that field interviewers were and are at the bottom of the research hierarchy, we demonstrate an increasing segregation between the core research team and field interviewers. In PinUK the field interviewers are visible in the paper survey booklets; through their handwritten notes on codes and in written marginalia they can ‘talk’ to the central research team. In PSE they are absent from the computer mediated data, and from communication with the central team. We argue that, while there have been other benefits to field interviewers, their relational labour has become less visible in a shift from the exercise of observational judgement to an emphasis on standardisation. Yet, analyses of what field interviewers actually do show that they still need to deploy the same interpersonal skills and resourcefulness to secure and maintain interviews as they did 45 years previously.

Its spine may have been saddle-stitched, and its inside pages printed in black and white, but when the Australian and International Art Monthly burst on the scene in June 1987, its pedigree was immaculate and its contents and contributors overflowing with art-world luminaries. But hovering under the title on the cover was just one name: Edited by Peter Townsend.

In conducting his research for The Last Refuge (1962), Peter Townsend visited 173 public, voluntary and private residential care homes for older people in England and Wales. Drawing on his data, now archived at the University of Essex, we traced the subsequent history of these homes and revisited a sample that were still functioning as care homes in 2006. In this article, we focus on the 42 private homes he visited, some of which remain open and were revisited by us in 2005–06. The pre-1980 history of private sector residential care provision for older people is an elusive and poorly charted topic. Drawing on the two data sets for then and now, this article contributes new insights into this area of UK policy and practice.

An homage to Peter Townsend is presented.

After 30 years and the production of the 300th edition of Art Monthly in Australia, the opportunity to reflect on my involvement with the magazine in the early years is welcome. I did not meet the legendary Peter Townsend when he was on a lecture tour of Australia in 1983. At the time, I was director of the Craft Board of the Australia Council and was aware of an idea for Art Monthly Australia being floated. It was during that tour Townsend met with the Australia Council. He also met National Gallery of Australia conservator Jacqueline Macnaughtan, and this was the beginning of Townsend's long-term/long-distance relationship with her and with Australia.It has been my privilege to have worked with all six full-time editors, each contributing significantly to the success of the publication.

I first wrote a nearly-monthly 'Asia' column for Art Monthly in December 1991, and over the next two years produced (to my count) ten articles on the Asia-focused activities that were exploding in Australia. Editor Peter Townsend asked me to do these pieces and he remained hands-off. What more could you want? I read his 2006 obituary in the Guardian in preparing this text, which has the line 'his genius as an editor was to listen' - yes, indeed. Art Monthly fulfilled the information-with-context that those fast moving times required.

Catherine Townsend is the daughter of Peter Townsend (1919-2006), Art Monthly Australia's founding editor from 1987 until 1993. Here, she provides a history of her father's career prior to this time period.It was his brother Willie who introduced him to the publishers of The Studio, and his unexpected appointment as editor brought little then in the way of art-history baggage, entrenchment or factionalism. What he did bring was an understanding of the importance of the artist and writer at the centre of things, and a conviction that good art and good writing has the power to change people at a cellular level.