Sociology 1 Chapter 3

The social-conflict approach also includes multicultural theory, which links poverty to race and ethnicity.

As noted earlier, the risk of poverty for both African Americans (26.2 percent are poor) and Hispanics (23.6 percent) is more than twice as high as the risk of poverty among non-Hispanic white people (10.1 percent). Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have above-average incomes ($82,732 in 2014) but a poverty rate of 12.0 percent, which is somewhat higher than the rate for non-Hispanic white people.

This theory begins with the fact of patriarchy, a social pattern in which males dominate females. In practice, patriarchy means that men typically enjoy more wealth, prestige, and power in our society than women do. In addition, women of all racial and ethnic categories are at higher risk of poverty than men.

Feminist theory - Macro-level

urpose of the reform was suggested by its formal title: the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.

First, responsibility for helping the poor shifted from the federal government to the states. The old federal program, AFDC, was ended in favor of a state-level program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The new rules were intended to increase the "personal responsibility" of the poor by requiring able-bodied people seeking benefits to find a job or enroll in job training. In addition, the program limits the period of time that families can receive benefits to two consecutive years with a lifetime cap of five years.

As the Industrial Revolution began in the early 1800s, U.S. cities swelled with immigrants. The new industrial capitalist economy encouraged a spirit of individualism and self-reliance. The idea that people were responsible for their own social position remained popular, and with greater anonymity and social diversity, attitudes toward the poor became more negative. As a result, the public criticized charity as a misguided policy that would only end up reducing people's need to work and encourage them to become lazy. Some organizations such as the Salvation Army (founded in 1865) did offer food and shelter to the poor, but they included moral instruction reinforcing the belief that the poor were weak and of bad character and in need of reforming themselves.

In the 1870s, the scientific charity movement (really an early form of sociology) began studying what categories of people were poor, why people were poor, and what could be done to help them. This new thinking helped guide the settlement house movement. Settlement houses were buildings located in the worst slums of a city, where a staff of social scientists and reform-minded activists helped new immigrants get settled in their new surroundings.

The poverty line represents a dollar amount of annual income below which the government defines a person or family as "poor" so that they may become eligible for government assistance.

One person $12,071 Two persons 15,379 Three persons 18,850 Four persons 24,230 Five persons 28,695 Six persons 32,473 Seven persons 36,927 Eight persons 40,968 Nine or more persons 49,021

In the 1920s and 1930s, sociologists at the University of Chicago linked poverty to social disorganization, a breakdown in social order caused by rapid social change.

People arrived too fast for a city's neighborhoods, schools, and factories to absorb them. The result was overcrowded apartment buildings, overflowing classrooms, and too many people for the number of available jobs. The overall result was poverty and related social problems.

William Ryan (1976) describes how society can define people as responsible for their own poverty. He calls this process blaming the victim, finding the cause of a social problem in the behavior of people who suffer from it.

Pick an issue that you see as a social problem. Almost any problem will do; here, our focus is poverty. Decide how people who suffer from the problem differ from everyone else. It is easy to see that many poor people don't dress as well as others; many also don't speak English very well. Many have little schooling. Most poor people live in rundown housing. They sometimes get into trouble with the police. The list goes on and on. Define these differences as the cause of the problem. Blaming the victim rests on claims such as "Of course those people are poor! Just look at them! Listen to them speak! See where they live! Who is surprised that people like that are poor? They deserve to be where they are." Respond to the problem by trying to change the victims, not the larger society. Think to yourself that people would not be poor if only they would dress better, speak better, live in better neighborhoods—in short, be more like those who are well off.

