Long ago it was said that ‘one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.’ That was true then. It did not know because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles and less for the fate of those who were underneath…
In fighting extreme poverty, it's sometimes easy to lose sight of just how recently the conditions that we're seeking to combat existing in our own countries. That's why today, we're excited to review 'How the Other Lives,' an 1890 classic about slum life in New York, which offers lots of lessons and points of reflection for us today, four generations on.
Jacob A. Riis’ How the Other Half Lives (1890) is a factual, first-hand account of poverty in 19th century New York. Through his revolutionary use of flash photography, Riis takes us on a visual tour through slum life in Lower East Side Manhattan. Riis was writing during a time of immense social upheaval, when the city was experiencing a large influx of immigrants from Europe and many other parts of the world. This was creating a rapidly growing population which the city needed to accommodate. This was done through large scale tenements which would often house hundreds of people at a time in mostly squalid conditions.
He brought the plight of the New York working classes to the largely ignorant middle and upper classes, who often viewed their poverty as deserved or chosen. His use of hard facts, statistics and photographic evidence help guide us through the many overcrowded tenements, filthy streets, and exploitative sweatshops of the city. He was considered a great social reformer who was concerned with bringing about real change to attitudes and policy.
It is the conditions of the overcrowded tenements that serve as Riis’ central focus as, at the time, the tenements harboured three-fourths of the city’s population. Accompanied by visuals, he guides us through what the rooms look like at different rates and across different parts of the city: “The twenty-five cent lodging house keeps up the pretence of a bed-room, though the head-high partition enclosing a space just large enough to hold a cot and a chair and allow the man room to pull off his clothes…The ten-cent level the locker for the sleeper’s clothes disappears. There is no longer need of it. The tramp limit is reached, and there is nothing to lock up…” The unlicensed lodging houses of the city could even offer a small space on the floor for five cents or a squatting space in the hallway for three.
With the increase in demand brought about by the swelling population, the tenement apartments began to be portioned into several smaller rooms, often with no access to light or ventilation. In the pursuit of profit and with no regard to health, landlords would fill these rooms well over capacity with poor lodgers. “There are numerous examples of tenement-houses in which are lodged several hundred people that have a pro rata allotment of ground area scarcely equivalent to two square yards upon the city lot…” It was thought that the tenement houses in East Side Manhattan were once the most densely populated district in the world, not excluding China, as they were “packed at the rate of 290,000 to the square mile.” Riis saw how the poor had no voice to protest against the degradation of their condition, because the tenements were the only option open to them other than a life on the streets.
In such high density living the spread of diseases such as Cholera, Typhus fever, and Smallpox were inevitable. Riis reveals how the mortality rate of the city went up from 1 in 41.83 in 1815, to 1 in 27.33 in 1855 as a result of diseases associated with slum living. The Bureau of Vital Statistics commented that solely due to “suffocation in the foul air of an unventilated apartment…there are annually cut off from the population by disease and death enough humans to people a city, and enough human labour to sustain it.” The stifling air in the warmest of months was the cause of many cases of suffocation and ill health, particularly amongst young children.
The effect of slum living for children of the city is perhaps the most touching in all of Riis’ account. He uses facts and statistics to expose the scores of children dying before their 5th birthday. He also highlights how child mortality rates dramatically decline in cases where the same number of people are living together, but basic sanitary conditions are upheld. He uses examples like this through his account to remind us of the crucial relationship between sanitation and health.
With many children falling victim to vices such as alcohol and petty crime, young lives were often wasted outside of school and education. The use of child labour in the many sweatshops of the city is also brought to light. Sweatshops were created in tenements, so that the same law which applied to workers in the factories could be evaded. People would work long hours without any breaks for a wage that barely covered rent let alone food expenses. Families in these situations would be living on the very fringes of survival and close to starvation. Emigrating to America from Denmark in 1870, Riis struggled to find steady work for much of his early life in the new land. Without food or opportunity, he experienced first-hand the life of poverty documented in this account.
Although it has been described as more of a factual account than an emotive one, what Riis accomplished was to give a face to the under-represented issue of urban poverty in New York. His account uses real case studies from those experiencing the worst of the conditions. As the intimate portraits peppered through his account show, he documented everything from the clothing to the sombre expressions of those living in poverty. It is what makes this account of 19th century slum living so unique and compelling.
