Poverty Culture and Underclass Approach to Local Economic Development
The notion of a "culture of poverty" can be viewed in a number of ways when considering it as a basis for action in local economic development. The central concept here is that, as one resident of a aboriginal core area leader commented to me once regarding another aboriginal person, "that behavior isn't from any culture I know of, that's just the culture of poverty". The daily grind of poverty affects people not just as individuals, but as groups, and the collective behavior is then described as a new "culture".
The term can be used in either a descriptive or a pejorative sense. In the warmer southern United States where mobile homes are used by many poor people for housing, the term used often used for "trailer court culture" is "White trailer trash". A newer term coming from the international development literature is "the underclass".
Though the problems of writing off people with labels or ignoring them once labeled is a very real problem, two things can be drawn from the literature in this area which might prove helpful for developing a local economy:
Links to sites related to this approach to local economic development are listed below.
- Many of the equity oriented programs in the educational realm arise out of efforts to help people caught up in this reality (and their families) to move along in their lives. Care must be taken to not oversell benefits and be realistic about race and class social realities which beneficiaries of such programs might face, so that they do not backfire later down the road. I now say to all people I deal with in the area of career issues, "the economy has changed and everybody is now disenfranchised. Nobody is going to hire you and the safety nets are falling apart. If you happen to get hired by someone, have a party and celebrate - you have a won the lottery, but don't wait up nights for it to happen. Are you still interested in getting on with your life?" Such an interchange tends to bring things down to reality up front, and cut out a lot of unrealistic expectation.
- The literature and activities which are focused on correcting the systemic inequities in the city, such as those raised by the political economy oriented people often give good ideas as to what might be done locally to remove impediments to local economic growth and development.
Links To Further Resources
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