| Research Abstract |
The present study aims to verify empirically in terms of our Quantitative data obtained from a Nepalese caste city a thesis of "Culture of Poverty" which was proposed by Oscar Lewis (in La Vida 1968). Extracting necessary information out of our Pokhara Database, we attempted to see correlation between these valuables such as caste categories, family wealth level, family types, patterns of marriage and so on.
The valuables of family wealth are categorize into three relative classes such as "wealthy class", "middle class" and "poor class". In the same token, the valuables of family types are distinguised into six types such as "patrilineal extended family" (PEF), "pseudo-patrilineal extended family" (SPEF), patrilineal family " (PF)", "pseudo-patrilineal family" (SPF), "nuclear family" (NCF), "single family" (SF) and "others" (OT).
Seeing the wealth-class-wise distributions of family types, in poor class the largest number of family types is single family. And, the flow of family types goe
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s from single family, nuclear family, suido-patlineal family, patlineal family, suido-patlineal extended family to patlineal extended family.
(On the other hand, in the wealthy class, the flow of family types shifts in reverse order.)
This probably means that, according to the size of a family from patrilineal extended family up to single family, it corresponding family wealth has been shrinking. Accruing to Lewis, the most obvious characteristics of the culture of poverty is spled family and intra-family dispute which has caused naturally downsized the family size. Hence, we can say that our qualitative data has shown a part of Lewis thesis empirically relevant even in a different cultural setting from where Lewis did in North American and Central American Continents.
On the basis of our research results, we are also able to insist that the less the degree of family wealth becomes, the smaller the family type of its corresponding family turns to be. Although our hypothetical thesis is not yet empirically proved by concrete family histories but a empirical finding from a simultaneous quantative data. However is a result of our databese which has been saved more than 9,000 families at Pokhara, Kingdom Nepal. This quantitative massiveness of our database will lead to the importance of our present research as the first trial to prove Oscar Lewis's thesis empirically. Less
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