Money, relationships and mindset change
By Susan Murray, David Hume Institute
31st March 2021
One of the core aims of the David Hume Institute is to increase diversity of thought. This includes bringing international insights from around the world to Scotland. In the past we have often done this through academic links but last year we worked with WEvolution, the Glasgow based self reliant organisation, on a speaker series of changemakers from the Global South.
A full report has been written up by WEvolution on the insights from these changemakers that featured in this series. There was one overriding reflection: lasting change happens through individual relationships, and especially when change is supported in an individual’s relationship with money.
The examples from Catherine Wanjohi described how local self reliant groups transformed women’s relationships with money and education. Salomon Raydan explained how becoming shareholders rather than savers changed mindsets for some of the poorest people in Venezuela. Reflections were similar to those from Professor Linda Scott on the transformative difference that Avon entrepreneurs made in Africa despite judgements made by aid workers on this business approach.
Economic freedom has the power to bring great change.
The partnership with WEvolution bought speakers and insights we might not have heard on our own and prompted us to think more about people’s relationship with money as a critical factor in economic and social change around the world.
Closer to home, why are many people more comfortable with giving “stuff” for example through foodbanks than supporting the poorest in Scotland into a financial situation where they have freedom of choice through systemic change. At the moment choice in Scotland is closely linked to financial resources. This was an issue Darren McGarvey explored in his recent documentary: from the concentration of bookmakers in our poorest communities to availability of shops to buy healthy food, the resources you have - or don’t have - can define the resources you get.
For the speakers in the series, working alongside individual’s to support them to change their relationship with money has been a way to unlock potential but as the final event in the series with Aloysuis Fernadez discussed, it is not enough. The former World Bank economist discussed the old proverb, if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him to fish you feed him for life. However structural inequality means that is not enough, “even when you can teach people to fish, they still can’t reach the river, or if they get to the river and all the fish are gone. Teaching is not enough.”
More has to be done to level the playing field and this means working alongside people, listening and redesigning systems with them to remove barriers.
Self reliant groups are a way of people supporting and championing each other. There is a removal of the traditional power and control dynamics of finance or philanthropy as people in the group are equal.
The event series echoed findings from our latest research as part of The Action Project. As we emerge from the pandemic, people in Scotland are making more conscious choices with money and are ready to engage with the economy differently than pre-Covid. In the words of Nobel prize winning economist Esther Duflo, “Economics is too important to be left to economists” - and as we heard from Dr Arun Advani, the narrow backgrounds of economists risks group think, so it's in all our interests to play a more active role in the economy.
Read the full report on the #GlobalSouthSeries here.
In the Action Project conversations, we heard from people taking action to build a Scotland that is more prosperous, sustainable, inclusive and fair. Share your action for change at WhatsYourAction.scot.
