Journal of Sociology & Social
Welfare, Sept 2003 v30 i3 p15(25)
The culture of race, class, and poverty: the emergence of a cultural
discourse in early cold war social work (1946-1963). Laura
Curran.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2003 Western Michigan University,
School of Social Work
Through a primary source historical analysis, this article
discusses the emergence of a cultural discourse in the early cold
war (1946-1963) social work literature. It traces the evolution of
social work's cultural narrative in relation to social scientific
perspectives, changing race relations, and increasing welfare
caseloads. Social work scholars originally employed their cultural
discourse to account for racial and ethnic difference and eventually
came to examine class and poverty from
this viewpoint as well. This cultural framework wrestled with
internal contradictions. It simultaneously celebrated and
problematized cultural difference and foreshadowed both latter
twentieth century multiculturalism as well as neo-conservative
thought.
**********
In the introduction to their 1958 edited volume, Social
Perspectives on Behavior, Herman Stein and Richard Cloward
suggested, "If we are to develop, now and in the future, our
characteristic method in psychosocial study, diagnosis, and
treatment, knowledge of group and cultural patterns must match our
not inconsiderable knowledge of personality organization" (Stein
& Cloward, 1958, p. xiiii). The writers, two faculty members at
the New York School of Social Work, largely echoed the sentiment of
their peers. Increasingly, early cold war (1946-1963) social work
scholars argued that an understanding of culture was integral to the
study of psycho-social phenomena and the amelioration of social
problems.
Although elements of a cultural perspective were present in
earlier social work thought, cultural narratives gained new ground
in the early cold war years or the period spanning from the close of
World War II in 1946 until the assassination of John F. Kennedy in
1963. This development mimicked larger trends in the social
sciences. In response to Nazi racism and a mounting civil rights
movement, mainstream social scientists rejected biologically-based
explanations of racial and ethnic difference and instead turned to
the prospect of an environmentally produced "culture" to account for
racial, ethnic, and--eventually--class characteristics. Postwar
social workers largely followed suit. Like social scientists, social
workers initially applied this cultural lens to questions of race
and ethnicity, but soon came to examine
class, poverty, and welfare use from this
vantage point as well.
Historians generally maintain that psychological perspectives
dominated early cold war social work thought (Curran, 2002; Herman,
1995; Leiby, 1978; Patterson, 1986; Trattner, 1994). These authors
are correct in their claims, yet their psychiatric focus obscures
postwar social work's simultaneous concern with cultural issues.
Existing scholarship examines the origins of cultural narratives in
the social science literature and its impact on policy making (Bell,
1982; Katz, 1986, 1989; O'Connor, 2001; Rainwater, 1970; Rainwater
& Yancey, 1967), while a fewer number of authors investigate
postwar social work's adoption of a cultural discourse in its
discussion of the African-American family (Solinger, 1992; Kunzel,
1993). Nevertheless, historians have generally not explored the rise
of a cultural discourse in the early cold war professional social
work literature. To address this research gap, this paper asks: How
did the postwar professional social work community respond to the
growth of a social scientific cultural framework and how did it
integrate this intellectual stance into its professional vocabulary?
Through a primary source analysis of social work texts, journal
articles, and technical reports, this article traces the origin and
emergence of a cultural discourse--meaning scholarly, expert
narratives on culture--in the social work literature. It situates
and tracks the evolution of social work's cultural discourse in
relation to developments in the social sciences, changing race
relations, an increase in the welfare caseload, and the political
milieu of early cold war America. As this analysis finds, social
work's cultural discourse grappled with its own internal
contradictions and ultimately produced a mixed legacy. In its
celebration of cultural difference, it adopted a culturally
relativist stance and foreshadowed the political and intellectual
multicultural movement of the latter twentieth century. Yet it
simultaneously problematized and pathologized cultural difference,
with some social work authors suggesting that cultural difference
could account for poverty and related
social ills. Through its in-depth investigation of a critical era in
social work history, this research ultimately reveals the contested
nature of a cultural discourse one that continues to figure
prominently within the vernacular of contemporary social science and
social work.
The "Cultural" Context: Social Science, Race Liberalism, and
Social Work
Postwar social work's attraction to cultural perspectives
reflected developments in the social sciences. The World War II and
early postwar eras witnessed an intellectual fusion between
psychological, sociological, and anthropological viewpoints, as
researchers collectively sought to explain the horrors of Nazism.
