| I chose to write a dissertation on poverty because of a genuine concern for America's most urgent problem and its most likely victims--the urban underclass, black and white. In doing so, I have utilized a relatively unstructured and qualitative research method and the analytical focus is on the targets of anti-poverty policy. This research strategy was inspired by Robert Lane, whose research in the late 50s, provided an informative picture of the political attitudes of working class Americans.;The free flowing discussions used in the dissertation allowed me to ask why policies designed to help my 24 respondents--black and white, male and female--have not worked. In addition, the research method of the dissertation permitted me the opportunity to "hang out" with many of my respondents, observing them while they applied for new welfare benefits, shopped, and took care of other routine business in their daily lives. This unstructured "bottom-up" approach is highly unusual in modern policy analysis. The dissertation's use of extensive verbatim quotations and revealing anecdotes, brings the voices of the respondents in my study to all of us--loud and strong.;It is my hope that small investigative case studies, like this one, provide a new, deeper, and richer perspective on an old problem.;In his classic book, Political Ideology, Lane masterfully used psychological and sociological constructs to dissect the politically relevant values and beliefs of the American Common Man. His information came from several free flowing discussion with each of fifteen working class men in New Haven, Connecticut. The conclusions he made about working class conceptions of equality and the nature of working class ideology in America are still illuminating. In this case, I explore the policy-relevant values and beliefs of the relatively permanent underclass in Binghamton, New York. |
