The Culture of Poverty Revisited: Bringing Back the Working Class

Authors

  • Anthony Marcus University of Melbourne, Victoria

Keywords:

Marxism, poverty, homelessness, working class, anthropology of the United States, race

Abstract

This article looks at the "unhappy marriage" between the anthropology of poverty in the United States and Marxist social science. It examines the theoretical and methodological assumptions of poverty studies that have excluded a Marxist analysis and identifies the analytic weaknesses of these assumptions through ethnographic field data on homelessness in New York City during the Reagan/Bush years. Finally, an attempt is made to situate the development of poverty studies within the larger political history of the American working class in the 20th century and suggestions are presented for the directions that a Marxist anthropology of poverty might take.

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Published

2022-06-21

How to Cite

Marcus, A. (2022). The Culture of Poverty Revisited: Bringing Back the Working Class. Anthropologica, 47(1), 35–52. Retrieved from https://cas-sca.journals.uvic.ca/index.php/anthropologica/article/view/2367

Issue

Vol. 47 No. 1 (2005): Renewing the Vision: Marxism and Anthropology in the 21st Century

Section

Thematic Section:

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