Functional Marginality : Dynamics of a Poverty Intervention Organization.

This article presents some of the dynamics and dilemmas of one poverty intervention organization (PIO) as it attempted to enact the expectations and approach the goals of the War Against Poverty. The research methods used in this study were participant observation (in the committee complex and in Topeka Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) staff activities) and unstructured interviews (with Topeka OEO staff and poor and not-poor members of the committee complex). The Topeka OEO is a specific PIO in a specific community--thus generalizations are left to the discretion of the reader. The Topeka OEO has been shown to be a PIO striving to maintain a "functional marginality" between the poor and not-poor and, employing a political organizational style, attempting to bring poor and not-poor together in order to implement on "Overlap Model" for social change. It was concluded that whether or not such organization can endure toward its defined goals, whether or not it can remain functionally marginal without becoming marginally functional, is at this point still a hypothesis being tested.