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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.

This article focuses on a traditional way of resolving problems in the United States which has been through the development of local self-improvement associations. In spite of the fact that the above characteristics of the poor suggest that they would not participate effectively in voluntarily associations, many intervention programs reflect the belief that self-help associations constitute an important, if not an indispensable, ingredient for breaking the poverty culture. Organizing the poor on their own behalf can be attempted either in conjunction with the prevailing social order, as in the community action programs sponsored by the Office of Economic Opportunity, or in opposition to the prevailing order, as in programs associated with Saul Alinsky or the new student left. Organizing the poor in opposition to the prevailing so that order does not elicit support from established social institutions, but may provide the drama and the emotional appeal that will motivate participation by a substantial segment of the poor population. On the other hand, organizing within the framework of the existing social order may produce strong institutional support, but it limits the targets and tactics of organizational strategy.