The largest welfare programs, which are run by the federal government and state governments, typically have three characteristics:

Social welfare programs benefit people or activities defined as worthy. The public and its leaders debate and decide which categories of people or activities are most worthy of support. The categories of people who benefit from social welfare programs change along with the level of resources that government makes available according to swings in the political mood of the country. Social welfare programs benefit most of the U.S. population. Welfare programs include not only assistance to poor families but also price supports for farmers, the oil depletion allowance to petroleum companies, the homeowner's tax deduction for home mortgage interest, pensions paid to the elderly, benefits for veterans, and low-interest loans for students. Government bailouts of GM and Chrysler as well as various financial corporations in recent years are all examples of massive social welfare assistance. Overall, social welfare programs reduce economic inequality, but only a little. To fund social welfare programs, government takes from the rich (in taxes) and gives to the poor (in benefits), which has the effect of reducing economic inequality. But many programs, such as the recent corporate bailouts, benefit wealthier individuals and families.

Some early sociologists argued in favor of a "bad apple" theory that claimed that poverty was the result of personal flaws. For example, Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) developed an analysis, called social Darwinism, which viewed society as a competitive arena where the most able became rich and the least able fell into poverty. Spencer described the operation of a competitive society as the "survival of the fittest" in which the "less fit" fell behind.

Structural-Functional Theory Macro-level

Then, in 1929, the Great Depression rolled across the United States. As many as one-fourth of all working people lost their jobs, and the economic collapse suddenly sent millions of families into the swelling ranks of the poor.

Under such conditions, it became impossible to see poverty as caused by people who were lazy or "different." It was then that U.S. society began to define poverty as a social problem.

Herbert Gans (1971) offers a critical response to Davis and Moore's theory, pointing out that inequality is useful but only to affluent people. The function of inequality, Gans claims, is to ensure that there is a supply of poor people willing to do almost any job, no matter how unpleasant.

social disorganization Symbolic-Interaction Theory Micro-level

Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore (1945) asked, "Why does inequality exist everywhere?" Their answer was that inequality—specifically, differences in the rewards given to people who perform various jobs—is useful for the operation of society. Linking rewards to the importance of various jobs is therefore useful. Therefore, social stratification—with some people having more resources than others—has some positive functions for a society.

social disorganization Symbolic-Interaction Theory Micro-level

A more recent social pathology theory is the "bell curve" thesis of Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray (1994). Over the course of the twentieth century, they argue, the United States became more of a meritocracy, a system of social inequality in which social standing corresponds to personal ability and effort. In today's information age, intelligence matters more than ever in the world of work, and corporations greatly reward personal ability. For this reason, Herrnstein and Murray conclude, government programs can do only so much to improve the plight of the poor: As Herbert Spencer said a century earlier, they are capable of little more.

social pathology approach Structural-Functional Theory Macro-level

Charles Murray (2013) has studied the diverging cultures of both high- and low-income communities. He studied high-income communities where he found evidence that optimism about the future and a strong work ethic are alive and well. By contrast, in white, working-class communities he found that pessimism about the future was widespread, eroding industriousness (measured by a lower rate of employment), lowering rates of marriage, and weakening religious values. These trends combine to weaken the social fabric of these communities and to push poverty rates up. Overall, Murray concludes, the United States is more and more breaking apart into two societies—a small "new upper class" and an enlarging "new lower class."

social pathology approach Structural-Functional Theory Macro-level

The social pathology approach is also found in the work of the anthropologist Oscar Lewis (1961, 1966). Lewis studied poor communities in San Juan (Puerto Rico), Mexico City, and New York City, asking why some neighborhoods remained poor from generation to generation. His conclusion: They contain a culture of poverty, cultural patterns that encourage poverty as a way of life. Lewis claimed that people adapt to poverty, accepting their plight and giving up hope that life can improve. Doing so, they pass on the culture of poverty from one generation to the next.

social pathology approach Structural-Functional Theory Macro-level

Social-conflict theory takes the view that poverty is in no way inevitable or natural, and it is certainly a problem our society needs to fix. This approach also rejects the idea that poverty results from flaws in poor people themselves. On the contrary, it places the blame for poverty in the operation of society itself

Social-conflict theory Macro-level