Why Culture Matters in the Study of Inner-City Adolescents

William Julius Wilson
Harvard University

Photo: Jon Chase/Harvard News Office, © 2000 President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Abstract
This paper argues for a more comprehensive framework for understanding the behavior and social outcomes of inner-city adolescents that not only examines the impact of structural factors, but also considers the role of cultural factors, which have not received sufficient attention from serious researchers. The paper discusses why social scientists tend to avoid discussions of culture in studies of poverty and why a cultural analysis of life in poverty is crucial for fully comprehending the social outlook and behavior of inner-city youngsters. The paper highlights and critically examines the work of Orlando Patterson and Michèle Lamont and Mario Small in developing a framework that allows one to capture the complexity and multidimensionality of culture. It therefore elaborates on the need to examine the micro-level processes of decision-making and meaning-making among inner-city adolescents not only to determine how cultural frames as well as cultural repertoires (habits, styles, and skills) are shaped by poverty, but also how they in turn shape responses to poverty, including those responses that may contribute to the reproduction of poverty.

Biography
William Julius Wilson is Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University. Past President of the American Sociological Association, Wilson has received 41 honorary degrees, including honorary doctorates from Princeton, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth, and the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. A MacArthur Prize Fellow from 1987 to 1992, Wilson has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Education, the Institute of Medicine, and the British Academy. He is a recipient of the 1998 National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honor in the United States, and was awarded the Talcott Parsons Prize in the Social Sciences by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003. His publications include three award winning books, The Declining Significance of Race, The Truly Disadvantaged, and When Work Disappears, and, most recently, a co-authored book (with Richard Taub), There Goes the Neighborhood: Racial, Ethnic, and Class Tensions in Four Chicago Neighborhoods and Their Meaning for America.