Discuss the concept of the culture of poverty and critiques of that idea

What will be an ideal response?


Feedback: Culture of poverty is the idea that the poor have a value system that keeps them and their children in poverty. Believing that those values are transmitted from generation to generation, culture of poverty theorists say that even if poverty were eliminated, the former poor would probably continue to prefer instant gratification, be immoral by middle-class standards, and so on. From this view, the poor have a subculture with values that differ radically from the values of the other social classes and this explains their poverty. Edward Banfield said the poor focused only on the present and not on the future. Critics of the culture of poverty hypothesis argue that the poor are an integral part of U.S. society; they do not abandon the dominant values of the society, but rather, retain them while simultaneously holding an alternative set of values. This alternative set is a result of adaptation to the conditions of poverty.

Sociology

You might also like to view...

People are connected to religious values and beliefs through:

a. rituals b. cult structures c. pantheons d. a and c above e. a and b above

Sociology

According to the text, some personal problems

a. are viewed as conditions that affect individual members of a population. b. are related to the larger social issues in society. c. rarely harm all of society's members. d. rarely harm all of a culture's members.

Sociology

Gestures and words that form the basis of human communication are known as

A. folkways. B. norms. C. rites of passage. D. symbols.

Sociology

The Nuremberg Code was developed to protect biomedical research subjects after the Nazi experiments on concentration camp inmates were revealed.

Answer the following statement true (T) or false (F)

Sociology