With these cross-disciplinary strivings, academics and even average
Americans became familiar with the anthropological concept of
culture. The work of iconic anthropologist Margaret Mead (1935,
1949) preached a cultural relativism that exalted the status of
seemingly "primitive" cultures. Relatedly, the writings of Danish
emigre analyst Erik Erickson (1950) and famed Frankfurt School
theorist Theodore Adorno (1950) portrayed culture as integral to
personality development. In sum, the "culture and personality"
school dominated mid-century social science (Bell, 1982; Herman,
1995).
Postwar social work scholars were not immune to this
interdisciplinary fervor. Social work had enjoyed a long-standing
relationship with the social sciences. Prior to the 1920s, the
profession was more closely allied with sociology than with either
psychiatry or psychology, but this shifted as social work found more
common ground with the mental health disciplines (Leighninger, 1987;
Stein, 1955). Yet the WW II and postwar period again opened up
collaborative opportunities for social workers. The 1948 appointment
of a sociologist as head of the Russell Sage Foundation, the leading
funding body for social work research, furthered an alliance between
social work and the social sciences. The culture and personality
model also attracted social workers who had historically vacillated
between individual and environmental frames. Moreover, as the
postwar social sciences gained federal support and public influence,
social work embraced a social scientific knowledge base in an
attempt to enhance professional prestige. The early cold war social
work literature reflected this move towards interdisciplinary
collaboration. In 1950, social work educator Henry Maas' article,
"Collaboration between Social Work and the Social Sciences," won the
Social Work Journal award for the best paper addressing "The
Contribution of the Human Sciences to Social Work Practice." The
period saw the establishment of a cross-disciplinary faculty seminar
at the University of Michigan that eventually spurred the
interdisciplinary doctoral program in social work and social
science. Social scientists were increasingly placed on social work
faculty and as consultants in social work agencies (Leighninger,
1987). The appeal of social scientific thought set the stage for the
introduction of cultural narratives into the social work knowledge
base.
The relatively liberal racial politics of the World War II and
postwar period also furthered social scientific and social work
attraction to cultural perspectives. The nation's entrance into WWII
forced Americans to confront racism at home as they fought racism
abroad. In these years, Roosevelt outlawed discrimination in defense
industries, Truman established the first presidential committee on
civil rights and desegregated the military, and African-American
activism flourished. The 1950s continued to see major strides
towards racial justice with the growth of the civil rights movement
in the South and the 1954 desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of
Ed. The beginnings of the cold war also drove racial progress, as
the Soviet Union played on the hypocrisy of American racism in its
appeal to European and developing nations. Postwar race liberalism
and the civil rights movement enhanced the appeal of cultural
perspectives on race. This new framework defined differential racial
and ethnic characteristics as matters of learned cultural norms and
thus provided an alternative to earlier, explicitly racist
biologically-based theories of racial difference (Jackson, 1990;
Kirby, 1980; Sitkoff, 1978).
Professional social workers pronounced a rhetorical commitment to
the basic goals of the postwar civil rights movement, including
desegregation, equal opportunity, and anti-lynching legislation
(AASW, 1952; "The American Lynching Record," 1950; Hosch, 1948;
Klineberg, 1957; "Race and Housing," 1959). Civil rights appeared on
the policy platform of the major social work organization, the
American Association of Social Workers (AASW) and later the National
Association of Social Workers (NASW), from the late 1940s into the
early 1960s (Anderson, 1948; "NASW Position on Civil Rights," 1963;
"The 1950 Delegate Conference," 1950). Early cold war social workers
also looked to their own backyards and encouraged agencies and
schools to desegregate caseloads, cease discriminatory practices in
hiring and service provision, and integrate agency boards (Berry,
1963; Granger, 1948; Hosch, 1948; Lindeman, 1948; Olds, 1961;
Simons, 1956; Solinger, 1992). However, social work's commitment to
racial equality was limited. Early cold war social work writings
provided little coverage of the grassroots civil rights movement and
the profession's rhetorical commitment to racial equality was often
not matched in practice. Many agencies carried on racist and
segregationist practices throughout the postwar years, and
African-Americans remained marginalized and underrepresented within
the profession (Solinger, 1992). Nevertheless, social work embraced
a moderate civil rights agenda and a cultural framework became the
preferred means by which professionals discussed and explored issues
of race and ethnicity.
