Structural Foundations & Poverty in America
Desmond argues poverty persists not because of poor choices but because these systems structure inequality to benefit some while disadvantaging others.
Answer: What are social institutions, markets, and political decisions?
Marx’s base–superstructure concept argues institutions reflect the interests of this group.
Who is the dominant economic class?
Individualistic explanations fail because they focus on personal traits while ignoring these.
What are systemic barriers to resources?
Merton’s strain theory says crime results from a gap between cultural goals and this.
What is unequal access to legitimate means?
Modernization theory explains poverty as resulting from insufficient adoption of these.
What are Western development paths?
Desmond critiques the Official Poverty Measure as this type of tool that understates need by ignoring housing, childcare, and modern costs.
What is a political artifact?
Workers become a “class-for-itself” when they do this.
What is recognize their shared conditions and organize collectively?
The “deserving vs. undeserving” narrative primarily reinforces these kinds of judgments that hide institutional inequality.
What are moral judgments?
Merton defines “innovation” as accepting society’s goals but using these types of means.
What are illegitimate means due to blocked opportunities?
Dependency theory argues Global South poverty stems from wealthy nations doing this.
What is extracting resources and labor?
Excluding the incarcerated, institutionalized, and unhoused from poverty statistics creates this structural effect.
What is making the poorest populations statistically invisible?
False consciousness occurs when people interpret structural inequality as this.
What is individual failure?
This theory of poverty wrongly attribute poverty to immutable traits instead of these structures.
What is Biological Theory?
Social disorganization theory argues high-crime areas are produced by segregation, instability, and this process.
What is structural disinvestment?
In dependency theory, “core” nations maintain power by doing this to the periphery.
What is structurally extracting wealth and suppressing development?
Desmond argues the criminalization of homelessness shows poverty governance relies increasingly on this.
What is punishment rather than care or investment?
Surplus value explains capitalist poverty because capitalists profit by doing this.
What is appropriating/exploiting value produced by workers?
This Theory claims poverty persists because discrimination restricts access to education, jobs, and mobility.
What is Restricted Opportunity Theory?
Shaw & McKay showed crime remains in certain areas regardless of which groups live there because crime is produced by this.
What are place-based structural conditions?
A modernization theorist would interpret poverty as evidence of this.
What is cultural backwardness or insufficient modernization?
Racial disparities in poverty stem from historical segregation, housing discrimination, and uneven investment — together known as this.
What are institutionalized spatial patterns?
Jackson & Katz-Fishman argue racism functions to divide workers in order to protect these interests.
What are capitalist ruling-class interests?
This Theory says poverty results from capitalist decisions such as outsourcing and wage suppression — also called this.
Political Economy Theory?
Quinney’s “crimes of accommodation” occur when oppressed groups commit certain crimes as adaptive responses to this.
What is exploitation?
A dependency theorist says poverty reflects structural dependency shaped by long-term patterns of this.
What is colonial exploitation?