culture & poverty/ culture $ wealth

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Thu Jul 15 09:05:58 PDT 1999


At 11:10 AM 7/15/99 -0400, Charles Brown wrote:
>I agree with Rakesh's criticism of the thesis described on this thread. We
don't need a biological explanation nor even a rejection of the concept of culture to analyze this circumstance. We only need a theory of cultural development that understands cultures of poverty in capitalism as made and created by the bougeois state and other hegmonic institutions. The Appalachian traditions and customs that might tend toward poverty did not derive on their own outside of the class struggle in American history, any more than similar traditions in the Black communities around the country. The key is that we not attribute the tendency toward poverty to causes within the Appalachian or African American working class, but to the conscious policies, practices and CULTURE OF WEALTH, that is the class conscious traditions and customs of the U.S. ruling class and its predominant control of the state, the educational and training system, media ( from the church and newspapers of old to the tel!

-- snip --

While you are right about the systemic causes of certain cultural beliefs, I think the distinction between inside/outside group sources of those beliefs are more confusing than explaining. As I said in my reply to a similar argument voiced by Angela, this is a wya of moralizing or putting blame - not wn explanation of historical processes. And that explantion must account for the fact that most members of the working class are willing cooperators of their own exploitation.

Michael Burawoy (_Manufacturing Consent_) makes that point by his emprical studies of working class culture in the Chicago area - and shows how "folk culture" is used to defuse dissent and induce compliance to factory regime.

Ignoring the fact that such "folk culture" (add to it, patriotis, racial prejudice, sexism etc. that are a part of that culture) is a cultural shibboleth that defines the working class - and many workers will be more willing to defend their "right" to discriminate agains women and minorities than to take ana action against their bosses - is actually doing a disservice to any progressive social change,

wojtek


>evision today), and other culture instilling institutions for many decades.
>
>Thus, the answer to Marx's Theses on Feuerbach point is that in the main
the educators in capitalism are educated, trained and controlled by the capitalists and their culture of wealth; and those educators must turn out a certain percentage of poor people, for capitalism must have a MASS reserve army of unemployed and poor. And some people must learn to be that way, thus they are enculturated in empoverishment.
>
>Traditions or cultures of anti-intellectualism and know-nothingism arise
early in American history. There was a literal Knownothings political party in the early 1800's. There is a tradition of social ostracism of academically "smart" students by average students within schools that is within this culture.
>
> In school grades are on a curve. The curve does not reflect the natural
range of academic potentials in the population but rather that there are only an elite minority of slots for higher education. Somebody has to fail because there are a limited number of slots in the culture of wealth. (After all part of the definition of being wealthy is having more money than most people AND HAVING POWER OVER MOST PEOPLE. There is no wealth without poverty by definition.) Anyway, there is tracking in the schools, such that many students are targetted for an empoverished and empoverishing education early on.
>
>This culture of poverty has a dialectical twin: the culture of wealth.
With capitalist property relations, this culture of wealth must enforce a culture of poverty on many masses of people for the culture of wealth to continue.
>
>The culture of poverty theory is an empoverished philosophy without its
complement the theory of the culture of wealth.
>
> In other words, we need a historical materialist conception of the
culture of poverty in its struggle with the culture of wealth.
>
>
>Charles Brown
>
>>>> Rakesh Bhandari <bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU> 07/14/99 06:33PM >>>
>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
>
>
>
>



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list