Oscar Lewis's concept of a culture of poverty suggests that a fatalistic and resigned attitude exists among the poor, which leads them to accept their social status. Discuss some of the major criticisms of this controversial point of view.

According to Chapter 7, one of the major problems sociologists have with Lewis's idea is that it makes it easy to do nothing about poverty because it assumes that poverty is a cultural rather than a structural problem. A good answer will mention the just-world hypothesis or people's desire to believe in a fair world. In this way, a belief in Lewis's culture of poverty leads people to blame poverty on the poor rather than to see the poor as victims of a system that allows them few options to change their socioeconomic status. A good answer might also mention the work of Dalton Conley, who believes that the culture of poverty ignores the entrenched structural factors that not only keep the poor in poverty but also maintain the wealth of the upper class. Conley's research suggests that in order to truly understand the causes of poverty, we might also examine extreme wealth as a social problem.