Lacking neither in will nor in initiative, does a majority of the rural population in the developing world nevertheless continue to live bleak lives full of deprivation and vulnerabilities. Today, poverty remains the single most important challenge for much of the developing world. Viewing poverty as a multidimensional reality, this book provides a penetrating look at this most serious of contemporary problems. Taking Bangladesh as a case study, it highlights the many facets of poverty as a state and as a process. The seventeen original essays in this volume, based mostly on a nationwide survey of households, extend conventional economic analysis in several new directions, most notably in the analysis of routine crises, ecological reserves, differentiation of the poor, and the political economy of poverty alleviation. Empirically rich and based on primary data, this volume deals with the methodological challenges of rural poverty research, offering innovative contributions in the use of self-evaluations by the rural poor. Indeed, a critical argument throughout the book is the need to see the poor not as passive clients for assistance but as social actors whose initiative, capacities and labour power can serve as perhaps the biggest assets in the struggle against poverty. With its multidisciplinary approach and original insights, this book will be of considerable interest to scholars in the disciplines of economics, development studies, sociology and anthropology.