Other Americas: Transnationalism, Scholarship, and the Culture of Poverty in Mexico and the United States

Abstract

The anthropologist Oscar Lewis first used the term “culture of poverty” in a 1959 article on Mexico. Within months, the idea that the poor had a distinct culture became part of a passionate, decade-long, worldwide debate about poverty. Scholars, policy makers, and broader publics discussed what caused poverty and how to remedy it. How entrenched were the class and racial differences that led to poverty? How did those differences affect a country’s standing in the community of nations? This article tracks the concept of a culture of poverty as a way of probing the reciprocal, if unequal, connections between Mexico and the United States and their relation to national narratives and policy debates. It tracks how Lewis’s formulation of a culture of poverty drew on his training as an anthropologist in the United States, his extensive dialogue with Mexican intellectuals, and his fieldwork in Mexico. It also shows how Lewis and others reformulated the notion in response to intense public controversies in Mexico and Puerto Rico; the vehement U.S. discussions surrounding the War on Poverty and Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report on the Negro family, and larger events such as the Cuban Revolution, the U.S. civil rights movement, decolonization, the Vietnam War, and second-wave feminism.

Perceiving the Problem of Poverty and Schooling: Deconstructing the Class Stereotypes that Mis-Shape Education Practice and Policy

“…According to Lewis, these included an emphasis on the present and neglect of the future, violent tendencies, and a lack of a sense of history. Notably, Lewis's findings, which dozens of scholars since have attempted, and failed, to replicate, largely were rejected by the social science community by the mid-1970s (see, for instance, Billings, 1974;Harris, 1976;Van Til & Van Til, 1973) and widely criticized among poverty scholars for its generalizations and stereotyping (Rosemblatt, 2009;Ryan, 1971;Valentine, 1968). The popular phrase "blaming the victim" was coined by William Ryan in 1971 in his critical response to the "culture of poverty" paradigm.…”

“…Of course, stereotypes tend to stick more strongly to disenfranchised communities that do not have the institutional power to popularize a counter-narrative (Salzer, 2000) than to privileged communities that do have the power, not only to popularize a false narrative, but also to use that narrative to justify their own privilege and, in Woddell and Henry's (2005) words, "to rationalize discriminatory practices" (p. 302). In the education realm, where conversations about class and poverty have been dominated for the past decade by Payne (Gorski, 2008a;Ng & Rury, 2006;OseiKofi, 2005) and the "culture of poverty" paradigm, a framework that assumes-and wrongfully so (Gorski, 2008b;Rosemblatt, 2009)-that poor people share a consistent, predictable set of values and behaviors, a particularly unrelenting kind of stereotyping has been leveled against students living in poverty.…”

Mexico City as an Urban Laboratory: Oscar Lewis, the “Culture of Poverty” and the Transnational History of the Slum

“…In Mexico, The Children of Sánchez stirred a nationalistic scandal. 65 The book was read by the pro-government Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística (SMGE) as an American attack against the Mexican Revolution and government, a particularly hypocritical one since the United States was waging an imperialistic war against Vietnam while oppressing its black population at home. The SMGE denied the conditions portrayed in the book and questioned Lewis's motivations, suggesting that he could be an FBI agent (in fact, Lewis was targeted by FBI agents, who were compiling a thick file on him).…”

Japanese‐American confinement and scientific democracy: Colonialism, social engineering, and government administration

“…For a discussion of the fungible nature of concepts of “race” and “culture,” see Rosemblatt (, 2018).…”

“…For a discussion of the fungible nature of concepts of "race" and "culture," seeRosemblatt (2009Rosemblatt ( , 2018.5 Kelly (1980); JohnCollier to Sophia Aberle, October 13, 1942, reel 25, John Collier Papers (MS 146), Yale University Library (hereafter JCP-YU);. Quotation from JohnCollier to Milton Eisenhower, April 15, 1942, box 22, OFJC- NAB.…”