How to Study Poverty
This woman is a member of Cooperconfec, a sewing cooperativa
that provides employment for women in a poor suburb of Salvador.
Cooperconfec is one of five cooperativas Harry is studying for his
research on sustainable community enterprise in Salvador. Photo
by Harry Phillips
As part of the Hart Fellows Program in the Northeastern city Salvador,
Brazil, I am developing a community research service project on
cooperativas populares. These organizations are self-help organizations
that aim to fight the high rate of unemployment, particularly in
the poorest neighborhoods of the city. My main research instrument
has been a field questionnaire that explores different issues of
socially excluded citizens, their social reality, and the obstacles
they have to overcome to survive. Coming into contact with this
reality and interviewing men and women who tell me they have eaten
dirt to survive has been quite a shocking experience to me, someone
who could not visualize that idea prior to coming to Salvador.
One of the people I interviewed is Yelena, a 25 year-old single
Afro-Brazilian woman, and the main breadwinner in her eight-person
household. She lives in one of the largest suburbs of Salvador,
which has a large amount of self-made brick houses, one on top of
the other one. During the one-hour bus ride to the cooperativa where
Yelena works, you can see plenty of open-air sewages, very long
lines at decrepit medical posts, schools falling to the ground and
children playing soccer barefoot on the streets.
Yelena was able to study only up to the third grade due to her
family’s economic needs, and later was not able to continue
her studies because she had to go out to work to put food on her
sons’ tables. She has been a member of a 20-member seamstress
cooperativa for the last nine months, working eight hours per day,
six days per week, and earning the equivalent to less than $40 per
month, even though the minimum wage in Brazil is twice that amount,
based on a 40-hour work week. “At least it’s better
now that I am able to earn more than the meager $5 per month I earned
when I first joined the cooperativa.”
My intention in describing her reality is not for you to feel sorry,
as she is among those few who fare better than the average citizen
in the city. I just find people like Yelena heroes who do not deserve
one’s pity, but one’s support to strive forward. As
a single woman with three years of schooling, this is one of the
few types of jobs she can aspire to due to the segregation of her
house, deep in the suburbs, and the city center, the heart of Salvadoran
economic activity. “Nobody else will hire me because I don’t
know how to do anything. I can barely read and write. And, the cooperativa
is in my community, which means that I can keep an eye on my children
while I work. ” On top of that, most other women who work
for the organization are grateful to work there because it does
not only take in women who already know the profession, but rather
offers courses for handpicked needy community women such as themselves.
After the first few interviews I carried out at the cooperativas,
I felt a bit uncomfortable when I asked each interviewee about his/her
previous occupations. They would generally lower their heads and
mumble off some of the humblest occupations like domestic or hotel
servants, informal beach merchants, and shoe shiners. Or, like Yelena,
they would say they didn’t ever have an occupation. The cooperativa
gives unemployed, generally older and excluded Afro-Brazilian women
the opportunity to build a future for their families.
From what I have observed so far, stronger self-esteem is one of
the most important factors that cooperativa-membership instills
on women like Yelena. When asked what being a cooperativa member
brings to her life, Yelena responds with a large smile that the
most important thing is that she is now able to put food on her
kids’ tables, even if it is not enough to last the whole month.
“At least I have some cash to buy rice and beans.”
But she also says that being part of the organization allows her
to be happy and trust people. Before, she was stuck in her house
doing chores most of the day, drowning from isolation and desperation.
However, she can now socialize with her peers at the cooperativa.
Some of her neighbors even “envy her when they look at her
walking through the mud street every morning at 7 a.m. going to
work.” She guesses their state of envy because she felt it
for Maria, another member of the cooperativa who joined the organization
months before her. Other than being able to earn an income, Yelena
now has something to be proud of through the cooperativa. This organization
has had an empowering impact upon Yelena that makes her conscious
of how useful she can be to society and how much she can really
do on her own.
Cooperconfec members pose in front of their finished products.
The women will sell these garments in a Salvador store. Photo by
Harry Phillips
After interviewing so many people like Yelena, people who have
been socially, economically and politically excluded from Brazilian
society, I have asked myself how one should study their social condition.
And I don’t mean this in an instrumental way, as in what are
the appropriate instruments and concepts one should use to analyze
the social phenomenon of poverty. This, I leave to academic experts
who analyze Excel sheets away from the field. The deeper question
I am tackling is how I should study poverty and at the same time
respect the humanity of the subjects.
There are many ethical questions that come into play when one asks
such a question because one is not just dealing with animals or
inanimate objects, but with real human beings who go hungry, get
sick, and plead to society for justice.
To some, studying “poverty” could be analogous to looking
at a group of ants working arduously and slowly putting forces together
to barely sustain their communities. The difference between an insect
and a human need not be elaborated, but this difference often blurs
when one sees and comes into contact with deep poverty, as the Brazilian
poet Manuel Bandeira alludes to in his poem O Bicho:
Yesterday, I saw an animal/Vi ontem um bicho
Deep inside the yard/Na imundície do pátio
Searching for food among the debris./Catando comida entre os detritos.
When it’d find something,/Quando achava alguma coisa,
It would neither examine nor smell it:/Não examinava nem
cheirava:
It would swallow it voraciously./Engolia com voracidade.
The animal was not a dog,/O bicho não era
um cão,
It was not a cat,/Não era um gato,
It was not a rat,/Não era um rato.
The animal, my God, was a man./O bicho, meu Deus, era um homem.
Studying “poverty” is something that I had never done
in the field before coming to Brazil. I saw it from up close in
my native Costa Rica, but I never put the academic hat on and actually
studied it. Now that I do, I feel minimized. In comparison to the
daily survival challenges that many of the Brazilian poor deal with,
my worries and concerns become the size of a chickpea next to a
watermelon.
How much am I really helping Yelena feed Pedro, her weak younger
son who comes to hang out near the sewing machines while she works
in the afternoon? I am studying poor people and their strategies
for survival, but what will be their direct benefit from my work
here? This is one of the main questions the Hart Fellows Program
asked me to reflect upon, and I have to say it is one of the biggest
challenges as well. How can I translate my work into something useful
to those I am “studying?” Having a bottom-line goal
to benefit poor communities like Yelena’s should be the essence
of studying poverty. Any other reason to study poverty is pillaging
knowledge, which I find unethical. The first step I am taking to
translate my work into something useful is by writing to you, and
letting you know the issues that I am facing, and the millions of
Yelenas that exist in such and much worse conditions.
I have been radicalized in these past five months. My strong realist
side has been challenged by the desperate screams I hear in my dreams.
The ghosts of people I interviewed tell me that their reality can
and must change.
Looking at my experience in Brazil, and reflecting upon the question
“how to study poverty?,” I have a preliminary answer:
“with the right attitude and for the right reasons!”
I felt very uncomfortable during my first visits at the cooperativas
because I did not know how to relate to extremely poor people. I
felt awkward talking to humble people and answering their questions
about big American cars and my studies in Public Policy at Duke
University. However, I soon found out that the right attitude is
to openly acknowledge the differences that exist between our worlds.
But, it is my personal duty to get to know their lives and be interested
in what they have to say. Their cries are not often heard, so the
“right” attitude will always involve me lending an ear
to listen.
Several names have been omitted or changed.
-- Harry Phillips, December, 2004
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