Social Work's Cultural Narrative: Ethnicity and Race
By mid-century, a cultural discourse on ethnicity and race emerged among social work
leaders and scholars. This new outlook captured the imagination of
social work educators. The Russell Sage Foundation and the Committee
on Social Work Education (CSWE) sponsored the New York Cultural
Project, a collaborative group of social workers and social
scientists that explored socio-cultural issues in social work
education. In its 1955 monograph, A Casebook of Seven Ethnic Case
Studies, the project argued, "The same piece of behavior may be
viewed from a psychological frame of reference and from a
socio-cultural frame of reference and both approaches must be
integrated in any attempt to understand or explain it" (p. 4). In
the early fifties, the American Association of the Schools of Social
Work (AASSW) established a sub-committee concerning cultural issues
in social work education and courses on culture, although still
marginal, increasingly appeared in social work schools (Coyle, 1952;
Kluckhohn, 1951).
Writings on culture surfaced in the social work literature and
addressed a relatively representative range of American cultural
groups, including white ethnics, African-Americans, Puerto Ricans,
and Japanese-Americans. Social work authors argued that cultural
knowledge was essential to good casework practice. For example, in
her 1956 text, Cultural Values of American Ethnic Groups, Sister
Frances Jerome Woods, a social work educator, opined, "A theoretical
framework within which to view cultural values and an ability to
recognize and appreciate the significance of the cultural elements
in specific case situations is believed to be helpful and, at times,
essential to effective practice" (p. 4). Other authors suggested
that a lack of cultural knowledge undermined the efficacy of social
work interventions. A 1959 article appearing in the
practitioner-oriented journal Social Casework described a botched
casework attempt in a Native American community and attributed a
misdiagnosis to cultural ignorance. According to the writer, the
ignorant workers mistook a matriarchal family pattern, which "traced
kinship descent and all major social responsibilities through, and
to, the senior members of the female line" for "'a father that
doesn't care'" (Williams, 195% p. 79).
The cultural relativism apparent in postwar anthropological
research also made its way into social work discourse. The social
work literature revealed an expanding professional tolerance for
cultural difference. Historians have described social work's
historical imposition of dominant Anglo-American norms upon
immigrant and other minority groups, particularly during the
Progressive Era (Gordon, 1994, Katz, 1986, Mink, 1995, Platt, 1969).
However, postwar social workers, at least on paper, questioned an
assimilative ideal. For instance, in his 1951 article entitled, "The
Relationship of Culture to the Principles of Casework," social
worker William Gioseffi (1951) asserted, "It is not the function of
casework to 'acculturate" the client to what we may conceive of as
American mores" (p. 195). Others similarly asked: "Are American
cultural values, simply because they are American, always to be
preferred to the values of the client?" (Woods, 1956, p. 357). These
comments signified a "proto-multiculturalism," or an intellectual
and ideological posture that challenged the melting pot ideal and
its eradication of cultural diversity.
Again anticipating late twentieth century multiculturalism, some
postwar authors advocated a self-reflexive stance and directed
social workers to examine how their own cultural position and values
affected their work. According to social work educator Grace Coyle
(1952), "As we achieve self-awareness of our own cultural
conditioning, we are better able to use this understanding in our
relations with others which may come from other cultural groups" (p.
293). The lack of such insight, others argued, left social workers
at risk of inadvertently imposing their cultural norms upon clients
(Barabee, 1954; Brown, 1950; Ginsburg, 1951; Houwink, 1946). In her
1947 article, "Race as a Factor in the Caseworker's Role," the
Director of the Howard University School of Social Work, Inabel
Burns Lindsay, described how the unconscious racial bias of a young
white worker led her to address her African-American clients by
their first names while referring to her white clients as "mister"
or "miss." Given the potential for unconscious racial biases to
corrupt the casework process, some authors, and African-American
writers in particular, debated the merits of racial matching between
clients and caseworkers (Brown, 1950; Houwink, 1946; Lindsay, 1947;
Taylor, 1955).
Importantly, social workers were quite careful to ensure that a
cultural analysis did not obscure a psychological one. Although
psychiatric perspectives largely dominated the profession's
intellectual discourse in the early cold war years, professionals
did not seek to replace psychological narratives with cultural ones,
but instead sought the integration of the two. For instance, in his
article entitled, "The Psychocultural Approach in Social Casework,"
Peter Sandi (1947) defined the "combining the psychiatric
understanding of individuals and groups with cultural understanding"
as "a further advancement of great importance ... in the social work
field" (p. 378). Others maintained that culture shaped and infused
personality (New York Project, 1955). The fusion of these two
narratives also mirrored the profession's developing psychosocial
framework (Coyle, 1956; Hamilton, 1951; Perlman, 1957) that
theorized the interdependency of psychological and social
phenomenon.
