User:JordanMay44/Culture of poverty

De Antuñano, E. (2019) states that the theory of the culture of poverty was popularized in 1958 by anthropologist Oscar Lewis, following his research in Mexico City. The culture of poverty frames low-income earners as existing within a culture that perpetuates poverty in a generational cycle. The theory suggests that the economic climate does not play a significant role in poverty. Those existing within a culture of poverty largely bring poverty upon themselves through acquired habits and behaviours. Oscar Lewis’s work sparked debates in the following decades. Many people disagree with his theory and believe it has little to no merit,  De Antuñano, E. (2019) quotes that the culture of poverty was “denounced as methodologically vague and politically misguided.”

An example of this is discussed by critical race theorist Gloria Ladson-Billings (2017). She observed the culture of poverty used to explain why some urban schools are unsuccessful. She says that parents of children in low-income families care deeply for their children, and encourage their education and success.

Hill, R. (2002) states that some recent scholars believe the work of Oscar Lewis on the culture of poverty was misinterpreted. They believe his theory was not intended to suggest that low-income earners choose to live in poverty. They believe the culture of poverty is a result of coping mechanisms developed by low-income earners. It helps them accept their circumstances, which takes a great deal of personal strength. Recent scholars also suggest that Oscar Lewis acknowledged institutional shortcomings.

According to Kurtz, D. (2014), Oscar Lewis studied and acknowledged the ways poverty can be traumatic. During his research in Mexico in the 1950s, he discovered ways people cope and manage their impoverished state. Oscars Lewis's work inspired cultural anthropologists to study the culture of poverty. Kurtz, D. (2014) states the research concludes that “ Poverty has always been more than a social and economic issue. The politics of poverty always exists dialectically among competing interests that use power either to allocate or withhold aid to the impoverished depending upon whether those who possess power think that the poor either deserve or do not deserve relief from their impoverishment.”

Existing Article to be edited (edited in main space) The culture of poverty is a concept in social theory that asserts that the values of people experiencing poverty play a significant role in perpetuating their impoverished condition, sustaining a cycle of poverty across generations. It attracted policy attention in the 1970s, and received academic criticism (Goode & Eames 1996; Bourgois 2001; Small, Harding & Lamont 2010), and made a comeback at the beginning of the 21st century. It offers one way to explain why poverty exists despite anti-poverty programs. Critics of the early culture of poverty arguments insist that explanations of poverty must analyze how structural factors interact with and condition individual characteristics (Goode & Eames 1996; Bourgois 2001; Small, Harding & Lamont 2010). As put by Small, Harding & Lamont (2010), "since human action is both constrained and enabled by the meaning people give to their actions, these dynamics should become central to our understanding of the production and reproduction of poverty and social inequality."

Contents

 * 1Early formulations
 * 2Reactions
 * 3See also
 * 4Citations
 * 5References

Early formulations[edit]
Early proponents of the theory argued that the poor are not only lacking resources but also acquire a poverty-perpetuating value system. According to anthropologist Oscar Lewis, "The subculture [of the poor] develops mechanisms that tend to perpetuate it, especially because of what happens to the worldview, aspirations, and character of the children who grow up in it". (Lewis 1969, p. 199)

Some later scholars (Young 2004; Newman 1999; Edin & Kefalas 2005; Dohan 2003; Hayes 2003; Carter 2005; Waller 2002; Duneier 1992) contend that the poor do not have different values.

The term "subculture of poverty" (later shortened to "culture of poverty") made its first appearance in Lewis's ethnography Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty (1959). Lewis struggled to render "the poor" as legitimate subjects whose lives were transformed by poverty. He argued that although the burdens of poverty were systemic and so imposed upon these members of society, they led to the formation of an autonomous subculture as children were socialized into behaviors and attitudes that perpetuated their inability to escape the underclass.

Lewis gave 70 characteristics (1996 [1966], 1998) that indicated the presence of the culture of poverty, which he argued was not shared among all of the lower classes.

Oscar Lewis's interest in poverty inspired other cultural anthropologists to study poverty. Their interest was based on his idea of a culture of poverty. "(Lewis 1998)"Although Lewis was concerned with poverty in the developing world, the culture of poverty concept proved attractive to US public policy makers and politicians. It strongly informed documents such as the Moynihan Report (1965) as well as the War on Poverty, more generally.

The culture of poverty also emerges as a key concept in Michael Harrington's discussion of American poverty in The Other America (1962). For Harrington, the culture of poverty is a structural concept defined by social institutions of exclusion that create and perpetuate the cycle of poverty in America. Chicago ghetto on the South Side, May 1974

Reactions[edit]
Since the 1960s, critics of culture of poverty explanations for the persistence of the underclasses have attempted to show that real world data do not fit Lewis's model (Goode & Eames 1996). In 1974, anthropologist Carol Stack issued a critique of it, calling it "fatalistic" and noticing the way that believing in the idea of a culture of poverty does not describe the poor so much as it serves the interests of the rich.

She writes, citing Hylan Lewis another critic of Oscar Lewis' Culture of Poverty:"The culture of poverty, as Hylan Lewis points out, has a fundamental political nature. The ideas matter most to political and scientific groups attempting to rationalize why some Americans have failed to make it in American society. It is, Lewis (1971) argues, 'an idea that people believe, want to believe, and perhaps need to believe.' They want to believe that raising the income of the poor would not change their life styles or values, but merely funnel greater sums of money into bottomless, self-destructing pits. This fatalistic view has wide acceptance among scholars, welfare planners, and the voting public. Indeed, even at the most prestigious university, the country's theories alleging racial inferiority have become increasingly prevalent.".......

Thus, she demonstrates the way that political interests to keep the wages of the poor low create a climate in which it is politically convenient to buy into the idea of culture of poverty (Stack 1974). In sociology and anthropology, the concept created a backlash, pushing scholars to look to structures rather than "blaming-the-victim" (Bourgois 2001).

Since the late 1990s, the culture of poverty has witnessed a resurgence in the social sciences, but most scholars now reject the notion of a monolithic and unchanging culture of poverty. Newer research typically rejects the idea that whether people are poor can be explained by their values. It is often reluctant to divide explanations into "structural" and "cultural," because of the increasingly questionable utility of this old distinction.

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