It seems everyone is talking about ‘lived experience’ these days – in academia and the third sector, at least. Social movements of people in particular circumstances asserting ‘nothing about us without us’ have demanded to take part in public debate for many years. And participatory methods of involving people with lived experience of poverty are longstanding, especially in the Global South. But in the UK today there seems to be renewed interest in the ‘lived experience’ of poverty, and a plethora of groups springing up to bring to bear the knowledge gained from this in public debate. This involves not just the third sector but also academia – the Social Policy Association has set up a subgroup on ‘lived experience’ too.
In my view, it is crucial to include ‘lived experience’ in our thinking about poverty, and policies and practices to combat it. In principle, because people living in poverty have a right to a voice, but often find themselves ignored or dismissed (resulting in what has been called ‘epistemic injustice’). And in practice, because doing so can lead to both empowerment for those taking part and better policies and practices – as well as ensuring that our concepts and meaning-making are informed by knowledge from lived experience.
Of course, bringing the lived experience of poverty into public debate is complex. It requires proper resourcing – in time as well as money. Bringing lived experience to bear is not about witnessing or telling stories – individuals in poverty have to do this too much already. Meaningful participation should involve collaboration and some control throughout by those with lived experience of poverty, including in defining an issue, analysing it and devising possible answers. But this is demanding, and often at odds with the constraints of organisations and processes. Organisations have come up with useful suggestions about how best to navigate these difficulties; but the most valuable lessons are probably learned from trying it (lived experience, in fact).
In addition, and more challenging, we all know from our own lived experience that it is not THE truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Other perspectives on reality – including those of others with their lived experience – are needed for a rounded picture. And poverty itself in any case is not monochrome; it can be temporary or long term, and differentiated by age, gender, ethnicity, geography and many other factors. So people with lived experience of poverty should not be burdened with the demand to be representative – instead, they can be seen as ‘connectors’ to a world of experience.
One way to try to address concerns such as these is used by ATD Fourth World, an international organisation working closely with people in long-term poverty. It developed the ‘merging of knowledge’ in the 1990s (and expanded this later to include the ‘merging of practice’). This way of working adds elements of joint reflection and deliberative inquiry to engagement with ‘lived experience’. But it does not involve expert briefings, as some deliberative democracy exercises usually do.
Instead, different peer groups are created – for example, of people with lived experience of poverty, those who work with people in poverty or on policies that affect them, and those who study poverty in a more academic or abstract way. These participants meet as separate groups initially, to develop trust and discuss the topic from their different perspectives. Then, through a carefully facilitated process, participants from each group work together to develop a common understanding – and often also to create a shared document or other product to convey this understanding to others.
This resource-intensive, often challenging process is about producing in-depth engagement between different forms of knowledge. But it is also about developing human relationships between people with different backgrounds and often very different forms of ‘lived experience’.
The merging of knowledge methodology has been used recently to deepen understanding of the ‘hidden dimensions of poverty’, in a multi-country research project run by ATD Fourth World and the University of Oxford. While not discovering entirely new aspects of poverty that were previously unknown, it did result in a new emphasis on some dimensions – including maltreatment by others and by institutions, together with a lack of recognition of the contribution made by people in poverty to society.
Knowledge gained from lived experience of poverty can be valuable in informing practice as well. ATD Fourth World also participates in training social workers by bringing them together with parents in poverty who have had their children taken into care, for example. And the Department for Work and Pensions pioneered the use of Oxfam’s ‘Sustainable Livelihoods Approach’ – a way of understanding life in poverty from the perspectives of those who live it – in training benefits staff in Wales.
This knowledge is also of course very relevant to policies affecting the lives of people in poverty. The findings from the Hidden Dimensions of Poverty research described above are being used by the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights with others to inform the creation of an instrument to facilitate the design, monitoring and evaluation of relevant policies together with people in poverty. This is known as the tool for the inclusive and deliberative elaboration and evaluation of policies (IDEEP) and should be piloted shortly.
In these ways, knowledge gained from the experience of living in poverty may be beginning to influence understanding, practices and policies in a more sustained way. We would all be the richer if so.
Fran Bennett is an Emeritus Fellow of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford. She has a particular interest in social security policy, gender issues, and poverty and participation. Fran has written extensively on social policy for the UK government, NGOs and others, as well as analysing UK poverty and social security issues for the European Commission. She has worked for the Child Poverty Action Group and Oxfam in the past and is a longstanding friend and supporter of ATD Fourth World.
This blog draws on an original blog for ATD Fourth World and an associated article for the Journal of Poverty and Social Justice. Full references can be found in the Journal of Poverty and Social Justice article: The merging of knowledge? Lived experience of poverty and its place in public debate by Fran Bennett, available to read on Bristol University Press Digital.
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