Definitions Matter

This is the assignment I referred to in my last blog.

Introduction and Conceptualization
Imagine that a student from outer space is “studying abroad” in Durban to learn about humanity and has an assignment to prepare dinner for a group of ten earthlings. Because our visitor has never eaten before, it logs onto Google to conceptualize dinner--but lo and behold! There are millions of stories, images, recipes, nutritional guidelines, religious texts, ethnic menus, anxious “Overeater’s Anonymous” blogs, an online version of “Where the Wild Things Are” (where Max goes without his dinner), and pictures of starving children who go without on a regular basis. The alien is overwhelmed by dinner’s dynamism; is it a late daily meal providing energy and nutrients, a social phenomenon where the host shares culinary skill and generosity with guests whose bodies and souls are nourished, or is it a family outing to McDonalds? Should there be just enough or an abundance? What is enough? Who will be dining, and what do they (need to) eat? Faced with so much complexity, the alien settles on what it considers to be an essential, utilitarian definition of dinner and its corresponding mathematical application: it divides the daily number of recommended calories (according to umpteen websites) by three (representing meals per/day) and multiplies by ten (total guests). Then, it buys a bag of maize meal from Pick’n’pay, solves for x cups, prepares a cauldron-full, and adds a dash of salt for palatability and iodine sufficiency--taste and nutrition are important, the alien has learned, so the extra effort will surely earn a high mark!
But any professor worth her salt, so to speak, will give an average or lower mark; while the alien did base its definition of dinner and therefore its preparation on the solid foundation of energy provisions using a local commodity, it was too easily seduced by a neat1 mathematical equation and short list of add-ons--it too readily overlooked the dynamic messiness of social, geographic, demographic, economic dinner quandaries and their implications--to achieve great success. Turns out that all ten guests were orphaned babies, still too young to eat cereal. Therefore, the alien’s restricted definition of dinner precipitated its limited capacity to feed the babies.

Over-Simplified Concepts, Underutilized Capacity
Convoluted as my example may be, it illustrates a significant impediment to fulfilling human needs, humanity’s most basic yet dynamic assignment. In the context of persistent under-fulfillment, perceptions of poverty too often forsake relevance in the tension of multiple definitions for conceptual ease. Perhaps the best example is the definition of poverty commonly identified with the Millennium Development Goal to halve global poverty by 2015, a sort of international group project. The World Bank’s definition, held to be capable of coordinating international anti-poverty efforts is: living on less than US $1 per/day. Informed by this definition which allegedly accounts for deprivation from the most essential food and non-food needs vis-a-vis the poverty line, the World Bank’s policy approach to poverty consists of economic growth, access to human capital through health and education, and safety nets for those otherwise excluded (Lok-Dessallien 2001: 15). However, as Hulme and Shepherd argue, “the conceptualization of the poor as a single homogenous group whose prime problem is low monetary income [leads] policy-makers...to search for ‘the policy’ that increases the income of ‘the poor’” at the cost of other non-income-increasing policies (2003: 403). In other words, a restricted, money-metric, “dollar a day” definition de-emphasizes policies which address human capabilities, safety nets, and other critical aspects of poverty (Lok-Dessallien 2001: 15).
Further problems with the mono-definition arise: Boltvinik argues that where poverty is widely conceived of in money-metric terms, yet social indicators figure into policy, “a sort of social schizophrenia prevails” (2001: 5); Reddy and Pogge contend the concept skews poverty measurement in that it relies on a rigid and “arbitrary international poverty line not adequately anchored in any specification of the real requirements of human beings,” uses a “concept of purchasing power equivalence” which does not translate across time and space, and “extrapolates incorrectly from limited data” (4); and so on.
In his assessment of holes in the current global consensus on poverty reduction, Michael Lipton includes similar money-metric criticisms: the Food Energy and Purchasing Power Parity methods (FEM and PPP) of deriving the poverty line are troublesome in that FEM fails to capture needs which vary according to physical characteristics, lifestyle, heredity etc, and PPP lacks a suitable index (1997: 1004). However, he holds that absolute Private Consumption Per Person (PCP) “is indeed the most useful definition of poverty” because it helps us “understand material deprivation and evaluate progress and policies against it” (ibid).
Arguing for further definitional restriction, Lipton echoes Boltvinik’s “social schizophrenia” diagnosis that muddling money-metric concepts and human capability indicators “obscures their interactions.” Rather, he contends capabilities “deserve a separate measurement and analysis” (ibid). In fact, Lipton gives “Human capital” its own section and heading, distinct from the “Definition” of poverty. Likewise, he suggests that inequality is better left out of poverty definitions, better given its own, separate conceptual space; “‘relative poverty’ remains an uneasy and arbitrary amalgam of absolute poverty and low-end inequality, arbitrarily weighed” (ibid).
Although Lipton’s proposed definition of poverty is by degrees more nuanced and complex than “a dollar a day,” his attempt to fill the holes of the alleged poverty consensus (all within the space of a neat five-page document) falls into the same conceptual hole; if definitions inform the way we perceive and struggle against poverty--if indeed our perceptions become reality--then shouldn’t inequality and low human capabilities figure into the “definition” of poverty? By compartmentalizing, by omitting essential factors from what he deems the meaning of poverty, does Lipton not emphasize a static notion of poverty and de-emphasize reduction strategies which more readily address poverty’s dynamism? 2 Since “higher inequality leads to more political instability, more uncertainty, less investment, and lower growth”--nasty conditions for poverty reduction--it’s crucial to assign inequality conceptual weight. (Stewart 2000: 8)
In his defense, Lipton does what one must to complete any assignment: narrow one’s scope from the infinite number of conceptual possibilities down to a functional framework. Certainly, there is a general and, I believe, correct consensus that an absolute definition of poverty is necessary to identify and redress certain kinds of deprivation. However, is it necessary to limit ourselves to one definition? Can we, mustn't we give ourselves room to account for the more complex nature of deprivation? If ten orphans grow up relatively impoverished--perhaps not starving but hungry for nourishing dinners with functional families--will not their sense of themselves as poor, as incapable of living valuable lives precipitate certain realities? What if they decide they’ve never been given a fair chance, steal the difference, and end up dead not from malnourishment but from gun shot wounds? By no means does Lipton argue that we should ignore such possibilities, but he does undermine the attention we give said possibilities by overly narrowing his conceptual framework to exclude inequality from his “Definition” of poverty.
The debate over inequality’s relevance to poverty is not new. In fact, it is part of a long-standing, deep-rooted, either/or argument about whether poverty is best conceived of as absolute or relative, objective or subjective, uni-dimensional or multidimensional, and universal or particular. The arguments generally look like this: Are human needs absolute and universal or socially and historically constructed? Can any conceptualization of poverty be scientific and objective, or are all definitions influenced by the experiences and beliefs of those who create them? Should poverty indicators be restricted to material satisfiers like calories and clothes, “or include social, cultural and political” satisfiers like access to education and political power? (Laderchi, Saith, and Stewart 2003: 244). Furthermore, who should determine the level of deprivation which constitutes poverty (Boltvinik 2001: 3); an expert from academia or an expert from the urban slum?
Nobel prize winning poverty theorist Amartya Sen gets at the heart of the absolute/relative question: “Should poverty be estimated with a cut-off line that reflects a level below which people are-in some sense-‘absoluetly impoverished’ of a level that reflects (minimum) standards of living ‘common to that country’ in particular?” (1984 in Boltvinik 2001: 9). Peter Townsend thinks not: “any rigorous conceptualization of the social determination of need dissolves the idea of absolute need...the necessities of life are not fixed. They are continuously being adapted and augmented as changes take place in society and in its products” (1979 in ibid).
The debate has created a proliferation of approaches to poverty. Sen’s “Capabilities” approach gives an ends-based definition of well-being as the ability for people “to enjoy long, healthy lives, to be literate and to participate freely in their society” (Lok-Dessallien 2001: 11). Criticism of the “Capabilities” and “Monetary” approaches as paternalistic have engendered a “Participatory” approach which involves the poor themselves in defining poverty (ibid). The Social Exclusion approach--defined by the European Union as “the process through which individuals or groups are wholly or partially excluded form full participation in the society in which they live”--lends to a greater emphasis on inequality in its application (Laderchi, Saith, and Stewart 2003: 257).

