Culture of Poverty Vs Destruction of Impoverished Poor Ethnic

Culture of Poverty vs Destruction of Impoverished Poor Ethnic Communities: Two Approaches to Healing Poverty and Racial Injustice Marc Pilisuk Each cultural pattern, if it has survived, has had within it a set of practices and beliefs sufficient to avoid the eradication of its members and of its nurturing habitat. Viable cultural patterns include the roles of kin and non-kin in providing for the shelter, food, healing socialization of children, and teaching the accepted norms of the social group. Poverty strains such cultural support. The persistent cycle of impoverished neighborhoods enduring across generations. Led to the concept of a culture of poverty.

Its major tenet is that the poor are not only lacking resources, but they also are themselves transformed by a poverty-perpetuating value system. According to Oscar Lewis, "The subculture [of the poor] develops mechanisms that tend to perpetuate it, especially because of what happens to the world view, aspirations, and character of the children who grow up in it.” (Moynihan 1969, p. 199). The term "subculture of poverty" first appeared in the ethnography Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty (1959) by anthropologist Oscar Lewis. Lewis struggled to render "the poor" as legitimate subjects whose lives were transformed by poverty. Lewis argued that although the burdens of poverty resulted from the larger system and were imposed upon certain members of society, they led to the formation of an autonomous subculture. Children were socialized into behaviors and attitudes that perpetuated their inability to escape the underclass.

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

The people in a culture of poverty have a strong feelings of marginality, helplessness, dependency, and not belonging. They are alienated and estranged in their own country. They are convinced that the existing institutions do not serve their needs. They internalize the scorn of others and share widespread feelings of inferiority. Racial discrimination may exacerbate this as in the US but the slum dwellers of Mexico City, who did not constitute a distinct ethnic or racial group, also demonstrated the pattern.

People within a culture of poverty have very little sense of history. They are a marginal people who know only their own troubles, their own local conditions, their own neighborhood, their own way of life. Usually, they have neither the knowledge, the vision nor the ideology to see the similarities between their problems and those of others like themselves elsewhere in the world. In other words, they are not class conscious, although they are very sensitive indeed to status distinctions. When the poor become class conscious or members of trade union organizations, or when they adopt an internationalist outlook on the world they are, in my view, no longer part of the culture of poverty although they may still be desperately poor.(Lewis 1998)

The theory attracted academic and policy attention in the 1960s, but has largely been discredited by academics around the turn of the century (Goode and Eames, 1996; Bourgois, 2001; Small M.L., Harding D.J., Lamont M., 2010). Although the idea is experiencing a comeback, current scholars recognize many scholars have noticed that the poor do not typically hold different values from middle class people. Critics of the culture of poverty argument insist that structural factors rather than individual characteristics better explain the persistence of poverty (Goode and Eames, 1996; Bourgois, 2001; Small M.L., Harding D.J., Lamont M.,

2010. Rather than the "values" of the poor as the reason for potentially mal- adaptive behaviors, [1]. racism and isolation were considered to underlie the persistence of poverty.

2 Although Lewis was concerned with poverty in the developing world, the culture of poverty concept proved attractive to U.S. public policy makers and politicians. It strongly informed documents such as the Moynihan Report (1965) and 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 which create and perpetuate the cycle of poverty in America. Proponents of this theory argued that the poor are not simply lacking resources, but also acquire a poverty-perpetuating value system. According to Oscar Lewis, "The subculture [of the poor] develops mechanisms that tend to perpetuate it, especially because of what happens to the world view, aspirations, and character of the children who grow up in it.” (Moynihan 1969, p. 199). Later scholars have noticed that the poor do not have different values. The term "subculture of poverty" (later shortened to "culture of poverty") made its first appearance in the ethnography Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty (1959) by anthropologist Oscar Lewis. 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 therefore 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 some seventy 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.

The people engulfed in the culture of poverty have strong feelings of marginality, of helplessness, of dependency, of not belonging. They are like aliens in their own country, convinced that the existing institutions do not serve their interests and needs. Along with this feeling of powerlessness is a widespread feeling of inferiority, of personal unworthiness. This is true of the slum dwellers of Mexico City, who do not constitute a distinct ethnic or racial group and do not suffer from

3 racial discrimination. In the United States the culture of poverty that exists in the Negroes has the additional disadvantage of racial discrimination.

People with a culture of poverty have very little sense of history. They are a marginal people who know only their own troubles, their own local conditions, their own neighborhood, their own way of life. Usually, they have neither the knowledge, the vision nor the ideology to see the similarities between their problems and those of others like themselves elsewhere in the world. In other words, they are not class conscious, although they are very sensitive indeed to status distinctions. When the poor become class conscious or members of trade union organizations, or when they adopt an internationalist outlook on the world they are, in my view, no longer part of the culture of poverty although they may still be desperately poor.

