The inverse culture of poverty

Abstract

Workshop 1. Session 1.1: Poverty and Identity. Abstract: Low-income groups develop a ‘culture of poverty’ because of their marginalized position. Neighborhood effect studies use this notion as a point of departure. The culture of poverty provides necessary contacts for the informal economy, socializes diverging norms, and reproduces inequality trough genealogical lines. This culture retains the poor in their non-middle class life style. This article makes use of an antithesis of culture. Culture, as a mode of life style, taste, and cultural capital, can also be utilized as a weapon to keep others at a distance. By reversing the essentialist imperial concept of culture, this study will illustrate that low-income groups distance, are distanced and set apart by other status groups in the neighborhood. These tensions between class fractions decelerate building up social capital and thus contradicting the ‘neighborhood effect studies’ axiom.