Culture, poverty, politics: Cultural sociologists, Oscar Lewis, Antonio Gramsci

Abstract

This paper explores the methodological relevance of the culture concept for the study of poverty by cultural sociologists, Oscar Lewis, and Antonio Gramsci. Cultural sociologists currently dominate poverty studies in America and focus on the relationship of culture and poverty. Oscar Lewis’s idea of the culture of poverty influenced poverty studies by anthropologists in the 1960s. In the early twentieth century Antonio Gramsci argued that culture could serve as a revolutionary force to subvert the domination of the proletariat by the capitalist bourgeoisie. After exploring the political presumptions of each view point I evaluate their ideas against data from a field study of a community action council in America’s 1960s war on poverty.