Oscar Lewis

Lewis was Jewish, the son of a Rabbi, born 1914 in New York City and raised on a small farm in upstate New York.{{cite encyclopedia|title=Oscar Lewis |url=http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3404703872.html |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of World Biography |publisher=Encyclopedia.com|access-date=22 May 2013|year=2004}} He received a bachelor's degree in history in 1936 from City College of New York, where he met his future wife and research associate, Ruth Maslow.{{cite web|title=Oscar and Ruth Lewis Papers, 1944-76 |url=http://archives.library.illinois.edu/archon/?p=collections/controlcard&id=2433|work=University of Illinois Archives|publisher=The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign|access-date=22 May 2013}} As a graduate student at Columbia University, he became dissatisfied with the History Department at Columbia. At the suggestion of his brother-in-law, Abraham Maslow, Lewis had a conversation with Ruth Benedict of the Anthropology Department. He switched departments and then received a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia in 1940.{{cite book |last1=Lewis |first1=Oscar |title=The Children of Sanchez |date=1961 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |page=501 (Appendix) |edition=Vintage Edition 1963}} His Ph.D. dissertation on the effects of contact with white people on the Blackfeet Indians was published in 1942.

Lewis taught at Brooklyn College, and Washington University in St. Louis, and helped to found the anthropology department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.{{cite web |last=Gardner |first=David |url=http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/klmno/lewis_oscar.html |title=A short biography |access-date=2010-05-28 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100528211640/http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/klmno/lewis_oscar.html |archive-date=May 28, 2010 |publisher=EMuseum at Minnesota State University |location=Mankato |date=2007}} His most controversial book was ‘La Vida’ that chronicled the life of Puerto Rican prostitute, living with her sixth husband, who was raising her children in conditions unimaginable to many middle-class American readers.{{Cite book|title=Encyclopedia of the City |url=https://archive.org/details/encyclopediacity00cave|url-access=limited|last=Caves|first=R. W. |publisher=Routledge |year=2004 |isbn=9780415252256 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/encyclopediacity00cave/page/n470 430]}} Another well-known book was "The children of Sanchez" about Mexico City poverty family. Lewis died in New York City of heart failure, at age 55 in 1970, and was buried in New Montefiore Cemetery in West Babylon, Suffolk County, New York.{{cite news|last1=Whitman|first1=Alden |title=Oscar Lewis, Author and Anthropologist, Dead |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/12/18/archives/oscar-lewis-author-and-anthropologist-dead-u-of-illinois-professor.html |access-date=23 September 2016|newspaper=New York Times|date=December 18, 1970|page=42}}

Lewis is best known for his "Culture of Poverty" social theory: The theory states that being subjected to conditions of poverty, will lead to a culture adapted thereto, characterized by pervasive feelings of helplessness, dependency, and powerlessness. Furthermore, Lewis describes individuals living within a culture of poverty, as lacking or having limited means or knowledge to alleviate their inferior social status, focusing instead on their current needs.  

Nevertheless, the theory acknowledges factors leading to initial poverty, such as lack of available fair employment opportunities, proper free schooling, with decent social services and available standard housing. Thus, for Lewis, the mere imposition of poverty on a needy disadvantaged population, is the structural cause of specific cultural nature.  

Autonomous in its behaviors and attitudes, this culture passes down to the subsequent generation. The theory further concludes that once a needy population is exposed to poverty, no charity or low- income allowances will alleviate its allied image of social inferiority. A poverty trap, for which blame, should   be shifted from the poor themselves, to those who may profit from a faulty economy.{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}

• High Sierra Country, 1955
• Village Life in Northern India; Studies in a Delhi village, 1958
• Five Families; Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty, 1959
• Life in a Mexican Village; Tepoztlán restudied, 1960 [first edition 1951]
• The Children of Sanchez, Autobiography of a Mexican Family, 1961
• Pedro Martinez - A Mexican Peasant and His Family, 1964
• La Vida; A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty—San Juan and New York, 1966
• A Death in the Sánchez Family, 1969

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• [http://lccn.loc.gov/n50049587 Oscar Lewis] at Library of Congress Authorities — with 18 catalog records

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Category:1914 births

Category:1970 deaths

Category:Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni

Category:National Book Award winners

Category:Brooklyn College faculty

Category:Washington University in St. Louis faculty

Category:University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty

Category:City College of New York alumni

Category:Scientists from New York City

Category:20th-century American anthropologists

Category:Burials at Montefiore Cemetery