| Abstract | Abstract Instead of conceptualizing poor people as a group with a fixed culture, we need to understand diverse, shared frameworks for responding to economic adversity. Over half of all Americans of working age can expect to be in a poor or near-poor household at some point. Differing interpretations of their low incomes under flexible capitalism are illustrated by the responses of two unemployed middle-aged sisters from a white working-class family in now poverty-stricken San Bernardino County, California. Their divergent interpretations (one blamed herself and fell into depression; the other did not) show that even members of the same subgroup can draw upon different personally compelling cultural models to navigate social and individual change. This person-centered multiple-cultural-models approach is needed as a corrective both to portrayals of culture as a stable group adaptation to an unchanging economic situation and to theories of persons as buffeted by economic shifts without guiding narratives. |