How the Other Half Lives also documents the changes and organizations brought about in 19th century New York to create changes in legislation. For example the birth of the Board of Health, and the Tenement House Act of 1867 and The Society for Improvement of the Condition of the Poor. Riis proposed real tangible routes to overcoming the overpopulation and tenement housing crisis. Many of his proposals were to be adopted in the years to come. The attention his work received led to reforms in laws, the tearing down of New York's worst tenements and sweatshops, reformation of the city's schools and the construction of new safer tenements. This work represents the importance of awareness - Riis not only shows how we each have a moral obligation to recognise the plight of the poor, but that real lasting change is achievable.
*All images from Jacob A. Riis’ How the Other Half Lives (1890)
So far, in my last two blogs I have written about images used in charity advertising. I expressed the opinion that charities seem to use negative images as these elicit sympathy from their target audience.
In an attempt to understand the motivations behind the persistent use of these kinds of images, I contacted some charity workers to get their perspective. As was expected, not all those contacted responded. However, those who did were very sincere in their response and in admitting the challenges encountered when creating fundraising communications.
When asked if the use of negative images in communications is sustainable, the majority were of the opinion that it is not the best form of advertising because it’s exploitative. They felt that although it works in the short term it undermines people’s dignity and reinforces the notion that nothing has changed.
Some quotes from responses include;
“It’s wrong to use exploitative images.”
“Charities do it because it works as guilt can motivate people and people are strongly motivated by injustice.”
“We see ‘poverty porn’ all the time and we become immune to it, so some charities’ adverts are getting more shocking and hard-hitting in response.”
“The only reason why any charity will use ‘strong images’ is to demonstrate the very real need and because they create the genuine emotional connection needed to generate donations and support.”
Unicef UK: Nimatu Jollah lies on a bed in the hospital in Sierra Leone where she received treatment for malnutrition last year.
“Once big charities go down the poverty porn/devaluing charity route, it’s hard for others not to follow."
Some were of the view that although showing ‘need’ is important, it is more important to achieve a balance, by demonstrating ‘need’ without undermining dignity and showing the positive impact charity interventions are having. By this donors and potential donors are better motivated to not just give in the short term but be part of the solution long term:
“We work in partnership with the poor people we represent – not for them – and our communications must represent this equal power dynamic.”
“It’s important to me to show joy and suffering alongside each other- as this is what gives us hope and inspires people to give.” “If a charity cannot achieve this in its communications it makes me wonder if they are having any impact on ground.”
On whether their adverts represented a true picture of the people in them, some were quick to say yes while others admitted this is something they struggle with;
“We sometimes fall either side of overly positive and overly negative.” And “we must acknowledge the limitations of photography/filmic/textual representations in that they cannot reproduce some of the subtleties of real life.”
Following from this I asked what they and/ or their organisations are doing to minimise and/ or put a stop to this kind of advertising?
From responses received, there doesn’t seem to be a cohesive sector-wide effort to curb this kind of advertising, probably because as already mentioned it ‘works’. Some said they ensured that images used in their adverts and other communications are authentic representations of the people and communities they work with.
“We don’t hold other charities to account but, by being a responsible marketer, we hope to create an environment in which exploitation of the poor (and manipulation of people in the UK) is not accepted.”
Others said they adhered to Bond's code of conduct, while one said “I can’t really answer as I don’t really agree with the notion of ‘poverty porn’.” “I think it is a term created by people who use this as an excuse not to support an organisation.”
One cannot fail to note that images associated with extreme poverty, conflicts and diseases are not positive. However, the focus here is for charities to try and achieve a balance between demonstrating need and showing their effectiveness on ground.
As wrote in an earlier blog for the Global Poverty Project,
"The challenge for anti-poverty agencies is to effectively appeal to human sympathies in order to draw attention to the plight of the poor, while ensuring their subjects are conveyed as a dignified people determined to see an end to endemic poverty."
For this reason the Global Poverty project will continue to work tirelessly with the general public to educate and challenge concepts and actions that are adverse to the very inspiring and commendable efforts of charities working in development.
Australian philosopher Peter Singer’s book 'The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty' raises some fundamental questions about the movement to end extreme poverty.
It’s a snappy, stinging read which urges the reader to reflect on their own life. Singer argues not only that people in rich countries should help the world’s poor, but that they have a moral obligation to do so.
Singer’s basic argument is that it is morally indefensible for people with a surplus not to help those with less than enough.
He draws on various psychological experiments to demonstrate how choosing material goods over human lives cannot be justified. One of these experiments is the choice between (a) saving a child drowning in a pond but ruining your expensive shoes, or (b) leaving the child to die and saving your shoes (see video above).
