The Culture Of Poverty, By Oscar Lewis, An American Anthropologist Essay

In Ruby Payne's “A Framework for Understanding Poverty” she endeavors to provide educators with strategies to teach children from poor families, but Ruby Payne went wrong when she just took a mental image from a classroom and began analyzing on what she saw without enough evidence, her principal message was that poverty is not simply a monetary condition. She describes it to her audiences as a culture with particular rules, values, and knowledge transmitted from one generation to the next.

The purpose of this essay is to inform the reader of a real problem, media misrepresentation, and to try to have the reader change the way the think, feel, and perceive the poor. She gives examples of encounters she has had that are a result of the damaging depiction and conveys to the reader why those thoughts are wrong by using her own personal experiences. She mentions that before entering college she never thought about social class. However, the comments from both other students and her professors about poverty were alarming to her. Other people viewed the poor as, “shiftless, mindless, lazy, dishonest, and unworthy” indigents. Hook opposes that stereotypical image of the poor, referring back to being taught in a “culture of poverty,” the values to be intelligent, honest, and hard-working. She uses these personal experiences to her advantage by showing she has had an inside look at poverty.

Parsing out the influences of cultural and structural factors leading to differential behaviors among the poor and nonpoor is a difficult challenge for sociologists concerned with stratification and inequality. This is largely due to the fact that they appear to be so heavily intertwined. Structural and cultural factors reinforce each other in complex ways. Pervasive cultural elements such as ideologies and values are used to frame and interpret existing socio-economic structures and their effects on individuals. Structural forces such as access to resources such as information, education and employment shape cultural views and attitudes as well.

Poverty is not only an individual problem, but a societal problem. Harrell R. Rodgers wrote an article, “Why are People Poor in America?” Rodgers gives two categories of theories that are used when cultural /behavioral or structural/economic. Behavior/culture theorists look at the behavior, culture and values of the poor as the reason for poverty. While structural /ecIn western culture statistics are an excessively used tool in describing social issues. Numbers help explain a situation, but in excesses, can dehumanize a population. A serious social issue that suffers from desensitization is poverty. Poverty, as it is defined by Webster, is the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of supporting; the condition of being poor. The condition of poverty plagues many American families. According to the Census bureau, 15.1 percent of the United States population falls below the poverty threshold. 15.1 percent does not draw the same effect as the actual 46.6 million individuals living in those circumstances. In the United States, poverty has become a growing problem. There are 15 million more people living in poverty today than in the year 2000 (U.S. Bureau of the Census 2013). The poverty threshold, developed by Molly Orshansky, is a tool used to help indicate how many Americans are in poverty. According to the census, 46.6 million of America’s total population makes less than the poverty threshold for a family of four. The condition of being

In a study conducted by Oscar Lewis, he claims “the low-income population of San Juan and New York and found a widespread way of thinking that he called fatalism” (Macionis 2013:88). He determined people who are raised in poverty are more likely to have, “low self-esteem, limited aspirations, and a sense of powerlessness” (Macionis 2013:88). Some ethnicities, mainly the minority, are described as “oppositional culture” when they succeed or portray stereotyped white characteristics of prosperity in order to discourage advancement. People raised in poverty can find it hard to believe in a better life with education and success if they are only exposed to below average condition of living, education, income, and health care. Poverty is not only an issue of income, it also has negative effects that are detrimental to a person over time.

In the article “The Myth of the Culture of Poverty,” by Paul Gorski he explains and challenges all the myths surrounding poverty and the mentality of the poor. Gorski argues that “poor people do not have weaker work ethics or lower levels of motivation than wealthier people” (33). This way of thinking is called the culture of classism. A culture that leads us to have low expectations from people who have low-income or come from low-income families. Classism are what people who are financial stable use to define poor people and their characteristics. I choose this article because Gorski provides sufficient evidence on why we should not fall victim to myths that people use to depict poor people and their

For many years, people have had the misconception that people fall into the poverty due to the culture of poverty. The culture of poverty is what others think “of people living in poverty “fundamentally different from other Americans and that these factors are largely responsible for their continued long term poverty (Henslin, 2014).” Behind this concept, people continually think that the poor are lazy and that they bring poverty on themselves. Although there are many people who fall under the stereotypical view, there are those who live on the verge of poverty but are barely able to keep themselves out of poverty; especially when they are dealing with life changes like divorce, an accident, an illness, or the loss of a job. With the social structure that emphases discrimination amongst many subcultures as well as the job market being

The poverty theory developed by Lewis (1968) and Payne (2001) argues that the culture of poverty is both an adaptation and reaction of the economically disadvantaged to their marginal position, low socioeconomic status and impartibility in achieving success. According to the poverty theory established by Lewis (1968), there are many traits associated with the culture of poverty. Families living on poverty have a level of education and are living in inadequate housing conditions. This factor is often associated with low academic achievement and success of economically disadvantaged students. Consequently, Lewis (1998) contends that children living in poverty are often exposed early in life to drugs and alcohol, abusive relationships, and single-parent households dominated by the female parent.

In the United States today there are many reforms that had been made to help cope with those who are living in poverty. However, these reforms have been keeping many from being able to climb the social class ladder because the “War on Poverty” has not been effective on ridding poverty in the U.S. According to the Heritage Foundation, there are about forty six million people who are living in poverty and it is a conflict in this country because it puts people of lower class at a disadvantage because they have to choose between necessities like healthcare, child care and food in order to help themselves and their family members; therefore, many sacrifices have to be made to insure their survival. Though

Unfortunately, poverty is a complex phenomenon. It occurs on a structural level, as seen when discussing poverty rates, and on a personal level. In order to help individuals living in poverty, professionals must move beyond any myths and biases they may hold. Poverty cannot be fully grasped without an appreciation of the social environment in which poverty exists (Seccombe, 2011).

Those who argue that poverty has no effects on the mind and development of those who grow up and live in it are merely blind to the struggles of families that cannot afford the basic necessities needed to live. While I knew that there had to be some adverse effects brought on by growing in environments that are undoubtedly less than ideal but, this writing has given me a new perspective on poverty and more of a reason to help bring an end to

Annotated Bibliography Mohan, T. N., & Sartorio, J. (2007).  Welcome to Poverty USA. [electronic resource] : the 51st state. Princeton, N.J.: Films for the Humanities and Sciences, c2007.

Poverty is not easily defined, because it plays out in many different ways. To be in poverty, one is generally making at most three times the amount of money they would need to sustain themselves and their family members living a minimalist lifestyle. These families tend to eat cheaper food, use public transport, have less access to good educational institutions, are exposed to harmful environments, and have less access to healthcare, among many other things. Through the lenses of conflict theory and functionalism, one can begin to understand why poverty so affects many aspects many people’s lives in ways that carry them through adulthood, and sometimes pervades later generations of their families.

This review is formulated with scholarly sources and references based off of poverty in America. This disclosure is approached with a value free sociological approach, and it will give insight on the social causes of poverty and the effects it has on America. Poverty is a very controversial topic. Many will assume that people living in poverty are lazy, made bad life decisions, or that they are solely the reason for their predicament however, people living in poverty would argue that their are deeper issues for it. Poverty will be deeply explained and researched from both perspectives

Culture of Poverty. In his study entitled ‘La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture Poverty’, Oscar Lewis (1966) explained the second approach of dependency-based explanation which is dependency culture. He made a research among the urban poor of Mexico and Puerto Rico in the 1950s. He found out that poor people in a class-stratified society were likely to develop a set of