"A 'Colored' Attitude": Social Work on the African-American
Community
As a cultural framework infiltrated social work thought, one of
the areas most strongly affected was the profession's discourse on
the African-American community. Wartime and postwar migration
brought African-Americans to urban centers and contributed to an
expanding African-American client base in social agencies
(Trolander, 1987). Moreover, African-Americans came to account for a
growing proportion of the postwar welfare caseload and by 1957 42%
of Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) recipients were African-American
(Bureau of Public Assistance, 1960). In serving an expanding
population of African-American clientele, many postwar social
workers turned to their cultural knowledge base and, more
specifically, to the work of E. Franklin Frazier for guidance.
Famed African-American sociologist and social worker E. Franklin
Frazier was one of the first thinkers to advance an
environmentally-based analysis of African-American experience, which
included a discussion of African-American culture. In his celebrated
1939 text The Negro Family in the United States Frazier examined the
social problems associated with African-American migration from the
rural south to urban centers, including the overrepresentation of
female-headed households among low-income African-Americans.
Relating this phenomenon back to slavery, he referred to the
"matriarchal" family as a "cultural artifact" of the
pre-emancipation era. Although Frazier (1939) understood
illegitimacy as a "simple peasant folkway" that benignly endured
among African-Americans in the rural south, he maintained that
illegitimacy and female-headed homes contributed to grave problems
and to the "general disorganization of family life" as
African-Americans headed to industrializing cities (p. 100). Some
critics contend that Frazier attributed poverty primarily to cultural norms (O'Connor,
2001), but a strong economic and structural analysis also
underscored his account. He partially attributed the
overrepresentation of female-headed homes and urban social
disorganization in the African-American community to racial
discrimination and high rates of unemployment among African-American
men (Jackson, 1990; Schiele, 1999; Seemes, 2001; Southern, 1987).
In interpreting Frazier's logic, however, many postwar social
workers emphasized his cultural analysis rather than his
sociostructural one. Most typically, social work writers suggested
that higher rates of illegitimacy in the African-American community
were primarily attributable to cultural conditions. In their
frequently cited 1947 study, "The Attitudes of Negro Mothers Towards
Illegitimacy," social workers Patricia Knapp and Sophie Cambria
found that cultural factors were the best predictors of illegitimacy
among lower-class African-Americans. This idea circulated widely. In
an 1950 article entitled, "Illegitimacy and Aid to Dependent
Children," the author argued, "Cultural attitudes are partially
responsible for a higher illegitimacy rate among Negroes.... There
is mentioned a 'colored' attitude toward pregnancy, by which is
meant the notion that illegitimate pregnancy is no particular
disgrace" (Brenner, 1950, p. 176). Of course, not every social
worker agreed with this position. Many drew on psychological
accounts or combined psychiatric perspectives with cultural ones to
explain African-American illegitimacy (Curran, 2002; Orchard, 1960;
Tuttle, 1962). Moreover, social workers were not completely blind to
the socioeconomic forces affecting the African-American community,
and some connected employment discrimination to the
overrepresentation of female-headed homes (Bureau of Public
Assistance, 1960; Greenleigh Associates, 1960; Woods, 1956). Yet a
cultural narrative was clearly present. Historian Ricki Solinger
(1992) contends that a cultural determinism replaced an earlier
biological determinism in a strain of postwar social work discourse
on unwed motherhood in the African-American community.
Postwar social work writing on African-American culture and
family life--particularly in the low-income community--often
diverged from the celebration of diversity and cultural relativism
that characterized the general social work literature. Here, social
workers problematized perceived cultural differences. For instance,
Woods (1956) used the pejorative term "unstable" to describe the
African-American family (p. 183). In an article for Social Work,
Seaton Manning (1960), the Executive Director of the Bay Area Urban
League, concluded that among low-income African-Americans, "Personal
and family disorganization is common" (Manning, 1960, p. 5). Social
work's position largely mirrored that of the larger social
scientific community, which although acknowledging the
socio-structural inequalities, depicted low-income African-American
culture as disorganized and pathological (Drake & Cayton, 1945;
Myrdal, 1944; O'Connor, 2001).
