Adaptive strategies and underground economies in the 21st century

Originally posted on November 01, 2011

I.

In 1974, Carol Stack published All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community. The groundbreaking ethnography chronicled the adaptive strategies of poor African American families. Stack provided thick descriptions of women struggling to raise their children. In doing so, she indicted poverty as pathology and inadequate public policies.

Since then, ethnographers have continued to explore adaptive strategies, including underground economies. Sandra Smith’s Lone Pursuit: Distrust and Defensive Individualism Among the Black Poor, for instance, studies the affects of joblessness among African Americans in Michigan. Sudhir Venkatesh’s Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor examines the creative methods residents in the Southside of Chicago use to make money. These books, and many others, illustrate the effects of social inequality on marginalized populations.

But, considering adaptive strategies, what is the role of technology? From my current study, initial findings indicate that teenagers from low-income households are using technology in sophisticated, entrepreneurial ways. I present two snapshots to illustrate my point.

II.

Chuck, a seventeen-year-old senior at a traditional high school in South LA, lives with his grandmother. He has a 1.9 grade point average. He loves skateboarding and dancing. Every few weeks, he invites his “cameraman,” who is also his friend, to tape him as he jerks in the driveway. Chuck, with tattoos covering his arms and chest, moves rhythmically with the music. Afterwards, they upload the video to YouTube. Chuck, who has over 2,300 friends on Facebook, later tells me, “I have my friends advertise for me, especially the girls. It’s important to have a big network.” By the end of the week, the video has over 5,000 hits. Chuck meets his quota. In a few weeks, he will receive shirts and shoes from his sponsor.

Mario, an eighteen-year-old senior at a continuation high school in South LA, lives with his mom and dad. He has a 2.0 grade point average. He loves drawing and tagging. At night, he cleans office buildings with his father. On weekends, he travels from house to house to groom dogs. He received a credential from a local community college. I ask him if he will come out to Culver City: “Yeah, no problem. I’ll go wherever. It’s $10.” Mario also plans and promotes parties. He finds a house, gets a DJ, and then advertises on Facebook. His profile picture is the latest party he’s promoting. I ask how much he makes. “A lot,” he says.

III.

Chuck and Mario receive free or reduced lunch and live in a low-income neighborhood. They are average to below average students. Chuck may gain acceptance to a California State University campus through the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP). Mario, who has not met all of his high school requirements, will have to attend community college or a trade school. By most standards, their academic achievement has been lackluster. And yet, both are digital entrepreneurs. They exploit the creative possibilities of technology to earn goods or money. They re-define adaptive strategies in the 21st century.

(Re)viewing the Classics: Carol Stack’s All Our Kin

I originally published this post on February 01, 2011, at www.21stcenturyscholar.org. At the time, I was just beginning to study neighborhood ethnography--the methodology that I would later adopt for my dissertation.

Carol Stack, with her three-year-old son in tow, spent several years collecting data in The Flats, a poor, black neighborhood in an unidentified Midwestern city. Her purpose was to examine the strategies poor people adopt in order to survive. The researcher, now a faculty member at University of California, Berkeley, did not seek access through a church or school; wanting a more representative sample of families, she gained access to two families through a mutual acquaintance. From there, she networked.

All Our Kin challenges the stereotype of black families as dysfunctional and self-destructive. Stack presents a complex network of real and fictive kin working together with few resources to survive. Among these networks exist complex rules about topics such as gifting and child-rearing. Some may see these families as similar to the families presented in texts like the Moynihan Report or The Truly Disadvantaged, but Stack provides the reader with a more personal, nuanced portrait. A single-parent household does not automatically equal social disorganization.

The book is as relevant now as it was when published in 1970. The writing is clear and concise. Stack’s use of theory is unobtrusive but useful. More importantly, buzzing in the background of the text is a persistent feeling of uncertainty and precariousness. The individuals in All Our Kin want to succeed, but they can’t. Their material conditions are lacking and government policies and programs do not support upward mobility. Critiquing the welfare state, she says:

It is clear that mere reform of existing programs can never be expected to eliminate an impoverished class in America. The effect of such programs is that they maintain the existence of such a class. Welfare programs merely act as flexible mechanisms to alleviate the more obvious symptoms of poverty while inching forward just enough to purchase acquiescence and silence on the part of the members of this class and their liberal supporters. As we have seen, these programs are not merely passive victims of underfunding and conservative obstructionism. In fact they are active purveyors of the status quo, staunch defenders of the economic imperative that demands maintenance of a sizable but docile impoverished class. (p. 127-8)

As I said before, the book is as relevant now (if not more) than ever.