#27 - Academic Rush (Sunday Special) Pt 1 - “Eradicating Poverty, or the poor”.

ANOTHER LOOK ON THE CONCEPT OF “POVERTY”

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Inspired by Pr Ranema Majid’s “Eradicating Poverty, or the poor”.

While working on my JHU senior thesis in 2009, on "what would African Development look like if African scholars were listened to?" I jotted down some thoughts, reflections and experiences I've had in Africa, based on the readings I'd made. And there's one particular theme that I tried to elaborate on the concept of POVERTY.

Think about this….

"It is the first time in history that such an overwhelming number of people, belonging to highly diverse cultures and environments, are arbitrarily labelled “poor” for the only reason that their daily income does not exceed a given universal standard, expressed in the money of the “richest” economic power in the world. The definition totally neglects the fact that the overwhelming majority of the world population still meet (as they had always done in the past) most of their vital needs without recourse to money."  - Pr Ranema Majid

What does it mean to be poor? Or be labeled poor? Does living under $2 a day really says much about someone being poor? I often tell my Western friends that, I see the woman selling oranges, tangerines, tomatoes and plantains infront of my house, and listen: She probably does not pay rent in her house, she has a farm to grow her food, she walks uphill to get to her job as a seller, her children go to school, she eats what she produces, and she is healthy, and so are her children. Now how is that being poor?  Another example is my grandma in the village, she has her one-floor, cement-made house, but prefers staying in her mud hut which she had built herself, about  50 years ago, in which she cooks her food on firewood. She walks about 10 miles to get to one of her farms, and some days she spends less than $1 on any commodity. Would I call her poor because of that? No. She has her way of life, which is a rural way of life, but that does not equate to poverty.

What I’m saying is not that there are no poor people in Africa. There are, just like anywhere in the world (even if there are quantitatively more here); but I’m stressing on the fact that we must question the way we automatically tag people who live with less than $2 a day as poor, because as Prof Rahnema stated, in most regions of the world, most people meet their fundamental need without recourse to money.  I am not also saying that we must tell the actual poor people of the earth to contend themselves with $2 when they can have more, if so I won’t be promoting the industrialization of our agric sector. What I’m saying is that we must redefine our conception of poverty. The definition and standards that transnational organizations and International Financial Institutions give to define and measure poverty are inherently skewed. 

As Aminata Traore (from Mali) said  

“Africa reads itself and sees itself through numbers we did not collect, and that we cannot read, and which surely has nothing to do with our profound aspiration to more humanity.” [1] / My translation of the transcribed quote in French “L’Afrique se lit et se dit a travers des chiffres que nous n’avons pas collecte, et que nous ne savons pas lire, et qui n’a surement rien a voir avec notre profonde aspiration a d’avantages humanites.”  Traore, Aminata. B.World Connection. Interview.  June 8, 2008. Dailymotion.com.

And in her book , Le Viol de L’Imaginaire, Traore argues that because the West defines Africa according to Western terms, because they leave minimal space for Africans to define themselves; there is, what she calls a “rape of the imaginary.” Such that, we can’t Imagine our own “African Development”, we can’t imagine our very own “industrial revolution”, or our “standard of living,” all is equated and measured with standards that are foreign to us. That’s how our imagination has been raped. And that, I think is tragic. Because a people that cannot define itself, in its own terms, is condemned to be subject to not only others' definition, but also to others' will. How different is that from colonialism?

MY SECOND POINT IS, as some few scholars have noted, we should stop ignoring the capacity of the poor to find their own solutions.  There’s some kind of caricature of poor people that pictures them as crippled, and not able to find solutions to their own problems.

Hernando De Soto, in his classic “The Mystery of Captial” (ed.2000) makes a statement, I couldn't agree more with or rephrase any better: 

"The words "international poverty" too easily bring to mind images of destitute beggars sleeping o nthe curbs of Calcutta and hungry African children starving on the sand. These scenes are of course real, and millions of our fellow human beings demand and deserve our help. Nevertheless, the grimmest picture of the Third World is not the most accurate. worse, it draws attention away from the arduous achievements of those small entrepreneurs who have triumphed over every imaginable obstacle to create the greater part of the wealth of their society. A true image would (p.35) depict a man and woman who have painstakingly saved to construct a house for themselves and their children who are creating enterprises where nobody imagined they could build it. I resent the characterization of such heroic entrepreneurs as contributors to the problem of global poverty. They are not the problem. They are the solution. (p.37)" 

Hernando De Soto's thesis is that the Third world must undergo a propert-right revolution, in order to transform the massive dead-capital in each country into wealth => More on this in my subsequent blogposts, on Property Rights)  

Years later William Easterly’s analysis echoes De Soto’s statement, in his 2007 edition of The White Man’s burden, he rightfully states that the poor of the World are more resourceful than the West gives them credit for, and he adds that  “It is a fantasy to think that the West can change complex societies with very different histories and cultures into some image of itself. The main hope for the poor is for them to be their own Searchers, borrowing ideas and technologies from the West when it suits them to do so.”

