A distinctive welfare sub-culture?

Abstract

The existence and persistence of lower-class communities in an era of prosperity poses a problem of explanation for sociology. Focusing on various distinctions, different traditions have emerged for pinpointing the underlying causes, with a significant body of knowledge only gradually accumulating. The main line of thought, in which poverty-area people are viewed as necessarily suffering, seems indeed to have had its impact on social conditions. The structuring of most federal aid programs is consistent with it. That these programs also tend to be conceived and run by middle-class personnel, and that this serves as a rationale for middle-class ethnocentrism is considered after the fact. Other reasons for the practical failure of aid programs to alleviate the need for welfare can easily be indicated. However, from a sociological perspective it could also be reasoned that with such an abundance of aid a new type of lower-class culture may have evolved, uniquely adapted to aid conditions. It would be distinguished more by its members' indifference toward middle-class goals than their inability to achieve them. If correct, the implications of this reasoning would be great, both for the sociological literature and for the organization of many poverty programs. It is the aim of this thesis to explore and test the notion that a distinctive welfare culture exists in which ideals achievable within a welfare environment are emulated, and in which members therefore do not consider themselves in a state of suffering.