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A nine minute and four second video about the research on the "ultra-poor" has been professionally edited for a PBS live broadcast for an average viewership of 1,018,000 people, who reside in countries that are frequently not attributed to the "ultra-poor." However, if a group of countries that has created the conditions that serves as the structural framework for "ultra-poor," then I wonder about the ways in which poverty is not confined to economic wellbeing as defined by that group of countries. I wonder how "ultra-poor" can be attributed to those who inflict poverty through economic exploitation, militarism, and racism. Poverty is not solely defined by lack of materials but extends to processes and structures that causes the conditions to occur. The 54,240 second, strategic video project on the A scientific approach to evaluating global anti-poverty programs was pitched and approved by a group of editors as a story for the one-hour news. Watching the video in a doctorate seminar on Qualitative Approaches, I wonder about the underlying messages on research embedded within the video.

Throughout the 54,240 seconds, there were multiple camera angles shooting images to capture the villages in Ethiopia. The ammunitions of the camera worked to combined previous stereotypes about village life while simultaneously confining villages into palatable arguments that legitimizes the need for outside funding. Though it is evident that the villages have their own cultures, languages, values and ways of being in community as well as actual names, the researchers and reporters constantly neglect to call the communities by their names; instead, the villages and its people are referred to as "ultra-poor." This constructed name of "ultra-poor" is then used as a generalization to contextualized other communities in various parts of the world. Thus, I wonder: where are the voices of the villagers? There many pictures seen that are overlaid with voices of mostly white researchers with long titles and institutional qualifications.

Again, I ask: whose voices are heard and whose pictures are seen? The media structure, more specifically, the video editing, shows white people working in the United Kingdom and the United States. They, who come from countries that are frequently attributed as rich nations, are speaking on the reality of the "ultra-poor." The voices of the "experts" are placed on top of the images of darker skin people, Black people, and Ethiopian community, who all serve strictly as a background. Even when Tedros Kesete, a Black the data collector, does speak in the video, there is an addition box under his name with a summarized sentence as if his language and annunciation lacked the clarity of the chief economist and researcher, who both did not have summary boxes. This "background" of the various villages and communities are not merely the virtual backgrounds people change on Zoom screens, but details the actual roads, streets, and lives of the people living and building relationships in community. However, in this film, the background functions as a showcase to elevate and confirm notions of "ultra-poor" as non-speaking Black people, who are vulnerable and expendable to be treated as an aggregated dataset.

We wonder: what are conditions that allowed over 1,000 families to be taken (in the words of chief economist Rachel Glennerster) and tracked for one, three, and seven years in the name of research? That is over 2,500 days, exceeds 61,000 hours, nears 1.5 million minutes, and, to resonate with the seconds unit mentioned for the video, passes 35 million seconds. They tracked the community longer than if Michael Jordan repeated his entire carrier playtime, 35 times. In what ways is the compression of lived experiences into data that is extracted and collected by multiple universities and non-profit organizations resonate with the damage-centered research mentioned by Tuck?

There is a silent commentary as the column that detailed the top five country-recipients of United States foreign aid is shown in the final seven seconds of the film. One percent is frequently used to describe the ultra-rich in a United States context; however, in the column, the one percent is attributed to United States budget for foreign aid, which is over $15 billion dollars that is allocated to countries. The top five countries for aid in 2016 were Iraq ($5.3bn); Afghanistan ($5.1bn); Israel ($3.1bn); Egypt ($1.2bn); and Jordan ($1.2bn). Most of these countries resonate with the news today, especially as United States military leaves Afghanistan by August 31st, 2021.

What if poverty is profitable to the conditions that are maintained in the struggle of power? Toni Morrison's 1975 A Humanist View continues to resonate…

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References

Lazaro, F. (2019, August 23) A scientific approach to evaluating global anti-poverty programs [Video]. PBS.

Tuck, E.(2009). Suspending damage: A letter to communities. Harvard Educational Review 79(3), 409-427