Challenging assumptions about poverty

Robert Walker, a professor of social policy at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and an adviser to a United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty, discussed the conclusions of his most recent study with members of the Duke community Tuesday evening. Through the results of his study, “The Shame of Poverty,” Walker examined how individuals living in poverty identify with their economic status. He found that controlling for cultural definitions of shame, impoverished individuals in almost every country surveyed expressed some feeling of shame when reflecting on their poverty.

The study examined poverty on a global scale, but there are a multitude of connections to life at Duke. This year, the University has allocated more than $130 million to provide financial aid to those undergraduates who demonstrate sufficient need so that the Duke experience can be affordable across the economic spectrum. Many aspects of life here are shielded from the economic realities of daily life, as students spend food points liberally and nobody living on campus worries about making rent. Although coming from an underprivileged background might not carry the stigma that Walker discussed, it's important to realize class is embedded into certain aspects of Duke life. Students may feel pressure to pursue more lucrative careers if faced with the prospect of economic uncertainty after college, be it student loan debt or simply paying the bills. Around campus, status symbols slowly have become the norm: the glow of MacBooks in lecture halls and students flashing iPhones on the bus. Outside of the classroom, socioeconomic status becomes more and more visible in the choices we make in our extracurriculars and social lives. Even free time becomes a privilege, as some students look to work-study to augment their financial aid. As desirable it is to create academic environment free from the stress of personal finances, it simply can’t be ignored.

But the questions raised by Walker’s research also focus how we think about poverty from an academic perspective. There are lenses we wear when thinking like an academic without realizing it. Examining poverty as a systemic problem is very different that facing the realities of one’s own poverty. It becomes fetishized, an abstract object that can be displayed, consumed and studied, instead of personally dealt with. What are we missing when we study a phenomenon for which we have no experience of?

At Duke, students are in a unique opportunity to come into contact with the severe inequality so often discussed in academia. DukeEngage creates opportunities for students to tackle the issues surrounding poverty in a foreign and domestic context. Service learning programs push students into the local community as tutors and mentors for Durham youth. Yet at the end of the day, poverty is an issue that is intensely personal, no matter how prevalent. Our academic perspective can only capture the testimony and statistics of this experience. Bringing our focus to issues of poverty at home, rather than de facto exporting them abroad, will bring about a finer understanding of the psychological toll that accompanies financial instability. Those of us without the personal experience of poverty can discuss the implications of Walker’s study, but simply because something is recognized does not mean it is understood.