New Life for an Old Concept: Frame Analysis and the Reinvigoration of Studies in Culture and Poverty

Abstract

Erving Goffman’s attention to the concept of framing provided modern sociology with a critical means for expanding explorations of the cultural terrain of meaning-making. Frame analysis concerns the manner in which individuals perceive and respond to particular events and circumstances. Since Goffman’s introduction of the term, the concept of framing has been expanded considerably in sociological inquiry. What Goffman and many of his adherents may not have imagined, however, is that frame analysis serves as a useful tool for improved comprehension of how low-income individuals interpret and present images of their social reality. By drawing from literature that makes use of frame analysis in sociological subfields somewhat removed from research on race and poverty and incorporating data from low-income African American men who reside in Detroit, this article explores how these concepts can enrich and advance sociologically grounded cultural inquiry into poverty and argues that scholarly approaches to considering the agency of the poor can be revised and enriched.

Devolving the carceral state: Race, prisoner reentry, and the micro-politics of urban poverty management

“…Provided the researcher carefully distinguishes between speech acts (Lamont, 1992), observed behavior (Jerolmack and Khan, 2014), and the interpretive frameworks stakeholders employ (Young, 2010), ethnography is an ideal way to study the texture of social phenomena as it seeks to relay the practices of social actors in situ. In the following sections, I present findings from the field and discuss their implications.…”

“Change” Frames and the Mobilization of Social Capital for Formerly Incarcerated Job Seekers

“…In sociology, the concept of frames has been used most extensively in research on social movements and collective action (Benford and Snow, 2000). More recently it has been embraced by scholars attempting to bring culture back to discussions of poverty without the stigma of once-dominant conceptions of culture (Small et al, 2010; Young 2010). Underlying its use in these disparate bodies of research is the notion that individuals are signifying agents whose actions are informed at least in part by the meanings they attribute to the situations and events unfolding around them (Benford and Snow, 2000; Young 2010).…”

Transitory Mobility, Cultural Heterogeneity, and Victimization Risk Among Young Men of Color: Insights From an Ethnographic Study in Cape Town, South Africa

“…To understand better the social processes associated with adverse outcomes for minority youth, the study of culture by urban scholars has resulted in complex theorizing about the sources, components, reproduction, and disjunctures of culture, particularly in its interplay with social structures and human agency (see Small, Harding, and Lamont, ; Young, ). Yet criminologists have relied disproportionately on Anderson's () Code of the Street (McGloin et al., ; Stewart, Schreck, and Simons, ; Stewart and Simons, , ; but see Berg, Stewart, Brunson et al., ), limiting a fuller understanding of how culture might relate to victimization risks.…”