The Culture of Class
Social science and class
A cultural discourse was not reserved for racial and ethnic
issues and many social workers simultaneously applied their cultural
lens to questions of class as well. Like its perspective on race,
social work's adoption of a cultural perspective on class followed
developments in the social sciences. Scholarly attention to class
dates back to the late 1920s when social scientists, and
particularly those in the nascent discipline of sociology, began
investigating class dynamics in American society (O'Connor, 2001).
Robert and Helen Lynd's 1929 classic, Middletown: A Study in
American Culture, and W. Lloyd Warner and Paul Lunt's 1941 study,
The Social Life of a Modern Community, pronounced class as a central
organizing principle of American society. These prolific writers
argued that class was not simply a matter of one's socioeconomic
status, but rather behavior, mores, attitudes, and values were
central signifiers and determinants of class position: "When we
examined the behavior of a person who was said by some to be 'the
wealthiest man in town,' to find out why he did not have a higher
position, we were told that he and his family do not act right"
(Warner & Lunt, 1941, p. 82). Researchers involved in the "class
vs. caste" debates explored the intersections of class and race, and
some argued that socioeconomic status was a more powerful
determinant of cultural norms than racial status (Johnson, 1934;
Davis & Havighurst, 1958; Dollard, 1937; Drake & Clayton,
1946; Powdermaker, 1939). Academic attention was also not limited to
the lower class. In the 1950s, influential works like David
Riesman's (1950) The Lonely Crowd, William Whyte's (1956) The
Organization Man, and C. Wright Mills' (1956) White Collar
scrutinized the suburban world of the white, middle class. In short,
investigations into the culture of class became a hallmark of the
postwar social scientific literature.
This academic love affair between "class" and "culture"
culminated in anthropologist Oscar Lewis' (1959, 1961) now infamous
"culture of poverty" thesis. Expanding on
earlier sociological theorizing, Lewis attributed poverty to economic disruptions accompanying
industrialization, yet maintained that the stabilization of these
larger forces did not necessarily resolve the poverty problem. Rather, poverty often became a permanent feature of
industrialized economies as it was continually reproduced by a
"culture of poverty." In a series of
works spanning the 1950s and 1960s, Lewis (1961) laid out his
thesis: "The culture of poverty has its
own modalities and distinctive social and psychological consequences
for its members. It is a dynamic factor which affects participation
in the larger national culture and becomes a subculture of its own"
(p. xxiv). Lewis identified a constellation of behavioral and
psychological traits characterizing those living in the culture of
poverty, including "a high incidence of
alcoholism," "use of physical violence in the training of children,"
"early initiation into sex," "a relatively high incidence of the
abandonment of mothers and children," "a strong present time
orientation," and intergeneration transmission (Lewis, 1961, p.
xxvii). Lewis' work was hailed by liberal intellectuals, including
Michael Harrington whose The Other America discussed the cultural
components of poverty. As students of
Lewis' work suggest, Lewis sought both cultural and socio-structural
solutions to poverty, yet interpretations
of Lewis' work led many academics and policy makers to primarily
focus on the cultural attributes of the poor (Katz, 1989; O'Connor,
2001; Trattner, 1994).
Social work and "social class as a way of life"
Social workers were avid consumers of this new research and, even
before Lewis cemented his ideas, a cultural perspective on class
edged its way into the social work literature. Social scientists who
promoted this viewpoint, such as Lloyd Warner, Oscar Lewis, and
August Hollingshead, spoke at social work conferences and
contributed to postwar social work journals. In a 1961 article
entitled "Social Class and the American Social System," social work
educator Martin Loeb (1961) asserted, "in each social class there is
a sort of subculture-a way of life-in which there is a shared
morality and a shared view of the macrocosm and the microcosm" (p.
13). One of the most significant papers for social work was
anthropologist's Walter Miller's 1959 publication in Social Service
Review, "Implications of Urban Lower-Class Culture for Social Work."
There, Miller (1959) argued, "The various social-class groupings in
our country represent distinctive cultural traditions whose
influence on behavior is as compelling as that of ethnic cultures
or, in some respects, more so" (p. 220). In another influential 1963
Social Service Review article, prominent social welfare researcher
Elizabeth Herzog (1963) concluded, "the culture-of-poverty concept is so helpful that some of its
sharpest critics would not block its acceptance even if they could"
(p. 394).
