| This thesis examines antipoverty programs in Chicago's Near North Side neighborhood in the mid-1960s. The federal and municipal authorities who directed the efforts in the neighborhood defined poverty in cultural terms and therefore attempted to acculturate poor community members to middle-class family values, consumer habits, and labor roles in the corporate capitalist economy. Like the nationwide War on Poverty, Chicago's effort did little to end poor people's economic disadvantage through direct job creation or increased welfare payments. Instead, reformers attempted to modify poor people's values and behaviors to prepare them to enter the existing social structure and labor market. Often reformers' narrowly-constructed definitions of work, family, and gender roles, along with their faith in the capitalist economy and the American ideal of self-reliance, shaped their initiatives. Government and middle-class community members utilized this approach in most of the community antipoverty efforts, but one extensive grassroots initiative focused on empowerment more than acculturation. |