I mean, given the numerous records of unsuccessful top-down initiatives, it just makes sense for policy makers to increasingly entertain bottom-up solutions. Let’s take the example of the UN famous (and infamous) MDGs.  In 2008, Secretary General, Ban Ki moon affirmed that the MDGs shall be met by 2015: 

"Looking ahead to 2015 and beyond, there is no question that we can achieve the overarching goal: we can put an end to poverty. In almost all instances, experience has demonstrated the validity of earlier agreements on the way forward; in other words, we know what to do. But it requires an unswerving, collective, long-term effort” (UNDP, 2008) 

Yet looking back at the track records of MDGs, it is difficult to believe in Secretary General Ban Ki Moon’s assertion, that the MDGs would be met by 2015. In 1977, the UN summit fixed its goal to achieve universal access to water and sanitation for 1990; in 1990, the UN constructed goals to be met by 2000. By 2000 they postponed it to 2015. And today, in 2011, the prospects of attaining these goals still looks gloomy.  Even the MDG 2008 Gap Task Force report makes it clear that “while there has been progress on many fronts, the delivery on commitments has been deficient and has fallen behind schedule (UNDP, 2008c: iii). Thus many development actors believe the MDGs will not be met by 2015. William Easterly frankly stated in his book that “the current wave of enthusiasm for addressing world poverty will repeat the cycle of its predecessors: idealism, high expectations, disappointing results, cynical backlash” (Easterly, 2007: 6). 

James Ferguson, the renown anthropologist, advises “development theorists” to look into grassroots social movements on the ground. They are often community’s responses to the political, social and economic defects of their societies.  These communities mobilize and organize themselves according to their cultural norms and their collective aspirations. It is therefore critical to understand the functioning of grassroots movements as they propose alternative models of both development and “governance” (Ferguson 2006: 87). They equally highlight a model of development shaped around both the fundamental needs of their populations and their capacity of meeting those needs. Because, as Prof Rahnema, reasserts:   

“If there is one aspiration common to most of the people who actually live with one or two dollars a day, it is to prevent the destruction of their convivial environment and of their subsistence economy and, hence, the possible crippling of their potentia, or their particular art of living.”

We don’t want to end up, for instance, removing the pigmies from their livelihood in the forest, to offer them a “modern” standard of living, which after 5-10 years we will not be able to sustain. That will leave them in pure limbo: A state where they are not in the comfort zone they were used to before, nor at the level the “modern world” expects them to be.

I remember reading a statement in my Political Econ book, by O’Brian and Williams’ explaining that, because of colonization there is a tendency to equate development exclusively to non-western countries (O’B&W 2006:301). Although in 1948 some European nations, such as Portugal, Spain and Ireland, had the same living standards as now-called developing countries, they were never defined as ‘developing countries’. Likewise, post-Soviet countries were classified as ‘transitional economies’ or ‘emerging markets’ instead of ‘developing countries’. In this way, the term ‘development’ evolved during the 20^th century to describe African, Asian, Caribbean and Latin American regions (ibid). And thus, the distinction between “developed” and “developing” countries was drawn along these geographic lines, i.e. between the West and non-Western countries. 

In my opinion, underlying each MDG goal, each development theory, each recommendation from the Bretton Woods institutions is the aim to change complex societies, particularly African ones, in images of the West. But that’s really just aiming to fail. Unless we redefine our concept of “African development”, and have a clear VISION of what it would look like (whether it’s in each country, region, of Africa as a whole), and in the process we engage Africans themselves (representative of every social class),  development efforts will merely band-aid our wounds, not cure our ills. 

Bibliography


1.      Easterly, William. (2007) The White Man’s Burden – Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. Penguin Books.
2.James Ferguson. (2006)  “De-moralizing Economies.” Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order.  Duke University Press
3. O’Brien, Robert and Williams, Marc.(2007). Global Political Economy – Evolution and Dynamics. Second edition. Macmillan. New York

4. Rahnema, Majid. “Poverty.” (2001, June). www.pudel.uni-bremen.de/pdf/ majid2.pdf
5.  Rahnema, Majid.(2005) “Eradicating Poverty, or the poor”. cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/eradicating_poverty_or_the_poor___majid_rahnema.doc –
6. Traore, Aminata. (2002) Le viol de L’imaginaire. Actes Sud et Fayar
7. UNDP (2008). “Human Development Indices.” undp.org. date accessed: 01/05/09  http://hdr.undp.org/en/humandev/hdi/