Dr. Alenuma-Nimoh recently presented a paper, titled, Blame The Victim and Blame Society Explanations for Poverty: Some Pedagogical Implications at the 2015 International Journal of Arts and Sciences Conference
The presentation focused on clashing viewpoints in explaining reasons why some people are poor and others are not. There are two broadly distinguishable ways of explaining poverty in the scholarly literature and in popular parlance/popular discussions about poverty. One of them is sometimes referred to as “Blame the victim.” The conference session was a forum for Dr. Alenuma-Nimoh and the audience to reflect on the two central and equally compelling explanations for the existence of poverty and the specific causal processes that could be at work in each case. Depending on which explanation we choose, our approaches to ending poverty will ultimately vary. The presentation set the ball rolling in the direction of finding the causes of poverty and ameliorating the living conditions of the several people living in poverty today. Depending on the choice of explanation, the pedagogical approaches to helping students of poverty learn, will ultimately differ. Pedagogical implications of each of these two explanations of poverty were discussed.