Connecting Poverty, Culture, and Cognition: The Bridges Out of Poverty Process

ABSTRACT

This article highlights how one nonprofit organization deals with the controversial issue of culture and poverty through its interactions with low-income individuals. Through interviews and participant observation, we analyze its curriculum and process, which focuses on helping participants become more reflexive by analyzing their past life and potential futures through a social class analysis. At the same time, we discuss a key theoretical debate over culture and action/agency. Specifically, we examine the distinction between practical and discursive consciousness (or declarative and non-declarative culture), and issues of agency. We show how this theoretical process is accomplished in the organization by providing people with the opportunity to change their habits, skills, “cultured capacities” and “repertoires,” which can help them get out of poverty. We also show other factors, such as social support, are crucial and how the overall process works more for some than for others.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural sociology
• poverty
• poverty alleviation
• social justice
• case study

Acknowledgments

This article has benefited from comments provided by Omar Lizardo, Ann Mische, Terence McDonnell, Jose Limon, Amy Jonason, and others in the Culture Workshop at the University of Notre Dame. Thanks also go to David Gibson for valuable comments on this manuscript, and to Bonnie Bazata, Ilse Zenteno, and Tracey Stutsman for support in the research process.

Funding

This research was funded by a Ganey Grant by the Center for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame.

Notes

1. Some have studied the complex relationships between cognition, goals, context, structural constraints, and mobility by pointing out the role of culture in forming expectations and goals for the future while considering the constraints people face for mobility (Abramson, 2012; Frye, 2012), for example, how educational ideals and expectations matter for poor and non-poor youth (Vaisey, 2010).

2. There are some similarities here with discussions in anthropology over the differential roles of nonconscious, habitual behavior and that of conscious choice and change (Robbins, 2007; Zigon, 2009). Some, however, criticize dual-process theory for not sufficiently considering the concept of active deliberation (Leschziner & Green, 2013; Mische, 2012).

3. Broadly conceived, reflexivity means having an “internal conversation” with oneself (Archer, 2007, p. 2).

4. This concept has been shown to be fruitful in diverse aspects of health such as the adherence to treatment (Burke, Dunbar-Jacob, & Hill, 1997), or coping with stress (Lazarus & Folkman, 1987).

5. The early Bridges materials, written by Ruby Payne, received criticism for their generalizations (Froyum, 2010), but the materials have responded to this criticism and been improved, and some of the criticism of Bridges, we argue below, is because some scholars reject any discussion of cultural or class differences.

6. This case can be representative of similar nonprofits, some of which we mention above, but with the diversity of nonprofits doing relational work, we hesitate to generalize about processes of change, since that is a wide, diffuse area (e.g., addictions). There is of course much work on personal transformation, much of it of the self-help variety, but our work is more focused on interactions with institutional environments, such as work. The process we describe encompasses a more sociological or social psychological approach to change.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by a Ganey Grant by the Center for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame.