Chapter 6: Semiotic Approach on Developmental Trajectories of Families Living in Poverty¹

In this chapter we will describe and analyze the disruptive experiences lived by three economically poor families according to a systemic, dynamic, and semiotic perspective. The data came from a longitudinal study that included the intensive, almost ethnographic, investigation of 10 families over a 9-year period. The families were seen in their houses. Several techniques such as interviews, observation, photography, and videotaped accounts generated very rich and diversified qualitative material that was analyzed through the lens of a broad category, the ways of sharing.

Family units are systemic organizations. Their structure could be described as one based on the production and reproduction of beliefs shared by the group, which are found in a network of routines and everyday conduct that guide their developmental processes throughout time. The assumption that each family’s specific culture, which is the global property of the family organization, organizes and orients the intra- and interpsychological processes of its components, creating collective and individual developmental trajectories, is at the core of the explanatory model here presented. We emphasize the dynamics and flexibility the families utilize in order to define and implement developmental goals under adverse and disruptive circumstances, which characterize poverty.