Subclass (sociology)

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With the concept of subclass (. English underclass ) groups are designated by the integral institutions of society, especially from the labor market are and the social security systems, but permanently excluded from participation in education, consumption and culture; it therefore belongs to the discussion about social exclusion ( exclusion ). The focus of modern US studies is mostly on the specific living situation in North American ghettos.

Often reference is made to the Marxian characterization of the Lumpenproletariat , in which the term "subclass" is not used. In contrast to the similar term " lower class ", the German translation emphasizes the undertone critical of capitalism and the common struggle interests of the members of the lower class (see also the article new lower class ). In contrast to the English term class , in German sociology "classes" are social groups that are related to one another. This understanding goes back to the Marxian class theory and not the concept of the social class or the social milieu .

The development of the term

Subclass as "Defective Class"

The term "underclass" was first introduced towards the end of the 19th century as a criminal anthropological term in the context of the degeneration theorists ( Cesare Lombroso ). Lothrop Stoddard spoke in the same vein in 1922 in his book The Revolt against Civilization. The Menace of the Under One of the "defective classes" of "Under One" ( subhumans ).

Culture of poverty

In 1963 the term was reintroduced into the sociological discussion by Gunnar Myrdal with a different meaning.

The term " culture of poverty " or "culture of poverty" comes from the American anthropologist Oscar Lewis . He developed it on the basis of family-centered field research in third world countries . The central thesis is that this culture is persistent , i.e. stable. The characteristics of the culture would be passed on between the generations. Once the culture has arisen, it becomes independent from the conditions of its origin and persists even when these no longer work. Their creation is linked to certain conditions:

Controversy over Murray's notion of underclass

This thesis was taken up in the early 1980s by the American Charles Murray and "turned on its head" (Kronauer). Murray blamed welfare state measures and their recipients themselves responsible for laziness, violence, sexual immorality and drug abuse spreading among those dependent on the welfare state and being passed on from generation to generation. He affirmed the transferability of the development to the more developed welfare systems of Western Europe and saw the solution in the dismantling of welfare state support. This understanding has recently been revived by the publications of Paul Nolte . However, it is largely rejected in the sociological debate, since social exclusion in such considerations is wrongly attributed to the excluded, not to the exclusion mechanisms (see Kronauer 1996).

After the Conservatives had dominated the discourse for several years, appeared in 1987 William Julius Wilson's empirical study on the "truly disadvantaged" ( truly disadvantaged ) in the inner-city black ghettos of American cities. Wilson sets against Lewis' thesis the investigation of living conditions and the causes of increasing marginalization. For him, the “culture of poverty” is a consequence of the restriction of economic and socio-structural possibilities in the ghettos. The central theoretical term is therefore not poverty , but social isolation that arises from racial segregation and class division.

Devine / Wright underclass

Wilson's approach was systematized in the following years, e.g. B. by Devine / Wright: The Greatest Evils. Urban Poverty and the American Underclass .

The term underclass encompasses four different aspects:

  • economic aspect - persistent poverty ,
  • social-psychological aspect - alienation from the majority, exclusion,
  • Behavior - deviant or criminal behavior, anomie ,
  • ecological or spatial aspect - spatial concentration of the first three aspects poverty, alienation and anomie.

“We prefer a definition of 'the' underclass as being composed of those who live in urban, inner- city ​​neighborhoods or communities where high and growing poverty, especially persistent poverty, high and growing levels of social isolation, hopelessness and anomie as well as antisocial or dysfunctional behavior patterns. None of these factors alone is sufficient to form a subclass; they all have to be present at the same time. "

- (Devine / Wright 1993: 88f.)

Criticism of the term subclass

The phenomenon of poverty in the welfare state - caused by long-term unemployment and increasingly less held up by social policy measures - is in contrast to Beck's elevator effect and, as early as the 1990s, led to the question of whether the Federal Republic or Western Europe was also affected by the emergence of an underclass be. Anthony Giddens used it in 1973 in his " class structure of advanced societies ". The transferability of the concept is assessed differently.

Since the 1990s, in the wake of mass unemployment and increased social division in industrial societies, particularly in response to an essay by Charles Morris (" Is there a British underclass? ", 1993), a lively debate about the appropriateness of the term has developed. The main controversial question is whether the excluded actually have a core of social similarities, i.e. whether they represent a social class . But there is also a political controversy over whether belonging to the "lower class" does not represent a stigmatization of the groups assigned to it. This is especially true if a culture of an integrating element of the subclass poverty ( " culture of poverty ") is assumed.

literature

  • Andersen, J./Larsen, JE (1995): The Underclass Debate - a Spreading Disease? In: Mortensen, N. (ed.), Social Integration and Marginalization, Frederiksberg
  • Devine, JA / Wright, JD (1993): The Greatest of Evils. Urban Poverty and the American Underclass. new York
  • Goetze, D. (1992): “Culture of Poverty” - a search for traces, in: Leibfried \ Voges (ed.): Cologne journal for sociology and social psychology. Special issue 32
  • Gebhardt, T. (1995): The "underclass" as a new phenomenon in the US poverty discourse, in: Berliner Debatte / Initial, H. 1
  • Michael Hölscher and Jörg Rössel , 2005: An urban subclass? The social networks of spatially concentrated, socially disadvantaged population groups. In: Petra Bauer and Ulrich Otto (Eds.): Working together professionally with networks. Weinheim and Munich: dgvt, 2005.
  • Martin Kronauer (1996): "Social Exclusion" and "Underclass" - New Forms of Social Division. In: SOFI -beitungen, No. 24, pp. 53–69. Online (PDF; 69 kB)
  • Lewis, O. (1966): La Vida. A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty - San Juan and New York. new York
  • Morris, L. (1993): Is there a British underclass? In: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 17 (3), pp. 404-412
  • Murray, C. (1984): Losing Ground. American Social Policy 1950–1980. new York
  • Myrdal, G. (1963): Challenge to Affluence. new York
  • Wilson, WJ (1987): The Truly Disadvantaged. The inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy, Chicago

See also