Culture Of Poverty And Culture Poverty

This article is an attempt to probe into a comparative study of "culture of poverty"and "culture poverty" from an angle of culture of philosophy."Crfture of poverty" and "culture poverty" are two different concepts. "Culture of poverty" , a culture originating directly from economic poverty, refers to a particular culture system to people in poverty. As far as this research is concerned, it is not appropriate to confine our study simply to an abstract analysis of people's ideas, education as well as their intellectual level. "Culture of poverty" in China dififers fiom that in the developed countries of the west as explained by Oscar Lewis. Owing to the diversification of the environment of the "culture of poverty" in China, we can either divide it into "rural culture of poverty" and "urban culture of poverty" or separate it into "regional culture of poverty" and "individua! culture of povertv". In China "culture of poverty" is not the simple equivalence of the passive "problem culture". Currentlv, the subject of "culture of povertv" is the people who are financially needy or people who have just shaken off poverty. As a matter of fact, "Culture poverty" is the state or characteristics of the low level of a particular culture. Culture poverty has its absolute form and its relative form. Absolute culture poverty means that people seriously lack culture information, which cannot keep up with the basic everyday culture life, while relative culture poverty means that when the culture of a society cannot fit in with the economic development of the society, coordination and constraint of the culture from the society will be less functional or even functionless. The contents of culture poverty are roughly as follows: knowledge poverty, dull and backward cultural life, low standard of values or lack of values, belief disorientation or confusion and spiritual barrenness, lack of originality and principle of culture academia, low or vulgar quality of literary artsand lack of aesthetic value, and poverty of social life style. The subject of culture poverty can be an individua! , a community, or even a nation , whether poor or rich. To æ­¶m up, the difference between "culture of povertv" and "culture poverty" now goes without saying. Firstly, they are studied from difFerent angles: the former is focused on culture while the latter is focused on poverty; secondly, the research subjects are difFerent; thirdly, their research contents and approaches are different.However, culture of poverty and culture poverty are internally related to each other. Firstly, one of the characteristics of culture of poverty is culture poverty. In China, culture poverty in the impoverished and backward areas mainly includes such features as poor knowledge, large population of illiterates and semi literates, low desire for knowledge, being conservative, getting accustomed to out-dated life style, low interest and enthusiasm in labor and production, passive attitude of reliance on others, lack of ideal and aspiration, lack of entertainment equipment and living a dull life. It is common for our people to have out-dated ideas and narrow minds. They tend to be low, timid and loose. Secondlv, even if the material and economic conditions are improved, without the reform as well as the upgrading of culture of povertv, there will always be new culture povertv. This could be seen in the é‘‘æ­Ÿ of some pretty well off villages. Although people have eliminated poverty and lived a well-off life there, they are in bad need of a culture, a less-corrupt social environment, and a less-degenerated spiritual civilization. Thirdly, to reform culture of poverty and to eliminate culture poverty is complementary. Only when culture of poverty is rationally reformed can culture povertv, especiallv absolute culture poverty, be eliminated; only when we concentrate efforts on culture poverty elimination can culture of poverty be truly done away \vith.Tberefore, the dual tasks of China's socialist construction lie in refonning culture ofpoverty and elimina...