“We live in two worlds”: Loneliness as a Permanent Feature of Life in the Culture of Poverty

Monika OLIWA-CIESIELSKA

Abstract

The article addresses problems related to loneliness considered as a permanent factor in the life in a culture of poverty. As such, loneliness is perpetuated across generations and reproduced. The author discusses the results of her research on Oscar Lewis’s works and refers to several volumes of Pamiętniki bezrobotnych [“The Memoirs of the Unemployed”] published in Poland in the 1930s and the 2000s. The aim of the paper is to show how the poor identify and experience their loneliness caused by social exclusion, the family (in the case of a child), and by the self-image they create throughout their interactions with other individuals. Research into the lives of representatives of the culture of poverty in Poland shows that their loneliness is a consequence of the experience of social exclusion. The author interprets loneliness and aloneness as a negative condition which may be destructive and which the poor consider as unchangeable. A sociological analysis of the narratives written by the poor indicates that loneliness can be identified in every sphere of their lives. Such loneliness has lasting psychological effects, while, at the same time, developing into a protection against revealing deficiencies the poor might disclose in their relations with others.