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Running Head: THE CULTURE OF POVERTY

The Culture Of Poverty

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THE CULTURE OF POVERTY

The Culture Of Poverty

Culture refers to a set of values and beliefs that influence the effectiveness of strategy

formulation. They are patterns that of shared underlying assumptions which people have learned

and produce behaviour and norms. On the other hand, poverty is the inability to obtain the

required necessities. These necessities are such as shelter, food, healthcare, and safety. The

essential needs help to supply the material need of human beings. The culture of poverty

indicates that those remain in poverty as a result of adapting to the poverty burden. This culture

of poverty stems from the cycle of poverty. In the world, the major effort that can be noted to try

to eradicate the culture of poverty is education. Those people who live in poverty are encouraged

to set their primacies right and create a micro-culture.

Community development has designed various strategies that can help meet the need of

people who are living in poverty. Community developers support nearly all communities but are

more passionate towards people without adequate resources to meet their required necessities.

They also focus their attention on large communities that need help. Communities that are living

in poverty live in both rural and urban, and in places that are economically weak.

However, it is essential to note that what might be a necessity to one person might not be

a necessity to someone else. That means that necessity is not uniform to all people. On the other

hand, need scan be termed as relative to what is possible. Need are also founded on social

definitions and historical experiences. The essence of poverty appears to be inequality. However,

in somewhat different arguments, basically, poverty is relative deprivation. The social definition

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of poverty allows the flexibility of a community in addressing urgent local concerns. On the

other hand, objective definition of poverty enables the monitoring of progress and comparison of

one area to another. The most popular objective definition of is the arithmetical measure

formulated by the federal government as the yearly income necessary for the survival of a

family.

Oscar Lewis created the theory of culture in 1959. The theory of culture of poverty

argues that the poor people have adopted deviant cultural characteristics (Lewis p. 67). They

have a lifestyle that is different from other members of the society, and these distinct

characteristics are responsible for their poverty. Therefore, the poor are qualitatively dissimilar in

their values, and the cultural dissimilarities explain their prolonged poverty. Therefore, according

to the theory of culture of poverty, poverty is a trait that is passed from one generation to the

next.

Additionally, according to the theory, people who are in poverty have behaved

differently. This means that parents are more permissive when raising their children. The

children that are raised in poverty seem to have significantly different perspectives in life

whenever compared to the children that are raised in the middle class. For instance, the poor are

more stoical and are less interested in formal education. Though the theory of poverty culture

presents various viewpoints concerning the lives of the poor, there are opponents of the theory

that argue in contrast to the perspectives presented by the theory. Thus for Lewis, the burden of

poverty on the population was as a result of the structural cause of the growth of a culture of

poverty (Lewis p. 170). This culture of poverty later became self-ruling, as behaviour and

attitude grew within a culture of poverty are transformed from one generation to the next through

the process of socialization.

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Various detractors of the culture of poverty have identified several faults both with the

theory and the method in which it has been understood and applied to the society. The culture of

poverty assumes that the culture is fairly fixed. As a result, once a given populace exists in the

culture of poverty, no efforts in the intervention regarding poverty alleviation can change the

cultural outlooks and behaviours that are apprehended by the members of the population.

Therefore, assistance from the public to the poor regarding the welfare or any other direct forms

cannot eradicate poverty. This is because the theory assumes poverty to be hereditary in the

culture of the poor. For this reason, the culture of poverty theory changes its culpability for

poverty from economic and social circumstances to the poor.

The culture of poverty accepts the past factors that might have led to poverty like

education and substandard housing, the absence of adequate social services, the lack of job

opportunities, and racial segregation. The theory centres on the causes of present poverty which

is attitudes and behaviours of the poor.

Much of the pieces of evidence that have been given to back of the culture of poverty

suffer from procedural fallacies, mainly a dependence on the supposition that behaviour develops

exclusively from chosen cultural values. That is, indication that of poverty itself, including

unemployment rates, crime, drug use, and school dropout rates, are presumed to be the result of

the behaviour that is desired by individuals that are living in the conditions of poverty. The

culture of poverty theory assumes growth of deviant norms. These deviant norms lead to

behaviours such as drug abuse and gang involvement that seen as the normative and also desired

behaviours of the people living in the ghettos.

Alternatively, it can be explained that individuals that live in manners that nominally

illegal, such as involvement in underground economies or participation in gang-related activities,

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not because they desire to do so, or they are following social norms. It's simply because they do

not have a choice, given that there is the lack of education and job opportunities that are

accessible in their neighbourhoods. In other terms, those that live in the ghettos may view

themselves as having been forced into illegal methods of obtaining money. For instance, selling

drugs to live on within the circumstances of poverty. Therefore, “ghetto behaviours” are adaptive

and not normative. Given enough opportunities, individuals that live in the ghettos, they would

turn to conformist modes of earning a living.

The theory of culture of poverty had a huge impact on the US public policy. It formed the

basis of law and order to the poor in the early middle 1960s and strongly influenced the war on

poverty. The culture of poverty theory has suffered numerous serious academic criticisms. As a

result, it has remained one of the theories scholars particularly theories sociologist can twist and

turn to explain why poverty is still there in spite of the numerous programs that have been

designed to counter it. Some scholars have argued that the theory lacks a proper analysis of the

way in which structural factors and discrete characteristics interact. Nevertheless, it remains a

foundational economic and anthropological theory.