(Lewis 1998)

This culture contains a strong element of despair, marginality, sense of unworthiness. In such a subculture, an ethos of fighting for daily survival, avoidance of future planning, often without capacity for longer term regard of the well-being of self and community. Lewis argued that such an internalized life view was itself a major factor preventing any escape from poverty whether initiated by internal or by external efforts. While Lewis was a humanistic scholar and his indictment was of the society rather than upon the distressed individuals within it, his proposals to address the problem, and the many implementations of subsequent anti-poverty activity, have been guided by efforts to change the subculture of poverty, ie, attitudes and behaviors of individuals. Despite controversy, this assumption underlies much of the conventional approach to helping members of poor, ethnic minority groups to improve their lives.

While hunger, malnutrition and homelessness are tangible indictors, the experience of poverty is typically relative to what one sees as the wealth of others.

4 Awareness of poverty is based upon observations of inequality. Wide and unbreachable gaps test the resilience of traditional cultures.

The gap is illustrated in the United States where 46.5 million people live in poverty. At 21.8 percent, childhood poverty in the US is the highest in the industrialized world. One out of four US children lives in a family that receives food stamps, a program that faces cuts even while family income shows no gain.

Poverty among US seniors is increasing. Over 9 percent of seniors lived in poverty in 2012 , a percentage higher than in 1972.

It is no accident that average American families have seen their incomes decline over the past 30 years as an economic agenda endorsed by the two major political parties has endorsed “free trade” agreements which have served to exchange American jobs, workplace standards, food safety laws and consumer protections for greater corporate profits. While median family income has declined and poverty has increased, the number of millionaires and billionaires has grown at an extraordinary rate. In 1996, there were 121 billionaires in this country; now there are 442. Corporate greed has ushered in large gaps in the capacity of local communities to apply their cultural strengths to the well- being of their members. With corporations extracting more from the commons and returning less, people are asked to accept the mandates of austerity.

Austerity is driving many to suicide, depression and causing soaring rates of drug use and HIV and increases in infectious disease. Austerity reduced access to medicines and health care in Europe and U.S. 10,000 suicides and a million depression cases can be blamed on austerity. In Greece, HIV rates increased 200% since 2011 because of budget cuts * Greece had first malaria outbreak for decades due to mosquito spraying cuts * Five million Americans lost access to health care during recession * In Britain, 10,000 families are now homeless because of austerity. Austerity is devastating the health of people in Europe and

5 North America by driving suicide, depression, and the spread of infectious disease, according to new research. It is also reducing access to medicines and health care again affecting people’s health, the study suggests. The authors, Oxford University political economist Dr David Stuckler and Dr Sanjay Basu, an assistant professor of medicine and an epidemiologist at Stanford University, said their findings show austerity is seriously bad for health. In a book to be published this week, the researchers say that more than 10,000 suicides and up to a million cases of depression have been diagnosed during what they call the ‘Great Recession’ and its accompanying austerity across Europe and North America. They also claim that in Greece, moves like cutting HIV prevention budgets have coincided with rates of the AIDS-causing virus rising by more than 200 per cent since 2011. They suggest that the 50 per cent youth employment rate has also increased drug abuse which has further increased the spread of HIV. The study also revealed that Greece experienced its first malaria outbreak in decades following budget cuts to mosquito-spraying programs. The researchers added that more than five million Americans have lost access to health care during the latest recession, while in Britain, some 10,000 families have been pushed into homelessness by the government's austerity budget. Up to 1,000 people could die from mad cow disease due to being given infected blood in hospitals * Surgery for bingo wings soars by 4,000% in a decade as women strive to get arms like Michelle Obama and Jennifer Aniston ‘Our politicians need to take into account the serious - and in some cases profound - health consequences of economic choices,’ Dr Stuckler told Reuters. ‘The harms we have found include HIV and malaria outbreaks, shortages of essential medicines, lost healthcare access, and an avoidable epidemic of alcohol abuse, depression and suicide,’ he said. ‘Austerity is having a devastating effect. The researchers claim that the youth employment rate has also increased drug abuse which has further increased the spread of HIV The researchers claim that the youth employment rate has also increased drug abuse which has further increased the spread of HIV Previous studies by Dr Stuckler have also linked rising suicide rates in some parts of Europe to biting austerity measures, and found HIV epidemics to be spreading amid cutbacks in

