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0:01 Hello students, welcome to the fourth in a series of tutorials to be done on the topic of poverty. Today we're going to be looking at on rather the culture of poverty theory by Oscar Lewis. Now what really is the culture of poverty theory? Now the culture of poverty theory opens by looking on the fact that poverty is not just caused by the absence of money. Right? So it's not just the circumstance of not having money which makes people poor. However, poverty is created by certain cultural and generational systems, value systems and beliefs and behaviors. So let me repeat
0:47 that or let me rephrase that. Oscar Louiswis is saying I know money people don't have which make them poor but it is their behavior probably with money their cultural beliefs where monies are where money is concerned their value system with money that creates that generational uh system of poverty that certain people inherit and we have looked at this example in class. You have people like scammers in today's society who will get a lonesome overnight because they didn't work for it, but their treatment of it does not put them in a position to be better off. And what happens is they just end up losing
1:34 it. Think about how culture would have impacted that pattern or those behaviors. The culture of a scammer is to brath, is to live lavish, is to create an image that others can look on you to know that you are living a certain lifestyle. And in doing so, in keeping up those cultural behaviors and beliefs, what they do is they bleed out their money in in the hype. Uh compare that to somebody who works hard or somebody who comes from a culture that teaches them save, you know, invest uh buy stocks. You don't need to boast. And we can see this pattern in rich people. They dress simply, they don't
2:20 they don't present themselves as rich. Uh their money is invested and they don't bra it out. Right? And when you think of culture, don't think say okay Jamaica has a one culture. No, we have different subcultures in Jamaica. So the culture uptown is different from the culture downtown. And Oscar is also saying that the culture of rich people is different from the culture of poor people. All right. So what are the key features of the culture of poverty theory? All right. Fatalism. So the first thing that Oscar Lewis presents as a feature of why there's a culture of poverty is fatalism. And fatalism is the
3:05 belief that your circumstances in life cannot change. You know some people just say born poor die poor the rich become rich and the poor become poorer. And there is really no sort of motivation to escape whatever circumstance you're in as a poor person. Some people just believe life count we out as the system set and we cannot truly climb that that system of stratification uh into tears above us and it is not true. Uh people have escaped poverty through various ways such as education. Uh some people marry into riches and wealth and there are different circumstances under which people may escape poverty. uh for some people it's because of their skill set
3:52 because of talents they were born with. Look at people like Usain Bolt that is solely based on talent and skill, right? So fatalism is the first feature why some people believe that perpetuates cultural poverty. It's the belief. So guess what? Life can get better for you. The second feature is present time orientation. And this focuses on immediate needs rather than long-term goals. So say for example, you are somebody who you are poor. However you work, when you earn, instead of saving your money for long-term goals, you just use it to meet your what you think are your direct needs. Sometimes they aren't. So instead of uh putting up some of the money, you use it to buy a
4:39 washing machine because that may cause you to feel as though you're living a better, you know, a better life, things like that. So we spend much of our funds on vanity. instead of channeling those into areas that could cause us to earn more in the future. Uh which creates little emphasis again on saving and investing and in education. Good. And the third feature we're looking at is weak family structure. Right. Um h so when you have a society where a lot of the people are single parents it is a possibility that those households will be poor and I I said this in a previous video that a
5:26 single parent household is not the ideal structure right and that creates a lot of problem where even ch channeling funds into the family is concerned because what you have is one parent trying to balance the role of nurturer and bread winner. And we know that that is not an impeccable standard as it relates to running or operating a household. And as such, when you have weak family structures, uh what that creates are further problems. Right? Good. All right. So, some other features that aren't included here are like uh the failure of social institutions. So you will have a school that is supposed to prioritize education to ensure that
6:12 children escape whatever their circumstances are if it's poverty. However, failures in the education system can just create the perpetuation well a perpetual uh system in that it does not it does not effectively perform its role. Okay. So what are the criticisms of the culture of poverty theory? It blames the victim of poverty. So the theory does not look any at all on how society plays a role in people being poor. How society probably distribute resources and how that affects people and creates poverty. All it does it it looks at what you do
6:59 which makes you poor which might not be fair because imagine people being born into poverty. They have no control over that. So, right, another criticism, it ignores structural factors like unemployment. If the government doesn't create jobs, how am I going to be employed? How am I going to escape poverty? Inequality. If Uptown is treated different from downtown and I'm born downtown, how am I going to escape poverty? How is it my um how is it my choice why I am poor? which is what Oscar is saying and it also looks on the lack of education and opportunity. So if I don't have these opportunities, how am I going to escape poverty? Right? If I am poor and we can
7:45 afford education at the tertiary level, what am I going to do? Right? And the last criticism is that often the theories often used to justify neglect of the poor to reduce government support. Okay. So that takes us to the end of this tutorial. So basically to recap, we said that the culture poverty theory looks on the fact that guess what Oscar believes say some people are poor not because they don't have money but because their culture their culture socializes them into being poor. He thinks that one of these factors the key factors behind this is fatalism where people believe that they can't do better and so they just don't strive to do
8:31 better better. Another key factor is present time orientation where instead of investing in the future what people use their money to do is to meet their immediate needs and wants. Right? And it also looks on weak family structures and the failure of social institutions. uh whereas those institutions are supposed to help to socialize you into being a successful person and if those fail then sorry probably you will not escape your situation. Uh however when we move over to criticisms it tells us that hello uh Oscar you're blaming the victims probably you shouldn't. Some of them are born into poverty. How do they change their circumstance? In fact how do they change their circumstance uh when there
9:18 isn't uh adequate employment for everyone where everybody is not made equal in society by virtue of structure and everybody don't have the same opportunities. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. See you in the
