I recently finished reading No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City by Katherine S. Newman, which, as you would expect from the title, examines the lives of city dwellers who are employed yet still live in poverty.
Being an anthropology book based on an in depth research study, this is quite different than the kind of stuff I normally read. That said, I think it’s good to expand the minds a bit, go outside of our normal realm and do some cross-pollinating. Thanks to Mark Batterson for the idea (the cross-pollinating thing, not this book in particular).
Anyway…
According to NSiMG, two key problems are a labor surplus and a network deficiency.
The project specifically studied workers at Burger Barn (an alias for a national fast food chain). The researchers found that Barns in the suburbs paid comparatively well to Barns in or near the ghetto because while it was difficult to find people willing to work at fast food restaurants in the burbs, managers in the inner city would receive an overwhelming number of applications, thereby allowing them to pay bottom dollar because somebody would take the job.
The researchers also noted that one issue faced by many of these workers was a lack of contacts in workplaces where they might earn a higher wage. For many, their families and friends were poor as well. They simply didn’t have connections to jobs that paid better.
The book definitely had a liberal bent, viewing the government as at least part of the solution to some of these problems. While I haven’t read very many anthropology books, I’m guessing you’d have trouble finding too many that aren’t liberal.
That said, there is certainly some red meat for conservatives in here as well. The author advocates that one of the keys to a higher standard of living is to avoid having children until you are stable both financially and relationally.
Perhaps the most interesting conclusion that the book reaches is the belief that low wage workers have in the dignity of work. They fundamentally believe in the American ideal that it is better to work than not to work. Much like their higher-wage counterparts, these people place value in being a productive member of society.
I’d recommend checking out No Shame in My Game. For a 300 page anthropology research report, it was very readable. The book is a bit dated, but I still found its look at the psyche of and challenges faced by the inner-city working poor to be worthwhile. I’d also be interested in seeing how conditions changed once welfare reform, which was being enacted as this research project was conducted, was fully implemented and how the current economic climate is impacting this segment of the workforce (beyond the obvious), as NSiMG was written during a time of historically low unemployment.
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