Class, Underclass, and Poverty

Abstract

Abstract The concept of ‘the underclass’, or, as it is most frequently applied, the ‘urban underclass’, has generated the most vigorous debate on the nature of poverty in the USA since the 1960s. It is a term, as Peterson (1991) notes, that can appeal to conservatives, liberals, and radicals alike. Conservatives can focus on dependency culture and rational behaviour. Radicals can identify a group shaped and dominated by macroeconomic and political forces but denied a productive role. Liberals can direct their attention to the contrast between mainstream America and marginalized groups. Analyses of the urban underclass have had a major influence on the debate on ‘visions of poverty’ and the appropriate vocabulary of poverty. Perhaps the most influential contribution has been Charles Murray’s (1984) Losing Ground. Murray’s book formed part of the onslaught of the radical right. For Murray the underclass is a consequence of the perverse interventions of the welfare state and, in particular, of policies that seduce in the short term but have the long-term consequence of creating a dependency culture. While Murray’s explanation has a clear cultural component, it must be distinguished from the culture-of-poverty explanations of anthropologists. In the USA such explanations can lead to a focus on the roots of the black underclass in the rural south (Marks 1991: 451).