Lower Class People Research Articles

Issues in the Personality Assessment of Lower-Class Patients

Summary The recent national concerns about the poor and uneducated members of our society brings to the forefront the psychological treatment of the lower class. For many years, in state hospitals and mental hygiene clinics and now in community mental health centers, psychologists have been called upon for personality assessment of lower-class patients. The results of various studies indicate rather conclusively that lower-class people, for a variety of reasons, are much more likely to be assessed less favorably than members of the middle class. This paper is an attempt to review some factors in assessing the lower class patient so that the clinician can face these issues more clearly in his psychological assessment.

“het is uijt groote nood dat ik myn kind hier brengen…”

This article discusses an exploratory study of the language use and choice in 19th-centuryfoundlings’ letters from Gent. Inspired by the 'language history from below’ tradition,this study aims to deepen our knowledge of language past regarding the written languageof 'ordinary people'. After focusing on the tension between non-standard writing practicesand standard norms, we look at the language choice in the foundlings' letters. It isremarkable that some of these letters were written in French, whereas it is generallyassumed that lower class people only spoke Dutch dialects. We will try and contextualizeour findings concerning language choice within the broader framework of tensionsbetween French and Dutch in Belgium.

Relacyjno-symboliczne aspekty ubóstwa w dyskursie politycznym na temat programu „Rodzina 500+”. Przypadek tygodnika „Newsweek Polska”

The article shows relational-symbolic aspects of poverty in polish political discourse about flagship Law and Justice’s Party social program called “Family 500+”. Based on the case study of weekly newspaper Newsweek Polska the author stressed main discursive strategies such as demoralization, humiliation of poor people, lower class and unemployed people as a examples of individual blame explanations of poverty. Moreover article presents efforts of justifying inequalities as a result of neoliberal ideology and the vision of profligacy of public institutions due to social politics expenses.

The Factor of Militarism

To investigate the nature of militarism, two different but related questionnaires were admini stered to two different samples of adults and university students, N = 122 and 261, respectively. Both questionnaires contained a variety of ideological and personality scales selected on the basis of a review of the literature. In both cases, the scale scores were standardized, correlated with each other, and factor analyzed by the principal components method. In both samples, a primary factor of militarism was among the first two factors extracted. The primary factor of militarism contained scales of militarism, nationalism, severe treat ment of criminals, anti-Communism, anti-internationalism, conservatism, anti-democratic at titudes, authoritarianism, and anti-Semitism. The items in these scales were characterized by a readiness to use or threaten to use force and punishment to control the behavior of those believed to be deviating from the values of Western adult society, including the Communist 'enemy', children, Jews, Negroes, foreigners, lower-class people, sexual deviates, and mental patients. This need for compulsion and punishment was presumed to be a function of lack of faith in human nature. The primary factor of militarism was significantly correlated with the ideological factors of conservatism, nationalism, religiosity, lack of internationalism, lack of knowledge of foreign affairs, and political cynicism; and with the personality factors of extraversion, misanthropy, faulty childhood disciplines, lack of social responsibility, neuroticism, and lack of empathy. Some of these results (such as the correlation of militarism with conservatism and religiosity) are probably limited in their generalizability to the Western World, while the rest are prob ably more universal in their generalizability. However, cross-cultural studies will be required to increase our understanding of militarism in general. This study implies the need for more freedom in human relations if we want more respon sibility in human relations, including international relations.

Does Social Class Shape the Church?

A sense of smugness about the status of their intergroup relations seems to characterize many churches since policies for integrating non-whites into their congregations have been initiated or strengthened. Accepting racial integration on paper is not the end of such problems for the church, however; it often is but the beginning. Negroes in America belong predominantly to the laboring or lower classes. The majority of white Protestant churches have a membership that is drawn chiefly from the middle classes. Problems of integration across social and economic boundaries will therefore complicate the problems of racial integration. We may with some justification ask if churches which are unable to integrate with lower-class white people ought even to propose that they try to integrate with lower class Negroes.

A Title of Distinction

After the battle of Lopera, fought in 1483 against the Moorish kingdom of Granada, Ferdinand and Isabel, sovereigns of Aragon and Castile, received the victorious Count of Cabra and his nephew, the Alcaide de los Donceles, with lavish entertainment. The sovereigns honored the heroes by bestowing upon them large revenues for life, and in further recognition of their gallant services they granted them and their descendants the privilege of prefixing the title don to their names.' By contrast, little more than a century later, in 1591, Fray Juan Benito Guardiola complained that, low-class people even women of the streets were usurping the illustrious title of don and donia.2 Between these two dates, and continuing into the seventeenth century, social changes were at work breaking down the old hierarchical concept of society. The spurious assumption of the title don became a symbol of the resulting chaos, and criticism of its use appeared frequently in Spanish literature of the Golden Age. The subject furnished the motive for much satiric comment, and sometimes it was closely related to literary theme. Still the great hue and cry against the widespread use of don must be regarded as odd if we consider the historical evidence. In the Cantar de Mio Cid almost everybody was don. The title was given to the two ecclesiastics, to all the hidalgos, whether lords or vassals, and to the women with one exception. It was not used for the Infantes de Carri6n, perhaps because of their youth, although their wives called them don. No Moor was called don, but the Jews Raquel and Vidas were given the If there were a dead level of equality in things, only one kind of created good would exist, which would be a manifest derogation from the perfection of creation.-St. Thomas Aquinas

Growth of Nagata Village in the Tokugawa Era

According to the data from Shumon-ninbetsu-cho (1663-1870 A.D.) and other records, the author found out the following conclusions:1. In the former, middle and the first half of the later pariod (from the latter half of 17C. to the end of 18c.) the increase and decrease of population and the number of families had run parallel to that of the crop from paddy field. It indicates that the economic life of villagers had depended solely on the income from their cultivated land.2. However, in latter half of the later perod (the first half of 19C.) population and the number of families both had gradually increased, and the difference between the upper and the lower class in their patterns of family component had been diminished. It is due to the fhe fact that additional income favored the people in lower class, such as servants, inn-maids, porters etc., by earning side-live in the inn-town. Because, during this period this comunity had become a local center of commerce and handicraft deside of an inn-town on the Highway.3. This is a case where a village happened to lie along a highway, and in other villages being aside from highways the said trend appears far later.Note (1) Shumon-ninbetsu-cho: The book in which religion of each individual or of family and territorial property owned have been registerred.

Deviation and Social Change in the Jewish Community of a Small Polish Town

Although hostile attitudes toward persons who forsook the Jewish community remained unchanged, the youth evidently no longer gave the same allegiance to the culture as their parents did. The most striking evidences were the decline of religious orthodoxy and attendance at meetings of Zionist organizations and decrease of arranged marriages. Most social change occurred in the lower class, since the social structure of the community was such that it made lower-class people more likely to engage in nonoconformist conduct.

Social Class, Intermarriage, and Church Membership in a Kentucky Community

In the Holiness groups in a Kentucky mountain community intermarriage is concentrated in the highest and lowest social classes. Members of the highest class apparently intermarried because they refused to associate intimately with lower-class families, who, in turn, intermarried because the higher-class people refused to associate with them. Membership in Holiness goups was confined almost entirely to the lowestclass group and the Holiness gruops met specific, unique needs of low-class people.