Anthropology of poverty

Anthropology of poverty

QN: Using relevant examples discuss Oscar Lewis's arguments on poverty and how this can be used to understand vulnerability in african societies.

Poverty is mainly views as an indicator of lack of access to resources and income opportunities, but rather it has other aspects of social positioning such as geographical location, age, gender, class, ethnicity, community, structure, community decision-making processes and political issues that determine poor people’s vulnerability (Yodmani, 2001). Poor households often identify vulnerability as a condition that takes into account both exposures to serious risk and defenselessness against deprivation. Defenselessness in turn is often seen as a function of social marginalization that ultimately results in economic marginalization.
Oscar Lewis was an American anthropologist. He is best known for his vivid depictions of the lives of slum dwellers and his argument- a cross-generational culture of poverty among poor people- transcends national boundaries. The culture of poverty is a social theory that expands on the cycle of poverty. It has attracted equal measures of attention and criticisms since its inception and later on became an accepted model for explaining poverty. The theory offers one way to explain why poverty exists despite the numerous anti-poverty programs that have existed and continue to exist in many parts of the world.
Early proponents of this theory argued that the poor are not simply lacking resources, but also acquire a poverty-perpetuating value system. According to Oscar Lewis, "The subculture of the poor develops mechanisms that tend to perpetuate it, especially because of what happens to the world view, aspirations, and character of the children who grow up in it.” (Moynihan, 1969).
Lewis struggled to render "the poor" as legitimate subjects whose lives were transformed by poverty. He argued that although the burdens of poverty were systemic and therefore imposed upon these members of...

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