OPINION: Research causes cancer in rats

Our intention to improve the well-being of people, be they citizens, neighborhoods or countries, is impacted by the way we name and label people and places we care about. The naming and labeling is the first step in how we invest and intervene. We have learned this in dealing with groups of people; we have not learned this with our broader development efforts.

All transformation is in language. The context in which we do studies, plan programs and invest in development begins with how we name and think of people of interest. The dominant context now is seen in these labels – poor, homeless, ex-offender, single mom, dropout, immigrant, unemployed, recovering addict, underdeveloped countries, Third World, Gen X, Z, Boomers. On a larger scale, we have declared wars on poverty and drugs. On a smaller scale, think of underserved neighborhoods, a current version of what we once called ghettos and slums. 

Studies, Analysis, Evaluations Deliver a Narrative
How we name people, in our reports, in research, and in programing, has had an impact perhaps more powerful than what we had in mind. Here are some voices that call into question what we have mostly taken for granted.

The Heisenberg Effect. Werner Heisenberg was a quantum physicist who understood that the act of observing or measuring anything, people or particles, has an impact on what is being studied. There is no such thing as an objective observer. Even in physics. What the observer looks at is intensified on the part of the observed. When we measure your poverty, your education level, or where you are sleeping tonight, the form and narrative of our measuring magnifies and imprints the very condition we desire to improve. I knew I had little money, but now I am poor. What was a local and historical way of living is now a subsistence economy.

Decolonizing Methodologies. Linda Tuhiwai Smith describes how the anthropological “studies” of indigenous people worked to dilute and westernize Māori cultures of New Zealand. These social science studies became an industry, at a cost to the local community. The studies themselves, the questions being asked about the economy, trade, land development, led to conclusions of the inadequacy of the local culture. The research was a confirmation of the cultural and market point of view of the anthropologist rather than making visible what was unique and valuable about the Māori.

Underdeveloped Countries. In a 1945 speech, President Harry Truman stated that the United States, as its responsibility for having won the Second World War, would now be committed to the development of the underdeveloped countries to its south. Gustavo Esteva, an author, activist, and major advocate for local governance, said, “I did not know we were underdeveloped, I thought we were Mexican.”

National Measures of Well-being. The measures in the news express the dominant cultural narrative of streets paved with gold. The American Dream celebrates financial well-being and upward mobility. Our major media attention headlines the Dow Jones average, the Gross Domestic Product, the Consumer Price Index. These measurements define a nation and a culture according to their economic standing. They declare that we are consumers and investors at the core. All else is a human-interest story.

The focus here is to apply these perspectives to the social service, charity, local government and foundation worlds. While each is sincerely motivated to improve the well-being of local people who are socially and economically isolated, we are constantly speaking about their homelessness, their poverty, their safety, the dropout problem of their youth. The choices we make in what to measure declare how we, embedded in the larger culture we inhabit, define and name those we want to serve. These measures and attention drive our programs and funding. We name people according to what they are missing. We declare them as problems to be solved.

What You See Is What You Get
We intensify what we pay attention to, so our focus on deficiencies acts to affirm and sustain the wounds we claim to heal. In this naming, people become objects, despite the genuine compassion we have for them. What is a greater concern is that in this naming, people eventually internalize what we think them to be. When we call them poor, or primitive, or underdeveloped, many come to believe this is who they are.

In doing cancer research on rats, it begins by introducing cancer into the subject animals, then observing the consequences of what has been put in. The research does no favor to the rat. The risk of any study founded on the scarcity narrative, on what is wrong and needs improvement, is that it sets the pattern of our programs for those being studied and reinforces their sense of being deficient and a problem. We are very aware of this in medical science, but less mindful in social science.

Another reality of this process is the economic benefit that materializes for developers and service providers when we declare the brokenness of a neighborhood or a culture or a country. Focusing on deficiencies offers development opportunities and prospects for economic gains. The moment we see the gifts and capacities of this person, this neighborhood, this country, rather than their needs and deficiencies, the developers –– whether global banks, real estate developers, local agencies –– lose a market opportunity.

