BUILDING GLOBAL CITIZENRY THROUGH TEACHING ABOUT POVERTY

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BUILDING GLOBAL CITIZENRY THROUGH TEACHING ABOUT
POVERTY

• Farida C Khan
• Professor of Economics
• Co-Director, Center for International Studies

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Poverty Measures

• 1 a day
• 2 a day
• Percentage below poverty line

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The higher the bar, the greater the proportion of
people in poverty
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Where is poverty to be found?
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What percent is poor in each nation?
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If poverty is hunger, how well do nations
provide food for their people?
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What do we understand by these numbers?

• Cultural definitions
• Historical experiences
• Economic processes
• Visual understanding?

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Images

• Heres what we might see
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?v6Nf1j-CtnxM
• Or this
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vLFgb1BdPBZo

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How should images be used?

• To clarify the magnitude of the problems?
• Might they create misunderstandings about
  societies?
• To enable students to appreciate their
  circumstances?
• Might they instill static ideas about certain
  regions that are poor?

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How should information be provided?

• Not too abstract?
• Not too dehumanizing?
• To generate interest?
• To maintain respect for humanity?
• To overcome objectification?

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POSSIBLE MODELS to IMPART INFORMATION

• Technical Models
• Historical Models
• Cultural Models
• Mix of the above?

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Technical Models

• Source World Bank, UNDP, IMF, NGOs
• Human Development Index (UN) development
  indicators include income poverty, life
  expectancy, literacy schooling
• Millennium Development Goals (UN)
• http//www.endpoverty2015.org/
• http//www.un.org/millenniumgoals/poverty.shtml
  

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Millennium Development Goal 1 ERADICATE EXTREME
POVERTY HUNGER

• Target 1
• Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of
  people whose income is less than 1 a day
• Conflict leaves many displaced and
  impoverished

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Millennium Development Goal 1 ERADICATE EXTREME
POVERTY HUNGER

• Target 2
• Achieve full and productive employment and decent
  work for all, including women and young people
• Low-paying jobs leave one in five developing
  country workers mired in poverty
• Half the worlds workforce toil in unstable,
  insecure jobs

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Millennium Development Goal 1 ERADICATE EXTREME
POVERTY HUNGER

• Target 3
• Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of
  people who suffer from hunger
• Rising food prices threaten limited gains
  in alleviating child malnutrition

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Breaking the Link Between Poverty and Per Capita
Income

• Kerala and Sri Lanka
• Hans Rosling Video
• http//www.ted.com/index.hp/talks/hans_rosling_rev
  eals_new_insights_on_poverty.html
• NGOs and delivery of basic services (Grameen Bank
  and micro-credit)

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Historical Model

• What has been our thinking about other
  countries?
• Mercantilism State interest and colonization
• Liberalism Stationary economies
• Advent of development economics in 1940s/50s

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Historical Model

• W.W Rostow Stages of Growth, R. Nurkse Balanced
  Growth, etc.
• Suggests that there are underdeveloped/traditional
  and developed societies in a spectrum
• Traditional societies included slave systems of
  early Greece and Rome peasant societies in
  India, Egypt, China
• Confluence of development and time

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Historical Model

• Dependency and World Systems theorists (60s/70s)
• Development and colonization causes
  underdevelopment
• Modern models of growth create system of
  dependence and debt that worsen poverty

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Historical Model

• 1980s/90s
• Neo-liberal policies - increase growth through
  market policies to trickle down
• Kuznets curve? (growth ? inequality?)
• State provision of goods and services ?
• Juxtaposition of images of rich and poor
• Sense of entitlement ? but actual conditions
  worsened in some places

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CONTEMPORARY ISSUES

• Economic crises such as rising prices, reduced
  credit, global recession
• Climate change and environmental degradation

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NGOS

• Micro-credit
• Advocacy
• Projects

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Cultural Model

• Pre-modern Cultural contingency
• Cultural differences civilizational differences
  
• Policies based on understanding of a unified
  nature - how much do anthropologists inform
  understanding of poverty?

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Cultural Model

• Other regions in the world - multiplicities of
  indigenous peoples
• How have cultures contended with colonization and
  modernity

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Marshall Sahlins

• "Hunters and gatherers have by force of
  circumstances an objectively low standard of
  living. but taken as their objective, and given
  their adequate means of production, all the
  people's material wants usually can easily be
  satisfied (a common understanding of
  'affluence'). ... The world's most primitive
  people have few possessions, but they are not
  poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of
  goods, nor is it just a relation between means
  and ends above all it is a relation between
  people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is
  an invention of (modern) civilization."

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Cultural Model

• NATURE HITS BACK?
• We see the environment as what we use but our
  daily habits, interactions, architecture changes
  the environment.
• Environmental degradation goes hand in hand with
  the homogenization and unification of cultures
  and the desire to consume in a single manner.

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TEACHING TIPS

1. Keep the connection between micro and macro case
   studies should be used for generalizations
2. Focus on a single region or country or have the
   student do so
3. Have the student tie this in with his/her
   language class, literature, science
4. Learning more about a place will generate love
   and ownership
5. Have the student do a creative projecta video,
   narrative, poem, song encourage action

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TEACHING TIPS

1. Suggest that the student should make a pen friend
   in the country
2. Encourage Study Abroad to destinations other than
   Western Europe
3. Teach about heroes that fought poverty
4. Explain global resource scarcity and the
   impossibility of a global American lifestyle
5. Encourage involvement with a NGO or charity
   organization encourage the act of giving to make
   a difference