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The concepts of habitus and capital are crucial in the research tradition of social and cultural reproduction. This article applies both terms to an analysis of aspects of the life histories of low-income African American men. In exploring how their past experiences relate to their present-day statuses as nonmobile individuals, this article also revisits and redefines the utility of habitus and capital as conceptual devices for the study of social inequality. It expands the empirical terrain covered by the concept of capital to include that which allows low-income individuals to manage their existence in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities while also hindering their mobility in the broader social world. One implication of this approach is an improved cultural analysis of low-income individuals. The improvement lies in that their behavior can be better understood as reflections of their readings of social reality, which are based upon the material and ideational resources that they have accumulated throughout their lives, and not simply as manifestations of flawed value-systems or normative orientations.

For the past several decades, numerous studies have focused on the so-called “crisis of Black fatherhood”—that is, the many ways in which Black fathers struggle to fulfill traditional paternal roles and duties. Given major shifts in both the structural conditions and cultural expectations of fatherhood in general over the past century, we argue that it is necessary to reestablish not only what Black fatherhood looks like today—in particular, the internal diversity and dynamism of this category—but also how Black men (as well as other members of Black families and communities) make sense of these changes and meaningfully negotiate their implications. We outline a two-pronged research agenda that: first, identifies gaps in the existing literature that limit our knowledge of the full range of Black fathering practices and experiences; and second, reclaims and repurposes “cultural analysis,” not to pathologize “what’s wrong with Black families and fathers,” but to shed much needed light on the ways in which Black fathers themselves process and make meaning of their roles and realities.

Erving Goffman’s attention to the concept of framing provided modern sociology with a critical means for expanding explorations of the cultural terrain of meaning-making. Frame analysis concerns the manner in which individuals perceive and respond to particular events and circumstances. Since Goffman’s introduction of the term, the concept of framing has been expanded considerably in sociological inquiry. What Goffman and many of his adherents may not have imagined, however, is that frame analysis serves as a useful tool for improved comprehension of how low-income individuals interpret and present images of their social reality. By drawing from literature that makes use of frame analysis in sociological subfields somewhat removed from research on race and poverty and incorporating data from low-income African American men who reside in Detroit, this article explores how these concepts can enrich and advance sociologically grounded cultural inquiry into poverty and argues that scholarly approaches to considering the agency of the poor can be revised and enriched.