While these authors did not blame the poor for their poverty, many social workers followed social
scientists and were most interested in the cultural norms of
low-income groups. Authors argued that women-headed households and
paternal absence were defining features of lower-class life (1) and
insisted that lower-class culture and its accompanying social
pathologies were transmitted inter-generationally (Boulding, 1961;
Fantl, 1958). Some suggested that low-income families exhibited a
greater tolerance for violence and aggression. In her article on
juvenile delinquents from lower-class backgrounds, social worker
Ruth Brenner (1957) maintained, "in his community, assaultive
behavior is acceptable, and quite within the norm, while it is just
the opposite in middle-class society where it is severely condemned"
(p. 28). Others believed that the lower class evidenced higher
levels of hostility and suspicion towards authority figures and
peers. Citing a popular 1958 study by sociologist August
Hollingshead and psychiatrist Fredrick Redlich's 1958 entitled,
Social Class and Mental Illness, Loeb (1961) declared: "Intimacy is
rare [among lower-class individuals], and there is a considerable
degree of distrust and suspicion" (p. 16).
Social workers also portrayed the lower class as "present
oriented;" that is, poor individuals lived for the moment, with
little ability to defer gratification. Brenner (1957) noted, "few of
these [low-income] families follow anything like a schedule in their
daily living, that meals at a set hour at which the family members
gather is the exception; rather one eats when one is hungry" (p.
27). Quite significantly for caseworkers whose livelihoods were
often dependent upon the verbal expression of emotion, the poor had
difficulty conveying their feelings verbally: "The lower-class
person has difficulty in specifying and describing his emotional
reactions to stress situations" (Meier, 1959, p. 17). Some
maintained that these class-related traits were inevitable, and
perhaps adaptive, responses to class-based deprivation. But in their
portrayal of low-income individuals aggressive, sexually
promiscuous, and inarticulate, social workers problematized
class-based cultural difference and painted a pejorative portrait of
lower-class experience.
Following this logic, authors often promoted indoctrination into
dominant values and adopted a paternalist stance in work with
low-income individuals. Well known social worker and federal
researcher Alvin Schoor (1962) maintained, "Clients at some of our
programs ... are 'present-oriented'; we should help them to be
'future oriented.' That, is they should learn over time-possibly
over generations, for it is uncertain what time span a fundamental
change in values requires" (p. 74). At the 1961 National Conference
on Social Welfare, Thomas Gladwin, an anthropologist employed by the
National Institute of Mental Health, similarly proposed intervention
into supposed cultural traits: "any plan for remedy must be
concerned with culture change, with an alteration in the over-all
way of life" (p. 75).
Class relativism
Although social work's new discourse on class often cast
low-income individuals and communities as problematic, the
profession's cultural perspective contained contradictory impulses
and reflected a cultural relativism alongside a cultural
paternalism. As with their cultural rhetoric on race and ethnicity, social workers used their cultural
discourse on class to challenge class biases. In part, social
workers employed their commitment to self-reflection to expose and
attack potential class prejudice. Walter Miller (1959) argued that a
lack of knowledge about lower-class culture, along with unexplored
middle-class prejudices, could result in inappropriate diagnoses and
treatment: "it is vital to distinguish between what are really
problems in the lower-class community and what appear to be problems
because of an implicit comparison with features of middle-class
culture" (p. 233). Adopting a culturally relativist framework, some
went so far as to question the ability of middle-class workers to
help low-income groups (Martin, 1957). But others insisted that with
a carefully developed capacity for self-reflection social workers
could reach across the class divide: "It is quite feasible for a
so-called middle-class worker to form meaningful relationships with
clients from other strata providing he is able to examine his
personal limitations with an open mind" (Weinberger, 1959, p. 128).
Here social workers problematized their own beliefs and attributes,
rather than those of their clients.
In keeping with this cultural relativism, social workers
recommended that caseworkers shape their interventions to meet the
particular class-based needs of their clients. For example, in their
discussion of juvenile delinquency, social work educators Stein and
Cloward (1958) argued that treatment techniques "suitable for the
middle-class child may be relatively ineffective for the lower-class
child" (p. xviii-xix). At their most extreme, some social workers
asserted that the goal of casework was not necessarily the
inculcation of middle-class norms. In his commentary in Social Work,
Walter Taylor (1962) discussed the "superiority of some of the
values that persist in lower-class families" (p.110). Here, Taylor
acknowledged the assets of lower-class experience and anticipated
social work's contemporary "strengths perspective" (Cowger, 1994;
Saleebey, 1992). Importantly, these findings concerning social
work's class-based cultural relativism diverge from recent
scholarship on mainstream social scientific thought. Post-war social
scientists often depicted the behaviors of low-income
individuals--even those understood as somewhat adaptive--as
pathological and problematic in nature (O'Connor, 2001). In
contrast, like its perspective on race and ethnicity, social work's cultural discourse on
class ran a continuum from celebrating diversity to problematizing
it.
