贫困地理学的基础理论与学科前沿

中国的减贫实践证明,地理学在服务国民经济建设和支撑减贫瞄准与扶贫决策中发挥着重要学科价值。然而,由于基本概念模糊、基础理论滞后、学科体系不健全,“理论贫困”成为制约贫困地理学创新发展的最大短板。本文在解析贫困核心概念的基础上,系统剖析了贫困地理学作为一门分支学科的学科性质、基础理论、研究对象、研究内容与框架,提出了未来贫困地理研究中的前沿领域。结果表明：① 贫困是指与一定标准相比,人们所享受的各种福利处于劣势、缺少或不足的状态,具有多维性、区域性和动态性特征。在测量标准上,绝对贫困强调“极小值”,相对贫困强调“平均值”。在瞄准对象上,个体贫困关注个人福利或能力的缺失与不足,区域贫困则是从空间视角关注个体福利背后的“区域福利”。② 贫困地理学是一门研究贫困地区的形成、分布、地理特征及其与环境的关系和反贫困措施的学科,以贫困地域系统为研究对象,以“贫困—环境”关系为研究核心,具有综合性、交叉性和区域性特点。贫困地理学的基础性理论包括空间贫困理论、区域贫困理论和多维贫困理论,其研究内容与框架包括3个维度、2大要素、2类对象、2大标准。③ 贫困地理学需要进一步强化贫困地域系统演化、区域贫困测度、相对贫困瞄准、贫困监测模拟、减贫效应评估、区域可持续发展模式等方面的基础研究。

Basic theories and frontiers of poverty geography

China's poverty alleviation practice has proved that geography has played an extremely important role in supporting anti-poverty targeting and poverty reduction decision-making. However, due to vague basic concepts, lagging basic theories, and an imperfect discipline system, "theoretical poverty" has become the biggest shortcoming restricting the innovation and development of poverty geography. Based on the analysis of the core concept of poverty, this paper systematically analyzed the nature, basic theory, research object, research content, and framework of poverty geography as a branch of the discipline, and put forward the frontier areas of future research on poverty geography. The results show that firstly, poverty refers to the state of inferiority, lack, or insufficiency of various welfares enjoyed by people compared to a certain standard, which has multidimensional, regional, and dynamic characteristics. In terms of measurement standards, absolute poverty emphasizes the minimum value, and relative poverty emphasizes the average value. In terms of target objects, poverty can be divided into individual poverty and regional poverty. The former focuses on the lack and deficiency of individual welfare or capability, while the latter focuses on the regional welfare behind individual welfare from the perspective of space. Secondly, poverty geography is a discipline that studies the formation, distribution, geographic characteristics of poverty-stricken areas, their relationship with the environment, and anti-poverty measures. It takes the impoverished areal system (IAS) as the research object and the poverty-environment nexus as the research core. It has comprehensive, cross-cutting, and regional characteristics, focusing on the study of regional poverty. The basic theories of poverty geography include spatial poverty theory, regional poverty theory, multidimensional poverty theory, and sustainable development theory. Its research content and framework include three dimensions (economic, social, and environmental poverty), two elements (nature and human), two types of objects (regional poverty and individual poverty), and two standards (absolute poverty and relative poverty). Thirdly, there is an urgent need to strengthen the basic research of poverty geography in terms of the evolution of IAS, regional poverty measurement, relative poverty targeting, poverty dynamic monitoring and simulation prediction, urban poverty and rural poverty, poverty alleviation effectiveness evaluation, transformation and development and revitalization path of poor areas. In the situation that we face new challenges of poverty reduction and development at home and abroad, there is an urgent need to constantly innovate and develop the fundamental theory of poverty geography, promote the globalization of China's poverty research, and contribute China's anti-poverty project to the eradication of global extreme poverty.