Ananya Roy, University of California Los Angeles and Abby VanMuijen, University of California, Berkeley
The turn of the century is marked by the emergence of poverty as a global issue. From a new metrics of human and sustainable development to new institutions of philanthropy to vast networks of volunteerism, there is a widely dispersed impulse for poverty action as well as a widespread optimism about the “end of poverty.” Key elements of this optimism include faith in the problem-solving capacity of technological expertise, an insistence on ethicalizing global markets, and the endurance of humanitarian reason. Enlisted in such a project of poverty action are millennials, college students and young professionals who make and unmake their own class position in relation to the question of poverty. The #GlobalPOV Project combines critical social theory, improvised art, and digital media to undertake conversations with millennials about poverty, inequality, and poverty action. Building on the work of the Global Poverty and Practice Minor at the University of California, Berkeley, it stages an intervention in poverty pedagogy and poverty knowledge. It is also an experiment with formats of public scholarship, especially those that are effective in what can be understood as the age of Youtube. To learn more about The #GlobalPOV project and to view all of the videos, go to: http://blumcenter.berkeley.edu/globalpov/
Contact: Ananya Roy, ananya@berkeley.edu
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