Conservative Approaches explaining perceptions of the causes of poverty

All the theories that are grouped within the conservative approach tend to explain perceptions of the causes of poverty in individualistic dimensions.

Individualistic explanation framework

Historically the individualistic explanation framework has been favoured by the American public. According to this theory a capitalist society such as the United States have ample opportunities and it is up to the individual to work hard to acquire the necessary material wealth on which the society thrives (Bullock & Limbert, 2003: 696;

Smith et al., 1989: 94). Conversely, those who fail to take advantage of the possibilities and land up in poverty are themselves to blame. In other words, wealth and poverty in terms of the individualistic explanation framework rest squarely on the shoulders of the individual and not the society, or any other forces (Smith et al., 1989: 94). I am therefore not surprise that statements such as lack of ability, low intelligence, low ambition, or morals are closely associated with individualistic perceptions of the causes of poverty.

I believe this theoretical perspective represents the typical view that rich people are hard working and possess more drive to get ahead in life. However, I strongly feel this theory fails to acknowledge that most rich people or non-poor people are privileged in terms of resources such as adequate income, housing, medical care and family support. In other

words, I concur that non-poor people have the skills and knowledge to utilize the available resources and opportunities much better than their poor counterparts.

Bandura (1999: 35) from a social cognitive perspective distinguished between individualism and collectivism. In some countries collectivism is more appreciated, while in others people prefer to operate on their own to achieve their goals. For example, the United States can be considered as a country where an individualistic culture dominates, while China is characterized as a country with a group-orientated system. However, both individualistic and collective cultures are not static nor are they homogenous. In other words, there are collectivists in individual societies and individualists in collective cultures. Furthermore, people achieve their greatest personal efficacy and productivity if their personal orientation is aligned with the social system. This implies that an American individualist will achieve much better under an individually oriented system, while a Chinese collectivist will do better under a group-orientated system. The personal orientation rather than the cultural orientation matters most in explaining one’s drive for success.

To explain the individualistic framework further, I explore people’s beliefs of inequality.

Lopez, Gurin and Nagda (1998: 305), for example, review group differences about the beliefs of the causes of inequality and demonstrate that inequality is either attributed to individual dispositions such as lack of motivation or character, or to structural differences among groups. Lopez et al. (1998: 305), for example, claims that institutions treat different groups of people unequally, thus making success less attainable for some groups and more for others. Further, people often favour individualistic over structural explanations since individualistic attributions is “an automatic and natural human cognitive process, which is very difficult to interrupt, change, or unlearn”.

Victim-blaming framework

It is my view that the victim-blaming framework is an extension of the individualistic explanations framework. The term “victim-blaming” in itself is very sensitive and

numerous debates and research projects have questioned the usefulness of the use of the concept. Some scholars have argued that it is simply a short or catchy phrase to refer to more complex social categories, while others have described the term as undeserving since it is a racial code which simply hides anti-African American or anti-Hispanic feelings. This theoretical perspective predicts that perceptions of poverty stems from individualistic factors such as people are poor because they are lazy or dependent on welfare (Wright, 1993: 3).

Belief in Just World Framework

It is reasoned by Campbell et al. (2001: 411) that the tendency to blame poverty on individualistic factors (to blame victims of poverty for their own plight) is consistent with the belief in a just world framework (BJW). According to Bègue and Bastounis (2003:

435) and Campbell et al. (2001: 411) the belief in a just world framework is based on the hypothesis that individuals believe that the world is a just and orderly place where people usually get what they deserve. Furthermore, Bègue and Bastounis (2003: 436) indicated that the belief in a just world framework has been employed in the investigation of a number of social phenomena which included altruistic behaviour, the perception and justification of inequalities, and social discrimination.

A study conducted by Campbell et al. (2001: 411) employed the Just World Scale (JWS).

The sample consisted of 98 Malawian and 100 Australian respondents. The JWS was developed to investigate individual and group differences in the strength to which people belief in a just world. People were asked to respond to a 20 item JWS such as “by and large, people deserve what they get”, “many people suffer through absolutely no fault of their own”, and “people who keep in shape have little chance of suffering a heart attack”

(Campbell et al., 2001: 415). Nine of the question items reflected belief in an unjust world while 11 items reflected belief in just world.

The same respondents had to complete an 18 item Causes of the Third World Poverty Questionnaire (CTWPQ). The respondents had to rate from 1 to 5 the importance of 11

situational and 7 dispositional items as causes of poverty in the developing world. The results of the JWS was than compared with that of the CTWPQ and revealed that the Pro- Just World factor, which loaded on items such as “people who meet with misfortune have often brought it on themselves”, correlated significantly with the Blame the Poor factor of the CTWPQ, which loaded on items attributing poverty to dispositional factors (e.g. “the population of such countries make no attempt at self-improvement”) (Campbell et al., 2001: 415).

In general, the study showed that the Australian respondents believed that poor people are to blame for their own poverty circumstances, while the Malawian respondents attributed the poverty to structural factors. However, among the Australian respondents it was found that those who are involved in donating money and goods are more likely to attribute poverty to structural factors.