"The poor seem easy to identify: those who do not have enough money or enough of the things money can buy. This book explores a different approach to poverty, one suggested by the notion of capabilities that is emphasized by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. In the spirit of the capabilities approach, the book argues that poverty refers not to a lack of things but to the lack of the ability to live life in a particular way. However, rather than seeking to identify a prescribed set of activities and ways of being that are necessary for a fully human life, the book focuses attention on a particular capability, the capability for creative living, and explores the idea that we might consider poverty to be the inability to live creatively."--BOOK JACKET.