A Cultural Analysis of the Culturalization of Urban Poverty

• In Event: 127 - Section on Inequality, Poverty and Mobility Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Paper Session: Table 17. Poverty II

Abstract

Comparative cultural sociology has shown that different national cultures provide different resources and constraints on the use of these resources. Putting forward the understanding of the notion of cultural repertoire at a collective level, I propose here a cultural analysis of how poverty is dealt with mainly through a cultural-oriented action, drawing on the ethnographic case study (participant observation of 8 months) and semi-structured interviews (n.52) of a nonprofit active in a concentrated poverty neighborhood in the south of Boston. This nonprofit addresses predominantly the frames and narratives of inner-city neighborhood residents and attempts to de-stigmatize them through a shift in their meaning of the neighborhood. This research aims to study how action related to poverty is culturalized in the United States both in its conception and in its reception. Furthermore, it aims to show how a contextually situated action allows one to go deeper into the understanding of the making of broader patterns of actions and identities. I will show how this non-profit action strenghtens symbolic boundaries of the less deprived strata of the neighborhood. Secondly, I shall analyze how cultural repertoires both habilitate as well as constrain people, thus leading to a blurring of the line between structure and culture. Finally, through the study of the popular reappropriation of some elements of the American cultural repertoire, this paper examines how social inequalities are legitimized in American society in the neoliberal era.

Author

• Nicolas Duvoux, University of Paris V- Rene Descartes