The Culture of Welfare
Not surprisingly, social work's cultural discourse eventually
infiltrated the profession's perspective on welfare use. The now
familiar legislative and popular attacks on ADC first surfaced in
the years following World War II, as caseloads grew and the program
increasingly served African-Americans and never-married mothers. The
ADC rolls more than tripled in size from 1940 to 1960 and by 1961
never married families accounted for 21% of all ADC cases
(Abramovitz, 1988; Bureau of Family Services, 1963; Bureau of Public
Assistance, 1960; Hoey, 1939). Critics accused the program of
producing a variety of social ills including the erosion of the work
ethic, immorality, and illegitimacy (Curran, 2001). In response to
these changes, legislators and states enacted multiple restrictive
measures, such as suitable home policies, work requirements, and
substitute parent statutes to quell program growth and cost. Faced
with this backlash, some social workers attributed growing welfare
receipt to socio-structural factors, such as unemployment, low
wages, and racial discrimination (Curran, 2001; Leighninger, 1999a,
1999b). Many also employed popular psychological narratives to
account for financial need (Curran, 2002). And still others looked
to their cultural knowledge base to explain welfare use.
To a notable extent, professionals applied their understanding of
lower-class culture to the question of ADC receipt and especially to
the issue of the "multiproblem" family or long-term ADC recipients.
According to this strain of social work thought, multiproblem ADC
recipients shared the subcultural characteristics of the lower class
that contributed to the perpetuation of poverty. For instance, professionals argued
that the multiproblem family resembled other lower-class families in
their aggression and hostility (St. Paul's Family Centered Project,
1957). Moreover, like the individuals in the larger lower-class
culture, the multiproblem ADC family demonstrated an inability to
abide by the strictures of time. In her 1962 article for the journal
Child Welfare, social worker Evalyn Strickler (1962) quoted one
welfare recipient as telling her caseworker: "I never get any place
on time; I don't even own a clock" (p. 28). According to some social
workers, long-term welfare recipients suffered from a dearth of
verbal skills and did "not communicate through speech" (Salmon,
1962, p. 104). Thus, like social class in general, postwar social
workers began to understand welfare receipt as not simply an
economic phenomenon, but a cultural one as well. At the 1961
National Conference on Social Welfare, one speaker argued, "The hard
core [long-term welfare recipients] must be looked upon as people
who share a dysfunctional subculture" (Gladwin, 1961, p. 79). In
other words, economic need alone could not account for welfare
receipt.
Some suggested that this culture of welfare was not simply
related to issues of class-based characteristics, but also to issues
of ethnicity and race. These writers
maintained that different ethnic and racial groups exhibited
differing values and attitudes towards public assistance use. Social
worker Elizabeth Meier (1959) argued that while most Americans
experienced relief receipt as demoralizing "it is equally necessary
to recognize that there are differing class values and that some
ethnic groups may have other ideas about receiving help from a
common fund" (p. 16). In his 1956 study, researcher Ivor Svarc
(1956) similarly proposed that "self-support and dependency may have
different cultural meanings" among different racial and ethnic
groups (p. 146). While social workers' commentary on differing
racial and ethnic stances toward state assistance did not overtly
equate welfare use with a cultural pathology, it created a link
between welfare use and ethnicity and
race and especially to African-American culture. A few took this
cultural reasoning even further and began to suggest that welfare
recipients lived within their own distinct subculture. In their
article, "The Legitimacy Status of Children Receiving AFDC," social
workers Jane Kronick, Delores Norton, and Elizabeth Sabesta (1963)
suggested that ADC recipients, "have developed a separate subculture
of their own around their position as aid recipients" (p. 340). The
authors' belief in a distinct subculture produced by aid receipt
both paralleled and foreshadowed burgeoning criticisms of the
program, which claimed that welfare created a culture of dependency.
