What Is Anthropological Approach To Shantytowns?

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Anthropological Approaches to Shantytowns:
Engaging and Controversial Views by Oscar Lewis and Nancy Scheper-Hughes.

-Kathleen Westin-

SO 307: West Indian Societies
Dr. Campbell- Thomas

International College of the Cayman Islands
February 11th, 2015

Anthropological Approaches to Shantytowns: Engaging and controversial views by Oscar Lewis and Nancy Scheper-Hughes

Shantytowns are defined as urban slums “perched on hillside outskirts of most cities” (Sanabria, 2007, p.25) in Latin America. Common characteristics of shantytowns include run-down buildings, poor infrastructure, lack of space, high population, risk of disease, low education level, and a great lack of job opportunities (pp.24-6). These ghettos are home to the poor and socially-outcast, especially first and second generation migrants from rural areas (pp.24-5). Oscar Lewis and Nancy …show more content…

It discusses the “poverty, marginality, and oppression, [within a] regenerate culture of poverty shared by and reproduced intergenerationally among the poor” (Sanabria, 2007, p. 8). The theory suggests a sort of circle of life phenomenon where people living in shantytowns are isolated from the thriving communities nearby, and left to fend for themselves without outside resources. Because of this failure to integrate the poor within the greater society, these people fail to attain proper education, adequate employment opportunities, or stability for their families (pp. 8-9), ensuring great or probability of similar fates for future generations. Lewis characterizes the culture of poverty as crossing into and shaping physical, emotional, economic, and spiritual realms (9), which significantly influence the future of those living in

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