Conclusion and Consensus
Imagine that our alien is given a new assignment to write a short essay on the current global approach to poverty. Going back to Google, it decides that hunger is the absolute core of poverty, from whence poverty lines, profiles, and policies should come--after all, those pictures of starving children always mention “poverty” in the captions. Imagine the alien’s consternation when it stumbles across a “Swaminomics” blog that explores an Indian national sample survey which “put 26% of people below the poverty line,” but counted only 3% as having described themselves as “hungry sometime in the year” (2003).
The source of that blog, an article from the Economic Times called “It’s not just calories, stupid,” gives me a mind to say to Lipton and anyone else seeking one consensual definition of poverty, “It’s not either/or, stupid!” Rather, as O. Altimir shows, “the poverty standard (threshold or line) has two components: the absolute core (universal) and the relative one (specific to each society)” (Boltvinik 2001: 10; my italics). There are holes even in this concept, for there is insurmountable, irreconcilable tension between absoluteness and relativity no matter the subject at hand. Indeed, it’s hard to hold multiple, paradoxical realities in tension. In a word, it’s dynamic. But poverty is dynamic, so any attempt to ignore this reality will result in serious consequences. Just as our alien was unable to feed babies pap, neither can we successfully address poverty when our concepts are inflexible. Hulme and Shepherd insist: we must “move beyond the study of poverty trends to the study of poverty dynamics.” (2003: 420). Lest we get too liberal, it’s helpful to remember that relativists get lost in the google clouds just as fast as reductionists get stuck in the barren mud. Thus, Lok-Desallien encourages “a middle path” to identify “different types of poverty and different policy proposals for dealing with it” (2001: 17).
Ultimately, the concept(s) we choose will depend on the assignment we’re given. For instance, I’ve narrowed the scope of this essay to the definition of poverty, leaving out measurement and policy almost altogether. I’ve forsaken breadth for depth in an attempt to make my alloted 2000 words meaningful. The point of this qualification is significant: by stating my limitations, I clarify my participation in an ongoing dialogue in which countless others have countless contributions to make, both where my own contributions are limited, and where they are erroneous. Since halving global poverty by 2015 requires daily contributions from billions of people all over the world, we best stay mindful of the dialogue’s dynamism. Perhaps only one consensus is essential: life is precious and it is our human responsibility and privilege to fulfill human needs.