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This article presents a study, which focuses on poor Mexican American family. The Mexican American, then, like any other member of society, not only engages in what a scholar calls "judgmental work," but in doing so constantly relies upon the background knowledge of commonplace settings which he presumes he shares with others. That is, the Mexican American in managing his everyday affairs presumably does not comply with preestablished and legitimate alternative courses of action as spelled out by the dominant culture's normative abstract explanations of human behavior as described in most sociological theory. Rather, he tends to rely upon commonsense understandings of social structures about which people have little knowledge, and not upon the idealized norms that have been attributed to his failure or social status in the larger society by social scientists. True, the idealized norms of the social order form part of his background knowledge, but they do not fully explain how he goes about interpreting the norms to make sense of the many situations the Mexican American finds himself in and which may not have anything to do with his cultural heritage.

The article reports on a study which largely replicates the earlier study related to the discrimination in market against low-income group consumers, by testing the methodology in a different city. The primary focus of this study was to determine whether price and credit differentials existed between Anglo, middle-income and predominantly black, low-income sections of Portland, Oregon, and if such differentials did exist to determine whether they were a function of economic status or race. By including not only low-income but also middle-income shoppers of the two races, a built-in control was provided to magnify the relative importance of economic and racial status. If the low-income shoppers received similar cash and credit terms as those offered the middle-income shoppers, no brief could be made for exploitation. If the low-income couples received adverse terms, price discrimination could be said to be a function of income. Finally, if the low and middle-income blacks received higher prices than those quoted the white shoppers, then market exploitation would be said to be racially derived.

The article discusses the concept of subculture. When a segment of the population of a society is said to adhere to a subculture, this generally means that the people in that segment have been observed to share a distinctive pattern of values, beliefs and behaviors, and to exhibit a style of life which differs significantly from the dominant culture and other subcultures. It further means that the characteristics of the subcultural style of life are perpetuated by socialization, and are passed on from generation to generation. Social scientists have found the concept subculture theoretically productive and challenging, and have extended the label to apply to the cultural life of such diverse aggregates as delinquents, suburbanites, inmates, blue-color workers, hippies, the poor, and drug users. The process of discovering a subculture, and the implications of that process for the discoverer and the discovered, are promising matter for the sociology of knowledge. The social scientist perceives some collective, consensual and perpetuating (or perpetuated) social patterning within his candidate group, and if his criteria are met, he speaks of a subculture.