I
spend most of my days right now thinking, writing, talking and musing on many
issues surrounding education and development. Many of my thoughts are discussed
in my book, but I also enjoy challenging my own thoughts by sharing and
discussing with others. Thus here are a few blog-posts of my current thoughts
on a few topics to share with you all. Comments, ideas, questions back are
greatly encouraged J
...On Poverty
To what extent has “Poverty” become a
brand?
The term itself is, after all, a social creation;
judged and assessed purely through fiscal comparisons. It is not a self-created
identity, but a derogative imposed upon a person, community or country - a
label that is given rather than chosen.
The branding of “poor” comes (according to the
powers that be) when someone is “failing” to earn $2 per day – the global
marking of a poverty level. Therefore, as a branding, it leaves little for a
country or its people to aspire to other
than fiscal development; ultimately tying progress firstly into dependence,
then subsequently into a singular direction in order to lose the branding.
As a generalised label, “poverty” has almost served
to create a categorised subspecies of humanity: people classified as failing in
the game of life. For a community, a culture or a nation to be thus branded
implies an inherent sense of failure; that somehow you are “failing at life”
and therefore need to change your ways. Yet the branding only focuses on one
thing: money. Poverty does not consider happiness, quality of life, emotional
well-being, community engagement and support, skill-capacity, sustainability, growth-potential
etc. It is simply a judgement of how much money somebody has in their pocket
and endorses deep-seated assumptions of a lack of self-worth.
Here’s a question: If someone has an abundance of
material wealth but houses no love in their heart, no joy in their soul, no
happiness in their smile, are they not the ones that are Poor?
Current practices of poverty-alleviation through
development have been modelled around a foundation of comparison; the
construct of developmental aid infiltrating a psyche of superiority and
inferiority across the world. If you have money (or the promise of it) you are
a Success; if you don't, you are a Failure and dependent upon the Successful to
help you to follow in their footsteps. Thus,
in this system, one side is forever the loser. Everything within the processing
of aid support-systems categorises progress through models of comparison: all
of the diction surrounding development using terms of contrast, denoting one
way as either inferior or superior to the other:
Rich versus Poor
Developed versus Developing
Modern versus Traditional
The First World versus the Third World
The West versus the Rest of the World
OECD versus the Rest of the World
Industrialised versus Emerging Economies
The Fortune versus the Bottom of the Pyramid
A psyche of western thinking lies behind many aid
initiatives being infiltrated across non-western environments, yet the
processing and infiltration of projects on the ground will never work in the
same way they did for those setting the initiatives (for many reasons, about
which I will write further anon). The
problems of trying to homogenise evolutionary progress through a single-minded
dictation of directional change is that it so frequently ignores the absurdity
of an immeasurable comparisons of habit, environment or lifestyle; instead
removing contextual fundamentals from the equation and focusing simply on one
thing: Money.
Poverty is a branding that cannot be eliminated by
The Poor; it is an assumed derogative put upon a nation from outside and, as
such, leaves little room for manoeuvre beyond a reliance on aid to support
growth; restricting its people to a subservient role and a permanent backseat
position within the game of progress.
So how do we remove the branding?