The various contentious notions concerning the culture of poverty have sometimes been

featured in journals and articles. First, we start by examining some historical literature in the

arguments of Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He drew on Oscar Lewis in relating the culture of

poverty that was noted in African-Americans. Moynihan by ascribing the self-perpetuating moral

insufficiencies to the Black people, as though blaming them due to their misfortunes, some

generational scholars in the United States side-stepped cultural explanations used for the social

phenomenon, and the inkling that outlooks and behaviour outlines kept people poor was avoided.

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In his report “The Negro Family: The case for national action,” Daniel P. Moynihan

stated that the poor black people in America were caught in a web of underachievement. The

implications of this were that the principal reason many black families were in a gradual

breakdown and the traditional male roles were declining was as a result of deviant family

structures. Therefore, the family breakdown could be attributed to black males living a deviant

life. This lifestyle was transmitted from one generation to the next. His report argued that the

ancestries of non-conformity of family structures could be knotted straight to servitude where the

traditional family was not a feasible likelihood for African-Americans.

Also, the works of David Harding, Mario Luis, and Michele Lamont are worth to look at.

The writers have recognized and discussed the conflicts that have risen due to linking culture and

poverty. Therefore, as part of analyzing the recent research, they advocated that thoughtful,

hypothetically informed, and empirically based study of culture should be the permanent

component in the poverty study agenda. In this regard, sociologist and anthropologists have

come up with various diverse analytical tools that may help to get answers to the questions of

marriage, community participation, education, neighbourhoods among other topics that are

critical in the study of poverty.

When we look at the example of how William Julius Wilson, an esteemed sociologist, he

addresses culture and poverty differently. To begin with, culture is treated individually. Wilson

defines culture as how individuals in a particular community develop a comprehension of the

means by which the world works and make decisions founded on their apprehension. William

uses an example of black men. For instance, if the black do not cultivate a tough demeanour,

they wouldn’t survive. If you can access weapons, you get them, and if a conflict arises, you

have to use the weapons.

THE CULTURE OF POVERTY

To a large extent, William seems to be sensible in his analysis. The case he presents is

similar in other countries such as Columbia. Nonetheless, by laying emphasis on individuals, and

giving the example of them feeling compelled to use the weapons, the obvious policy choice

might be further despotism. Also, the obvious policy choice could be helping the ones that have

the right beliefs. The decline of culture as shared and meaningful constructs will accomplish very

little to individuals and beliefs in altering the malicious social logic, which sees the major route

from these forms of communities as “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” This somewhat

contradicts the central narrative of the American Dream.

The narrative of the American Dream is where a person does well for his or her sake.

Therefore, if the individual does not have enough sense to be sober and recognize that it is hard

work that pays, then they are non-Americans. It is a pattern of logics where outside regulations

are necessary. Also, changing beliefs using education or any other kinds of programs are the

major policy initiatives.

For Richard M. Nixon his administration may have marked the onset of a tough inflation

and unemployment period. Though inflation was notably low, inflation was gradually on the rise.

Due to what was viewed as an overheating economy, a monetary restraint policy was adopted.

However despite the various programs such as the regulation and social legislations, and the

Watergate, Nixon did not succeed in poverty alleviation.

However, there has been scholarly consideration of how the values and beliefs of people

relate to a particular environment. It has been proposed that the most efficient way to regulate the

behaviour of individuals may be through the factors that determine behaviour. It is easier to

modify circumstance than it is to alter the traits of a person. At a personal level, regulating

behaviour, therefore, could mean limiting access to the things that are irresistible. It may also

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suggest soliciting the help of friends or use other known external sources of influence, such as

support groups. At the communal level, efforts to generate social conditions that stimulate

healthy and moral behaviour could help.

Whether people have a free will or not, they are not entirely free, independent

individuals. They are influenced and also influence others through their physical and social

environments, frequently without being aware. Collectively, people create conditions that mould

the behaviour of individuals. As individuals, they can influence group decision making and

modify social conditions. This kind of scrutiny to understand what Mario Luis Small attempt in

figuring out why some mothers in New York and children in day-care centres developed

supportive networks while others do not. From this, it is probably correct to conclude that the

support groups developed not due to income or any other factors, but due to the policies that

exist in the day-care centres. Centres that have frequent parent associations, field trips, as well as

pick-up and drop-off services provided more opportunities to link up. In simple terms, the

institutional policies created an environment for people to interact. The environment then led to

various cultural network supports.

The notions that are related to the culture of poverty, as well as a culture of dependency,

are the basis for legislations that are against poverty. An example of such is the Temporary

Assistance For Needy families as a part of a welfare restructuring. This among others is based on

the presumption that behaviour and attitudes generate poverty. These reformations seek to

terminate the reliance of the poor on the government and promote marriage and work as social

norms.

Also, as it has already been identified, poverty takes two forms: Relative poverty and

absolute poverty. Though the theory developed by Lewis still has many controversies, it is still

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applicable to a community in relative poverty. In a situation economic inequality, people can still

be expected to modify their lives depending on their individual values. As for people that live in

absolute poverty, they mainly wish to survive. However, whether poverty is as a result of

economic, political and social conditions, or whether it is from entrenched behaviours and

attitudes developed by the poor are still a debatable topic among scholars, sociologists, and

government policy makers.

THE CULTURE OF POVERTY

Work cited

Lewis, Oscar. "„The Culture of Poverty." (1959): 200.

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