6 services for vulnerable people. But Dr Stuckler and Dr Basu said negative public health effects are not inevitable, even during the worst economic disasters. Using data from the Great Depression of the 1930s, to post-communist Russia, and from some examples of the current economic downturn, they say financial crises can be prevented from becoming epidemics - if governments respond effectively. As an example, they say Sweden's active labor market programs helped the numbers of suicides to fall there during its recession while neighboring countries with no such programs saw large increases in suicides. “Ultimately what we show is that worsening health is not an inevitable consequence of economic recessions. It's a political choice” Dr Basu said. This is not the first study to suggest that austerity can affect people’s health. Researchers at the University of Alcala in Madrid found that it actually improved the health of many people in Cuba during the early 1990s. They discovered that food and fuel shortages in the country caused the average citizen to lose 11lb and that death rates from heart disease and diabetes had fallen considerably. Professor Manuel Franco, of the University of Alcala, Madrid, said: 'We found a population-wide loss of 4-5 kg in weight in a relatively healthy population was accompanied by diabetes mortality falling by half and mortality from coronary heart disease falling by a third.'

Since the 1960s critics of culture of poverty explanation for the persistence of the underclasses have attempted to show that certain real world data do not fit Lewis' model (Goode and Eames, 1996). In 1974, anthropologist Carol Stack’s criticism called the concept "fatalistic." Her own studies noted that the way that believing in a culture of poverty was not fairly describing poor peoples culture so much as it was serving the interests of the rich. Stack wrote, "The culture of poverty, as Hylan Lewis points out, has a fundamental political nature. The ideas matters 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-

7 destructing pits." [2]

This 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). This critique provoked a backlash in sociology and anthropology, pushing scholars to look to look at political and economic structures rather than "blaming-the-victim" (Bourgois, 2001). Since the late '90s, the culture of poverty has witnessed a resurgence in the social sciences. Most scholars, however, now reject the notion of a monolithic and unchanging culture of poverty and attribute destructive attitudes and behavior not to inherent moral character but to sustained racism and isolation (Small M.L., Harding D.J., Lamont M., 2010).

There is an alternative view that finds the strength of traditional cultures still present even among many of the most deprived. Eliot Liebow’s Street Corner Society reported on the lives a tough group of poor Italian youth in a Midwestern community. Liebow found a complex and supportive culture among youth who found themselves excluded from the promise of their surrounding society, a culture that built upon elements of their own heritage. In a poor Black area judged by outsiders to be dysfunctional, Carol Stacks found a surprisingly potent female centered network of real and fictive kin providing a culture of spiritual beliefs, caring and supportive assistance. Their strengths provided a level of care for infants and elders and protections against violence which came without the demeaning consequences often imposed by formal services.

Projects based on alternatives to the culture of poverty focus their restorative efforts upon removing economic and cultural oppression and providing space for diversity. In this session we will look upon homelessness, income inequality, malnutrition, suicide through the glasses of professional helpers and the limitations we take on might be reduced by looking beyond the lens of personal and cultural frailties.

8 The idea of cultural frailty is often applied to central Africa, much of which (at least 70% of the population) live in culturally defined tribes living by traditional means. They are often on the move in search of water. Their food supplies and income are marginal and can be wiped out in one cruel storm or drought, made more likely by climate change. They live long distances from schools, roads and health care. Malnutrition, AIDS , cattle-rustling and killings for revenge are seen as inevitable. And wars, sometimes lasting for generations and extending to genocidal levels are often blamed upon rivalries among ethnic tribes or corrupt governments. Continuous killing amongst lawless tribal groupings and governments imposed upon and sustained by foreign powers are considered the natural consequence of underdevelopment. The response by global powers has been largely to provide relief, peace-keepers, refugee camps, food and water followed by infra-structure loans that create indebtedness among poor nations and require imposition of austerity. While global financial institutions play a prominent role, many individuals respond to humanitarian appeals to help the victims. However urgent such gifts may be, they do feed into the view that the victims have no resources and lack cultural strengths to improve their own lives. Awareness of the limitations of the culture of poverty idea can open new avenues to address problems of that have befallen poor and exploited communities. Examples are everywhere but a few illustrations will help.

Kenya is endowed with a wealth of natural and human resources, and yet Kenya is ranked as one of the low income countries in Africa. The Kenyan economy relies heavily on natural resources to support people’s livelihoods and to contribute to national income. However, Kenya’s huge potential for economic growth is threatened by environmental degradation. In Kenya, poor tribal communities have a history of violent conflict, The Kenya Pastoralist Network has found a way to break the cycle. Former warriors, sons and daughters of those tribes, speak with a unique

9 authority to convince the tribes to call a truce. They work with warriors, women and elders to see war differently, to reward peaceful practices, to pull together to stretch critical, scarce resources. And in Laikipia, the peace has held for four years. Now Kenya Pastoralist Network is ready to spread that peace to Baringo, where attacks are escalating and threaten three neighboring counties, including Laikipia.

