Poverty as Epistemic Object of Government: State Cognitive Equipment and Social Sciences Operations

This article studies the interrelation of the epistemic dimension of the State with the operation of social science embedded in institutional spaces of government and its effects on the process of production of social-science knowledge,conditioning its decisions. The reported study is based on the process of poverty measurement as conducted by the Chilean government. In this process,poverty appears as an object created and used not only as a scientific object of academic inquiry,but simultaneously as an epistemic object of government constituted by the State,and used for regulatory interventions. The research developed shows that there are many points of ambiguity in the decisions required for the construction of poverty,in which purely scientific or technical criteria are insufficient for decision-making and are supplemented by tactical or strategic criteria of government.