"The danger of a single story"

My initial reaction to Hugh Whalan's article concerning "misinformed ideas" about "the world's poor" was admittedly negative. But this gut reaction negativity, as I examined it, was in fact stemming from my holding some of the perspectives that Whalan was attempting to address. More specifically I was reacting to Whalan as this white, Western, neo-colonialist businessman masquerading his self-serving profit motivation as some sort of social good when in fact what "the world's poor" needed was just that, a more generous needs-meeting system. Whalan's response: treating "the world's poor" as any other consumer with a choice in the market is really the most respectful way to interact.

Now, I do think there's something intuitively right and good about the imaginary debate I had with Whalan. In effect, such disagreement is recognition that there were multiple sides to the story. And in fact (if we're to be generous with ourselves) it shows that on some level we recognize that there are in fact many stories to consider.

But what both my gut reaction and Whalan's argument still get wrong is that we are telling stories that are not our own to tell. In short, we are starting the stories with, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie herself quotes, "Secondly..." We, and many people like myself and Hugh Whalan, talk about "the world's poor" and then immediately jump to how to fix "their" problems.

My critique is not of the desire to solve problems, and most certainly it's not of the compassion for people who are in need. My critique is of Whalan (and anyone like him) morally justifying business expansion into new, "poor" markets without addressing the disparity in power and amplification of voice. To Whalan, these new market members are still passive consumers, characters in his story of social entrepreneurship.

What is needed from social ventures across the board is a sort of global middle-out economics that holds as it's bottom-line not just more efficient, sustainable, and cost effective goods and services but wealth generation by "the world's poor" that enables personalization and, most importantly, amplification such that they are to tell their own stories and have them heard with as much weight and regularity as stories like mine and Whalan's are heard now. Indeed, Whalan even sites an example to this effect in his own article (and as seen somewhat in the Uniqlo and "It's Not All about Growth for Social Enterprises" articles).

The kicker here: this means we (me, Whalan, and our ilk) should probably do less, not more. The key question therein: Less of what? More on that in subsequent blogs.