Mediators Beyond Borders International (a US 501(c)(3) corporation) and Kenya Pastoralist Network (a registered Kenya trust) partner in best practices to make and keep the peace. They blend traditional and contemporary peace practices so they are practical and easily adopted and sustained. They do not ask tribes to give up a traditional way of life but instead work with them to make life safer, to access education and water to reduce extreme poverty, and to help keep Kenya a stable presence for the region.

The Kenya Pastoralist Network has a great track record. Our access in the new government structure means this can really take off in 2014 -- we can spread the peace through more tribes learning from each other. With your help, this is a turning point, a rare opportunity for peace.

10 • Harrington, Michael (1962). The Other America: Poverty in the United States. Simon & Schuster. • Lewis, Oscar (1996 (1966)). "The Culture of Poverty". In G. Gmelch and W. Zenner, eds. Urban Life. Waveland Press. • Lewis, Oscar (1969). "Culture of Poverty". In Moynihan, Daniel P. On Understanding Poverty: Perspectives from the Social Sciences. New York: Basic Books. pp. 187–220. • Lewis, Oscar (January 1998). "The culture of poverty". Society 35 (2): 7. doi:10.1007/BF02838122. • Mayer, Susan E. (1997). What money can’t buy : family income and children’s life chances. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-58733-2. Retrieved 2009-11-09. • Messman, Terry (2013). A Place of Freedom Where the Sea Meets the Sky. Street Spirit 19 (12) 1-7 • Duvoux, Nicolas, "The culture of poverty reconsidered", La vie des idées : http://www.laviedesidees.fr/The-Culture-of-Poverty.html Cohen, Patricia (2010-10-17). "‘Culture of Poverty’ Makes a Comeback". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-10-20. • Bourgois, Phillipe (2001). "Culture of Poverty". International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. Waveland Press. Small M.L., Harding D.J., Lamont M. (2010). "Reconsidering culture and poverty". Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Conclusion The assumption that people are poor because they are embedded in a subculture that keeps them there is deficient. Many people are poor and powerless because others are rich and powerful. That small group of a wealthy power elite also share a set of cultural values: an ethos of individual over collective responsibility, the primacy of private property, the rights to use money to control electoral and legislative outcomes and to dominate or control major

11 media. Such interests claim authority over the resources and labor opportunities in any community without regard to addressing the cultural strengths of such communities which lack the legal, military and police capacities to prevent their own displacement Korten, 2006: Pilisuk and Rountree 2008). It is not the cultural beliefs of this clique, however, that are the ultimate problem. It is rather their structural domination of people and planet. We would welcome a change in what this elite believe and in the wasteful life styles some of them employ, just as we would welcome a change in the hopes and attitudes of those poor people who have given up . But in the last analysis the strengths of diverse cultures, however impoverished their residents, must be respected and poverty will not end without a redistribution of wealth and power.

Cohen, Patricia, ‘Culture of Poverty’ Makes a Comeback, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/us/18poverty.html Stack, Carol. 1974. All Our Kin. Harper & Row. • Goode, Judith and Edwin Eames (1996). "An Anthropological Critique of the Culture of Poverty". In G. Gmelch and W. Zenner. Urban Life. Waveland Press. • Harrington, Michael (1962). The Other America: Poverty in the United States. Simon & Schuster. • Lewis, Oscar (1996 (1966)). "The Culture of Poverty". In G. Gmelch and W. Zenner, eds. Urban Life. Waveland Press. • Lewis, Oscar (1969). "Culture of Poverty". In Moynihan, Daniel P. On Understanding Poverty: Perspectives from the Social Sciences. New York: Basic Books. pp. 187–220. • Lewis, Oscar (January 1998). "The culture of poverty". Society 35 (2): 7. doi:10.1007/BF02838122. • Mayer, Susan E. (1997). What money can’t buy : family income and children’s life chances. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-58733-2. Retrieved 2009-11-09. • Messman, Terry (2013). A Place of Freedom Where the Sea Meets the Sky.

12 Street Spirit 19 (12) 1-7 • Duvoux, Nicolas, "The culture of poverty reconsidered", La vie des idées : http://www.laviedesidees.fr/The-Culture-of-Poverty.html Cohen, Patricia (2010-10-17). "‘Culture of Poverty’ Makes a Comeback". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-10-20. Bourgois, Phillipe (2001). "Culture of Poverty". International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. Waveland Press. Small M.L., Harding D.J., Lamont M. (2010). "Reconsidering culture and poverty". Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social

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Valentine, Charles A. Culture and Poverty. Critique and Counter- Proposals. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1968.