Packaging Poverty as an Intersection of Class, Race, and Gender in Introductory Textbooks, 1982 to 1994

Abstract

Using a sample of 45 introductory sociology textbooks, this research addresses how poverty information is packaged as the intersection of class, race, and gender, and how this depiction has changed from the 1980s to the early 1990s. / conducted a quantitative content analysis of the number of index citations and the location of poverty information they reference ; the number and composition of poverty tables ; and the number, type, and race/gender composition of illustrations of poverty. Newer textbooks reveal a racialized and genderized depiction of poverty which differentiates the topic of poverty from inequality topics. Instead of promoting the development of a multicultural perspective, the selective location of poverty information via ghettoization and topic context appears to counteract the impact of the inclusive content of that information. Implications of and possible strategies for overcoming the conventional topic-chapter format of textbooks are discussed