Surely the morally right thing to do here is to save the child and sacrifice your shoes, because a human life is of greater value than possessions. How is it, then, that 24,000 children in poor countries die every day from preventable causes, while the average woman in a rich country owns at least US$600 worth of clothes that she hasn’t worn in the past year?
Working from arguments such as this one, Singer presents the case for a substantial overhaul of the current culture of giving.
Singer argues that each of us should give a proportion of our income to humanitarian causes – if we do not give, we do not - and cannot - live a ‘good’ life.
He specifically recommends how much each of us should give, depending on our income. He suggests that the vast majority of taxpayers should give 1% of their income to the movement to end extreme poverty.
When you earn the equivalent of US$105,000 a year or more, you should give 5% of what you earn over this threshold. This rate gradually increases until you give 33.3% of what you earn over an annual salary of US$10 million. Singer himself gives 20-25% of his earnings to overseas development causes.
Singer’s book raises several key questions about aid and development, two of which I identify here:
Is development all about money?
The Life You Can Save concentrates almost exclusively on financial contributions from the public. In that sense, it can be seen as very ‘money-centric’, focusing on the need to donate money to aid organisations, and neglecting the other actions that we at the Global Poverty Project advocate (Learn, talk, volunteer, buy, shout). Is donating money the most important and most effective way to combat poverty?
Who should give – governments or citizens?
As well as concentrating on financial donations, The Life You Can Save overwhelmingly focuses on the money given by ordinary citizens, not national governments or international organisations. It therefore seeks to greatly increase the role of personal giving as opposed to official development assistance (ODA). This point is picked up on by influential economist Paul Collier in his review of the book .
This specific focus begs the question of who the main players are in ending extreme poverty. Does the onus fall on the population at large, or the world’s governments? Or both? And what are the consequences for issues such as international trade regulations if we just focus on personal giving?
What are your views on these issues? Have you read The Life You Can Save – and what did you think of it?
In my last blog I wrote about the use of images in charity advertising and how as an African they tend to not just elicit empathy in me but also anger and disgust.
It is obvious that the use of images negative or not, by charities is not a new strategy as they’ve been used for decades to communicate various development issues and motivate donors to support their cause(s).
Their use is hardly surprising as according to research conducted by Burt and Strongman (2004), “images of children that evoke negative emotions appear to produce more and greater potential donations than those that evoke positive emotions” and “the stronger the negative emotion evoked by an image of a child the greater was the level of stated potential donating.”
However, in my opinion, in aiming to achieve sponsor recruitment by evoking pity, the continued bombardment with images of hunger, poverty, destitution, disease, crime and corruption has served only to reinforce some of the wrong, stereotypical perspectives people in the Global North hold of people in the Global South.
Furthermore, the continued use of these images over such a prolonged period has given the impression that not much has changed - resulting, in my opinion, to more and more people changing channels when these adverts come on. I therefore think that the continued use of images that are negative may end up having the reverse or counter effect on charity fundraising, that is, reduced donations and sponsorship.
Although, charities are not primarily to blame for these inaccurate perceptions, they are however in a position to show the reality of things, something that is often lost in the media.
I believe people have thoroughly become desensitized regarding these issues - with the media religiously portraying in news the grimmest sides of Africa and other developing nations forgetting and not unexpectedly the progress, albeit slow, that’s being made in these places - and as such have overcome the initial shock and pity these adverts aim to evoke.
Source: PLAN UK
Source: SAVE THE CHILDREN
I wish more journalists will own up and admit the problem just as Nicolas Kristof did when he said “The problem is that we in journalism invariably focus on Africa’s wars, poverty and humanitarian disasters, and aid agencies and academics do the same.”
From reviewing websites and adverts from a range of UK based development charities; I’m hard pressed to say negative images are not being used; because they are.
Encouragingly, there seems to be a downward trend in its use compared to say a decade or more ago.
I say this as I have come across some genuinely inspiring adverts that show the problem, charities’ interventions and the effectiveness of these interventions without making me cringe in agony. It’s also worth noting that many charities don’t consistently use negative images, however, this only begs the question why do they resort to negative images at all?
Should the end result of fundraising, that is, raising enough funds and support for development projects today (in the short term), be the primary motivation behind images used in charity advertising? Or should the motivation be how to recruit and maintain long term support for development projects?