The Alternative within Reach
There are growing efforts to change the scarcity and market narrative of neighbors, cultures, countries. For decades, Mark Anielski has been a voice for what he calls “the economics of happiness.” He has worked with Canadian provinces, First Nations and countries abroad to measure well-being. He asks about what level of trust people have with each other and how they make a local living. He wants to know what skills people have, how they keep their place safe, what is the level of volunteering. When these are the measures, it shifts the programs coming out of the study. It defines the community conversation and over time improves what the studies paid attention to.

In neighborhoods, in educational institutions, and in social service efforts, the movement to shift the language and the interventions that follow is occurring. The questions, again focus on what is valuable and even sacred in each local culture. Asset Based Community Development practitioners for decades have done this with people in neighborhoods, house by house. Here is what research on social capital or social cohesion would be like. Radical questions in a problem-solving, what’s-wrong-with-you world:

How many children are there nearby whose names you know?

To what extent do your neighbors care for your well-being? 

Can you make a living in your neighborhood or community if you do not work for a large institution?

How many times a month do you associate with people around you that are not family?

What are you good at? What are you willing to teach others? What involvement do you have in local arts and neighborly events?

How are you involved in the associational life of your community?

How often do you participate in walking dogs, tending to gardens, picking up litter, caring for others?

To what extent do local elected officials put engagement of citizens first?

What tools are shared among neighbors? Ladders, snow shoveling equipment, lawnmowers, cars?

There are many more institutional examples: The National Youth Advocacy Program focuses on youth on the edge of the criminal justice system. Its efforts have a neighborhood advocate bring together local resources to give youth and their family a better story of themselves and a chance for being more productive agents of their lives. NYAP brings neighborhood support to families with the belief “that every person has an innate ability to learn, grow, and develop.” We might have heard of these kinds of efforts and even participated in creating similar ones. While foundations are questioning their historic pattern of funding, what has not happened is a general shift of language in the way cultural and neighborhood data is collected. The deficiency research that drives funding strategies, government programs, and human services disciplines is still predominately focused on what is missing and what the “needs” are.

This Is Not About Good News
Measuring for gifts, capacities and social capital in no way denies the suffering that surrounds us. This is not a call to be more positive. Wealth inequity, life on the edge, social isolation, economic imbalance, poor mental health, drug and alcohol addiction are real and present and heart breaking. The call and the question here come from a belief that when we shift the context, shift the language and naming towards a focus on gifts and value, it is more practical and useful than, in the extreme, declaring wars on drugs and poverty.

The shift in language is simply a departure from deciding to consider people as a need and an object. It does not mean we abandon or change the depth of our care and support. It does ask that we name people of interest as citizens, socially isolated, economically isolated, urban youth, neighborhood residents, service workers, park residents. This takes us to a different form of action. We left the term “retarded” behind and now focus on people with disabilities. We shifted from “homeless” to people temporarily unhoused. We have stopped using the terms “ghetto” and “slums.”

The language we use and the narrative we change have significant impacts. When we consider someone as socially isolated, we connect them to others, we don’t declare them broken. This communicates to them and to ourselves that we welcome them as full human beings. They are not cases. They are no longer strangers. It is through social connection that most transformations occur and are sustained.

Transformation begins with using language in our measurements that rests on a different way of listening and understanding the conditions we are interested in. This not only leads to different programming but opens us to an alternative way of being and connection in the complicated landscape of our own lives.

Peter Block is an author and citizen of Cincinnati, Ohio. He is partner in Designed Learning, a training company that offers workshops designed to build the skills outlined in his books. His books include Flawless Consulting, Stewardship, The Answer to How Is Yes, Community, The Abundant Community, Activating the Common Good and An Other Kingdom. Peter is a founder of the Common Good Collective, and is part of the Cincinnati Common Good Alliance. You can follow his insights on Substack.