Is There a Gorilla in the Room?
Conceptualizing Poverty and
Reconceptualizing Rural Poverty
Rosalind P. Harris and Julie N. Zimmerman,
University of Kentucky
In the Shadows of Poverty: Strengthening the Rural Poverty Research Capacity of the South.
July 21-23. Memphis, TN
The gorilla stopped in the middle, turned to face the camera, thumped
its chest, and then continued walking across the field of view…
Inattention Blindness


Used in visual perception studies
From the field of Cognitive
Psychology

It has to do with what we notice
and what we fail to notice
Bottom line?
Conscious perception requires
What do we miss when we are
busy paying attention to
something else?
We applied this idea to how
we conceptualize poverty…
Began to ask questions such as…
Are we busy looking at poverty and rural poverty
in a particular manner?
When we do, what are we missing?
Is there a gorilla in the room?
Alice O’Connor.
2001.
Poverty Knowledge:
Social Science,
Social Policy, and the
Poor in Twentieth–
Century U.S.
History.
Princeton University
Poverty Knowledge Eras
Progressive Era
Chicago School
Depression/New Deal
War on Poverty/New Society
Culture of Poverty
Measure
Economic Growth
as the Solution
Poverty
AND
Programs
Deserving versus
Undeserving Poor
Income
Education
Economy
Income
Mother
only
Poverty
Race
Rural
Age
Gender
“…such analyses provided the intellectual – and
statistical – justification for a more activist approach
to economic growth, while minimizing the necessity
of structural measures to combat long-term
unemployment and poverty.
They were also important in linking poverty to the
achievement of concrete, numerical policy goals – 4
rather than 5 percent employment, and 4 rather than
2 or 3 percent economic growth”
(O’Connor 2001, p. 145)
“For while income was, at least on the surface, an amoral,
measurable, and inclusive criterion, maintaining a narrow,
income-based definition of the poverty problem would also
allow officials to skirt the question of what structural
inequalities lay behind the poverty numbers, and in
particular to avoid explicit mention of racial subordination
and discrimination as dimensions of poverty.
Gender as such did not even enter the framework as a
category of analysis. Thus while the numbers pointed to
female-headed families as among those who proved quite
immune to economic growth the CEA offered no analysis of
female wages or employment opportunities as one possible
explanation…”
(O’Connor 2001, p. 154)
Does Rural Poverty Have Implications
for How We Conceptualize Poverty?
Rural poverty forces us to de-homogenize poverty
The relationship between structure and individual is inescapable
How we address poverty impacts both individuals and
communities
Individual decisions are interrelated with larger considerations
Changes in the national and global economy impact both
individuals and communities
Limitations of approaches that rely on economies of scale
where the comparative advantage is defined as bigger being
better
“Studying poverty
is [not] the same thing
as studying the poor.”
Alice O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge
What
Now??
THE GREATEST CHALLENGE
TO ANY THINKER
IS
STATING THE PROBLEM
IN A WAY
THAT WILL ALLOW
A SOLUTION
Bertrand Russell
The significant problems we face
cannot be solved
at the same level of thinking
we were at
when we created them.
~ Albert Einstein
1990 RSS Taskforce on
Persistent Rural Poverty
Social reproduction and production are inseparable,
necessary and co-equal processes?
Gender, race, and ethnicity must be integrated into theory
rather than “tacked on?”
Individuals and social structures are mutually defined?
Social processes are embedded in time and space?
Local events and processes are linked to global ones?
The state is neither wholly subordinate to society nor
independent of it?