Dear Friends
The following seems relevant
Hugs
j
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THE FUNCTIONS OF POVERTY
(From "Poverty in the United Kingdom"; Townsend, Peter; Penguin Books Ltd,
London, England; 1979)
"One application of the functionalist approach to the phenomenon of poverty
allows us to draw general lessons. Gans has reflected at some length on the
functions of poverty, taking up Mertonıs point that items which are
functional for some sub-groups in society may be dysfunctional for others.
Society, he argues, is so preoccupied outwardly with the costsı of poverty
that it fails to identify the corresponding benefits, or rather, the groups
or values who benefit. He describes fifteen sets of functions, as follows:
1. Poverty helps to ensure that dirty, dangerous, menial and undignified
work gets done.
2. The poor subsidize the affluent by saving them money (for example,
domestic servants, medical guinea pigs, and the poor paying regressive
taxes).
3. Poverty creates jobs in a number of professions (e.g. drug pedlars,
prostitutes, pawnshops, army, police).
4. The poor buy shoddy, stale and damaged goods (e.g. day-old bread,
vegetables, second-hand clothes) which prolongs their economic usefulness,
and similarly use poorly trained and incompetent professional people, such
as doctors and teachers.
5. The poor help to uphold the legitimacy of dominant norms by providing
examples of deviance (e.g. the lazy, spendthrift, dishonest, promiscuous).
6. The poor help to provide emotional satisfaction, evoking compassion, pity
and charity, so that the affluent may feel righteous.
7. The poor offer affluent people vicarious participation in sexual,
alcoholic and narcotic behaviour.
8. Poverty helps to guarantee the status of the non-poor.
9. The poor assist in the upward mobility of the non-poor. (By being denied
educational opportunities or being stereotyped as stupid or unteachable, the
poor enable others to obtain the better jobs.)
10. The poor add to the social viability of non-economic groups (e.g.
fund-raising, running settlements, other philanthropic activities).
11. The poor perform cultural functions, like providing labour for Egyptian
pyramids, Greek temples and medieval churches.
12. The poor provide lowı culture which is often adopted by the more
affluent (e.g. jazz, blues, spirituals, country music).
13. The poor serve as symbolic constituencies and opponents for several
political groups (being seen either as the depressed or as welfare
chiselersı).
14. The poor can absorb economic and political costs of change and growth in
American society (e.g. reconstruction of city centres, industrialisation).
15. The poor play a relatively small part in the political process and
indirectly allow the interests of others to become dominant and distort the
system.
Gans denies that he is showing why poverty should persist, only that it
survives in part because it is useful to a number of groups in society
whether the dysfunctions outweigh the functions is a question that clearly
deserves studyı. He points out that alternatives can be found easily enough
for some functions. Thus, automation can begin to remove the need for dirty
work, and professional efforts can be direct4ed, like those of social
workers, to the more affluent, and those of the police to traffic problems
and organized crime. But he argues that the status, mobility and political
functions are more difficult to substitute in a hierarchical society, and
though inequality of status might be reduced, it could not be removed. A
functional analysis must conclude that poverty persists not only because it
satisfied a number of functions but also because many of the functional
alternatives to poverty would be quite dysfunctional for the more affluent
members of society.ı Gans believes that, unlike the Davis and Moore
analysis of inequality, his argument is not conservative. By identifying
the dysfunctions of poverty and discussing functional alternatives, the
argument takes on a liberal and reform cast, because the alternatives often
provide ameliorative policies that do not require any drastic change in the
existing social orderı.
