The culture of poverty... huh...
Today, as always after study, I was walking alone through Gahoe-dong and ended up at the cafe I always go to. Today, instead of opening my laptop, I started shuffling through the books around me. Then I came across a book called "Sadang-dong Plus 25." It felt like it was at my temperature. I picked it up casually, but my heart grew heavy as I read it in my chair. It almost felt like it was telling my own story. I am transcribing here a few parts that made me pause while skimming...
(...abridged)
After Oscar Lewis coined the term "culture of poverty" in "The Children of Sanchez" in 1961, it sparked countless political and academic debates not only within the U.S. but all over the world. The traits of the culture of poverty he identified numbered more than 50: frequent violence, lack of historical consciousness, lack of future planning, low motivation, weak work ethic, drugs, alcoholism, cohabitation before marriage, sexual promiscuity, gambling, and so on. These traits become variables used to explain the reproduction of poverty.
(...abridged)
You cannot say that Grandmother Geumseon's family became poor because of the culture of poverty. At least it is not the starting line of their family's poverty. If we take the grandmother as the starting line of poverty, her way of life does not fit any of the items listed under the culture of poverty — lack of restraint, alcoholism, laziness, or even sexual promiscuity. The start of the poverty was the Korean War, and even after moving down from the north, there was neither a house nor a husband, and for a 28-year-old female head of household who had to solve her family's livelihood alone with her children, there simply were no "widow policies." The grandmother did all sorts of trading, and was even detained for illegally trading in the black market. Her children started earning their own bread very early. No matter how hard they worked, they could not save any money. Her children neither committed crimes nor played any tricks to get by.
But from this point on, a way of life that could be labeled "culture of poverty" began to appear. The children did not even ask why their mother had come down from the north, and they did not want to know. The grandchildren said they do not ask because it would hurt grandmother's heart. If this is called lack of historical consciousness, then it is lack of historical consciousness. The children could not attend school because they had to earn money, and started cohabiting because they had no money to get married. Getting pregnant and having children before marriage — a so-called "culture of poverty" of a lack of planning for the future — is routine in this class. Researchers of the culture of poverty point out that they are weak on the motivation to defer immediate desire.
But when you look closely at the culture of poverty that appears in these people, it is not the cause but the consequence. The ways of life not only of the grandmother's family but of the poor families we met in Sadang-dong and Sanggye-dong were all, rather than the cause of poverty, the consequence of poverty.
— from "Sadang-dong Plus 25" (Cho Eun)
It is my problem.
