culture & poverty again

Rakesh Bhandari bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU
Wed Jul 14 15:33:05 PDT 1999


Wojtek,

I was not opposing culture of poverty theories, the many and contradictory variants of which span from Oscar Lewis's to Michael Buroway's contributions. Following Richard Lerner and Richard Lewontin, I was opposing the cultural determinism implicit in Harrison's Appalachia analysis--that is, the doctrine that our cultural heritage passed down by a process of unconscious acculturation is practically inescapable. This doctrine differs only in trivial mechanical detail from biological determinism, the doctrine that we cannot escape our genes. I wanted to suggest what this work had in common with the Bell Curve.

In short, what Harrison does not sufficiently recognize is that human culture is not autonomous but is in constant process of *historical development* by the action of individuals who are, in turn, formed by culture.

What I suggesting here is then better understood in terms of Adorno's critique of Spengler's fatalist conception of culture than in terms of the culture of poverty debates.


> But even more importantly, if you reject the view of
>culture as an inhibitor of progress - then all you are left with is
>sociobiology (or so-so-biology) in explaining social economic inequalities.

It is not a question of rejecting culture but critiquing its autonomisation such that it paradoxically becomes nothing but a variant of vulgar materialist doctrine, critiqued by Marx thusly:

"The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstance and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men that change circumstances and that the educator himself needs educating."

yours, rakesh



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