In an attempt to understand the motivation behind the use of images in charity advertising from a charity perspective, I have contacted 20 UK charities who are members of BOND (an umbrella body for UK NGOs working in International Development) with annual expenditure ranging from <£100,000 to >£40m.
In my next blog, I’ll share what I learn from these conversations.
This article was first published by Julie Cowdroy on ABC's The Drum here.
"The ironic thing about the coverage of the News of the World, is that now we are not actually getting any news of the world," read the witty tweet in response to UNICEF's question of whether the famine in the Horn of Africa was getting enough coverage.
While we may need more reports of the crisis to draw our attention to the plight of the most disenfranchised people on the planet, we also need better quality media coverage. Therefore, it may be worthwhile to present a few new ways to think about what has been dubbed the 'worst humanitarian crisis' in the world today.
1. Africa is not a country
It is vital that we control our assessment of the crisis to the affected individual countries within the north-east region of the continent of Africa. Context is everything. The nature of the political, economic, cultural, historical and security situations within Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, Eritrea, Uganda and the newly formed South Sudan are quite different. While regional stability in the continent's north-eastern states, or lack of, is a factor in this crisis, painting all of Africa with the same broad brushstrokes is getting kind of old and we really should move on from doing so.
2. While the images we see on our screens capture very real suffering, they don't capture the immense dignity of those who are affected
We are confronted with heartbreaking imagery of children who are dying in their mother's arms. Other disturbing visuals are emerging, such as mothers using rope to bind their stomachs to deaden hunger pangs so they can give what little food they have to their starving children. Upon speaking with humanitarian workers in the Dadaab camp in Kenya, such images line up with reality. Some areas have been dubbed 'hell on earth', and rightly so.
However, one Reuters reporter has given a harrowing account of a television producer who was visiting Dadaab, who asked, "How many skinny babies can you show me?" This is absolutely disgraceful and the lowest form of reporting on this crisis, but sadly not uncommon as the media juggernaut rolls into the neighbourhood.
These beautiful people have incredible dignity and are the types of wonderful human beings who would offer you their last cup of tea. This is the way they carry themselves. One aid worker in Dadaab reported that as he handed out a package of food to one woman, he said, "I'm sorry it's small, but there are lots of people to feed." The woman then offered half of her allocated food back. Surely, such decorum demands nothing but the utmost respect.
3. Thoughtful emergency relief will ease the suffering
Obviously, we must give humanitarian assistance to deal with the immediate need, and do so urgently, but also thoughtfully.
In events like these, all manner of newly formed charities and organisations quickly appear out of nowhere to 'help', and suddenly the circus is in town.
However, only local and international organisations that champion the rights of those who are suffering, and who understand the power those who are affected already have, must be central to the operation in order to bring long-lasting change. There are communities in certain pockets of Ethiopia, for instance, that have proven to be resistant to this crisis thanks to the ongoing work of local and international rights-based organisations.
4. The drought didn't cause this famine. It only compounded existing systemic problems
This crisis is regarded as a "slow onset" disaster. As Raj Patel says in his book Stuffed and Starved:
When flies buzz around the eyes of starving Africans on screens in the Global North, it is when they have officially been declared to be in a state of emergency … What is rarely reported when the tragic pictures are beamed is that getting to the tipping point takes time.
Author and academic Edward Carr recently posted an article on his blog highlighting that this famine should not be simply attributed to the weather. Carr argues that collapsing local and global markets, and a dysfunctional government in the state of Somalia are the main reasons for the crisis, and he is right.
First, the desperate state of affairs in the Horn of Africa demands that the international community address the global food system which increasingly disadvantages small-scale pastoralists who have been jeopardised by large-scale farming, despite the fact that the former – mainly women – produce a large proportion of the world's food. Reforming the system to champion women-led agriculture instead of export-focused agriculture could prove one way to safeguard against future food shortages.
Secondly, a very weak government and an extremely volatile security situation in Somalia is the primary reason this crisis has reached a fatal tipping point, but it is not for lack of notice. Protracted crises and complex chronic problems in places like Somalia take decades to be created, and therefore solved. Not weeks.
As the world scrambles to offer life-saving relief, we must also bear in mind that systems need to be established that will prevent such atrocities from happening again, and, more importantly, systems that mean they could, must be abolished.
Julie Cowdroy is an Australian singer/songwriter who also writes about international policy, poverty and power struggles.
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"The ironic thing about the coverage of the News of the World, is that now we are not actually getting any news of the world," read the witty tweet in response to UNICEF's question of whether the famine in the Horn of Africa was getting enough coverage.
