Q7 · UPPSC Prelims 2020 · Set A · General Studies

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The idea of 'Cultural Poverty' was given by

A Oscar Lewis
B Gunnar Myrdal
C Aashish Bose
D Amartya Sen

Correct answer: (a) Oscar Lewis

Explanation

  1. A

    Oscar Lewis

    (a) Oscar Lewis. The anthropologist coined ‘culture of poverty’ from Mexican and Puerto Rican fieldwork (Five Families, La Vida), arguing that poverty reproduces a self-perpetuating subculture. That naming is the official key.

  2. B

    Gunnar Myrdal

    (b) Gunnar Myrdal. Myrdal wrote Asian Drama and An American Dilemma on cumulative causation and race, not the culture-of-poverty coinage.

  3. C

    Aashish Bose

    (c) Aashish Bose. Bose is the Indian demographer of the BIMARU label, not of cultural poverty theory.

  4. D

    Amartya Sen

    (d) Amartya Sen. Sen’s capability and entitlement work explains deprivation without Lewis’s cultural-poverty thesis.

Summary. Official key is (a) Oscar Lewis. ‘Culture of poverty’ is Lewis’s 1950s–60s phrase for values and practices that, he argued, keep the poor poor across generations. Myrdal, Bose and Sen are neighbouring poverty names on Indian papers but they did not give this idea. The keyed author is Lewis.