While social workers supported expanded welfare state provisions
(Curran, 2001; Leighninger, 1999a, 1999b), social work's cultural
narrative--in both its relativist and paternalistic guises--led many
scholars to focus on the attributes of the poor rather than the
attributes of the socioeconomic system. Clearly, social work's
cultural discourse reflected the political climate of the early cold
war, which prohibited analyses of socioeconomic stratification. In
an era of fervent anti-communism and McCarthyism, it is not
surprising that a class and race-based discourse would minimize
socioeconomic inequality and highlight cultural dynamics. Some early
cold war social workers were victims of red-baiting (Reisch &
Andrews, 2001) and a cultural viewpoint provided professionals with
a means to discuss poverty and public aid
without alienating mainstream Americans or exposing the profession
to further episodes of red-baiting. The close of the 1950s saw the
demise of anti-communism's most violent aspects, but by this time
the cultural viewpoint had laid deep roots in social work's
intellectual life.
Conclusion
The cultural discourse that emerged in postwar America set the
tone for the academic and policy debates on race, poverty, and ADC use for years to come. The
framework met its first serious challenge with the public response
to then Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965
report, The Negro Family: A Case for National Action. Citing the
work of Frazier and other prominent postwar social scientists,
Moynihan attributed increasing rates of ADC use among
African-Americans to the breakdown of black family life and a
dysfunctional culture. According to Moynihan, low-income
African-Americans were caught in a "tangle of pathology"
characterized by delinquency, crime, and female-headed households.
The report embodied many of postwar social work's fundamental
assumptions about class and race, and cemented the association
between the culture of poverty, welfare
use, and the African-American community, which had always simmered
below the surface in the postwar social work and social scientific
discourse. Although a socioeconomic analysis accompanied his
conclusions, Moynihan's pathologizing of black family life and
culture invoked the wrath of a civil rights movement increasingly
dedicated to black pride and power (O'Connor, 2001; Rainwater &
Yancey, 1967). Amid the controversy surrounding the report and
accusations of its racism, many social workers came to renounce and
denounce pivotal aspects of their cultural thesis. Yet the debacle
of the Moynihan report did not lay the culture of poverty thesis to rest. Instead, conservatives
and other welfare opponents latched onto the theory, divorced it
even more fully from a socio-structural analysis, and argued that
welfare created a culture of dependency (Mead, 1986; Murray, 1984).
Ironically, a cultural narrative that initially emerged from an
effort to combat racism became, in modified form, a staple of the
neo-conservative movements of the latter twentieth century.
The postwar cultural discourse paradoxically anticipated another
political and academic movement: multiculturalism. In contrast to
the problematizing strain of social work's cultural discourse, the
cultural relativism apparent in postwar social work thought--with
its acceptance of cultural difference and reflection on cultural
biases--deeply resembles contemporary multicultural perspectives in
social work (Boyd-Franklin, 1989; Ewalt, 1999; Lum, 1999). While
contemporary commentators on multiculturalism often attribute its
intellectual roots to the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s
(Ewalt, 1999; Kivisto & Rundblad, 2000), this work shows that
the early cold war period actually provided some of the groundwork
for these developments.
Although social work's cultural relativism addressed diversity
and at times even challenged racism and class prejudice on an
individual level, it did not directly or consistently link its
discussion of cultural bias to larger questions of socioeconomic
power differentials, such as class stratification or
institutionalized racism. In their positive attention to culture
postwar social workers, however unknowingly, preached a cultural
relativism relatively devoid of a larger socioeconomic analysis.
Echoing these historical findings, present-day commentators describe
how a multicultural discourse that primarily celebrates ethnic and
racial diversity can inadvertently block questions of socioeconomic
inequality and class-based stratification (Fraser, 1995). According
to sociologist Michel Wieviorka (1998), certain categories of
multiculturalism risk producing "a policy which is unsuited to the
specifically economic and social difficulties of the groups for whom
cultural recognition is not necessarily a priority, or in any event,
the only priority " (p. 904-905). While by no means discrediting
multiculturalism, these historical findings similarly expose
possible constraints in its narrative.
Most significantly, by demonstrating that the early cold war
social work literature on culture contributed to such politically
divergent legacies, this study reveals how profoundly contested this
discourse actually was. This history ultimately tells us that there
is nothing inherently progressive or conservative about the notion
of culture. Cultural narratives can be used to advance multiple and
contradictory political claims.
Note
(1.) An examination of the deeply gendered implications of this
literature is beyond the scope of this paper. For a feminist
response to the culture of poverty thesis
see Ladner (1971) and Stack (1974).
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Laura Curran
Rutgers University
School of Social Work
536 George Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
lacurran@rci.rutgers.edu |