Download or read book The Invention of the Underclass written by Loïc Wacquant and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-01-28 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At century’s close, American social scientists, policy analysts, philanthropists and politicians became obsessed with a fearsome and mysterious new group said to be ravaging the ghetto: the urban “underclass.” Soon the scarecrow category and its demonic imagery were exported to the United Kingdom and continental Europe and agitated the international study of exclusion in the postindustrial metropolis. In this punchy book, Loïc Wacquant retraces the invention and metamorphoses of this racialized folk devil, from the structural conception of Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal to the behavioral notion of Washington think-tank experts to the neo-ecological formulation of sociologist William Julius Wilson. He uncovers the springs of the sudden irruption, accelerated circulation, and abrupt evaporation of the “underclass” from public debate, and reflects on the implications for the social epistemology of urban marginality. What accounts for the “lemming effect” that drew a generation of scholars of race and poverty over a scientific cliff? What are the conditions for the formation and bursting of “conceptual speculative bubbles”? What is the role of think tanks, journalism, and politics in imposing “turnkey problematics” upon social researchers? What are the special quandaries posed by the naming of dispossessed and dishonored populations in scientific discourse and how can we reformulate the explosive question of “race” to avoid these troubles? Answering these questions constitutes an exacting exercise in epistemic reflexivity in the tradition of Bachelard, Canguilhem and Bourdieu, and it issues in a clarion call for social scientists to defend their intellectual autonomy against the encroachments of outside powers, be they state officials, the media, think tanks, or philanthropic organizations. Compact, meticulous and forcefully argued, this study in the politics of social science knowledge will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, anthropology, urban studies, ethnic studies, geography, intellectual history, the philosophy of science and public policy.
Download or read book American Apartheid written by Douglas S. Massey and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This powerful and disturbing book clearly links persistent poverty among blacks in the United States to the unparalleled degree of deliberate segregation they experience in American cities. American Apartheid shows how the black ghetto was created by whites during the first half of the twentieth century in order to isolate growing urban black populations. It goes on to show that, despite the Fair Housing Act of 1968, segregation is perpetuated today through an interlocking set of individual actions, institutional practices, and governmental policies. In some urban areas the degree of black segregation is so intense and occurs in so many dimensions simultaneously that it amounts to "hypersegregation." The authors demonstrate that this systematic segregation of African Americans leads inexorably to the creation of underclass communities during periods of economic downturn. Under conditions of extreme segregation, any increase in the overall rate of black poverty yields a marked increase in the geographic concentration of indigence and the deterioration of social and economic conditions in black communities. As ghetto residents adapt to this increasingly harsh environment under a climate of racial isolation, they evolve attitudes, behaviors, and practices that further marginalize their neighborhoods and undermine their chances of success in mainstream American society. This book is a sober challenge to those who argue that race is of declining significance in the United States today.
Download or read book The Urban Underclass written by United States. General Accounting Office and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Urban Poverty and the Underclass written by Enzo Mingione and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last two decades "poverty" has moved centrestage as an issue within the social sciences. This volume, edited by one of Europe's foremost sociologists, aims to assess the debates surrounding poverty and the responses to it, exploring the ways in which the various socio-political systems and welfarist regimes are being radically transformed. The essays examine how such change is effected by failing welfare programmes and enervating social structures such as family and community which once would have provided mechanisms of social stability. The first part of the book provides reflections on urban poverty; the second part discusses the widely debated idea of an "underclass" and its meanings in Europe and in the USA, and the final part draws on concrete empirical analyses to examine the patterns of poverty thoughout Western Europe. This volume will be of first-rate importance to all serious students of politics, sociology, geography, public policy, youth and community studies, social policy and American studies.
Download or read book The Underclass written by Ken Auletta and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed author and New Yorker columnist delves into the core of American poverty in the early 1980s: “Invaluable.” —The Washington Post First appearing as a three-part series in the New Yorker, Ken Auletta’s The Underclass provides an enlightening look at the lives of addicts, dropouts, ex-convicts, welfare recipients, and individuals experiencing homelessness. Auletta’s investigation began with a seemingly simple goal: to find out who exactly makes up the poorest of the poor, and to trace the many paths that took them there. As the author follows 250 hardened members of this “underclass,” he focuses on efforts to help them reconstruct their lives and find a functional place in mainstream society. Through the lives of the men and women he encounters, Auletta discovers the complex truths that have made hard-core poverty in America such an intractable problem. In a nation where poverty and welfare rolls are declining but the underclass persists, the United States is as conflicted as ever about its responsibilities toward all its people. With his empathy, insight, and expert reportage, Auletta’s The Underclass remains as pertinent as ever.
Download or read book The Ghetto Underclass written by William Julius Wilson and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 1993-08-17 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sponsored by the American Academy of Political and Social Science William Julius Wilson is a leader in the study of the urban underclass. His controversial thesis states that the fragmentation of the black community along class lines has resulted in a group of blacks who have left the inner city for middle-class suburban life, leaving behind the ghetto underclass of very disadvantaged poor. This thesis has had an enormous impact on the study of urban life, race, and society. Originally published as a special issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, The Ghetto Underclass addresses questions from theoretical, empirical, and policy perspectives. Wilson and other leading social scientists cover demographic and industrial transitions, family patterns, sexual behavior, immigration, and homelessness of the urban underclass. Wilson′s introduction updates recent work on this topic since publication of the Annals issue. The Ghetto Underclass should be read by all students and professionals of urban studies, ethnic studies, sociology, policy studies, political science, social work, social welfare, and education.
Download or read book Dangerous Classes written by Lydia Morris and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-03-11 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an authoritative and much needed critical review of British and American debates about the underclass, set in the context of historical material and policy developments. The idea of an underclass is based on a notion of social exclusion, be it cultural or structural in nature. It strikes a contrast with the idea of social citizenship. In accepted definitions of the underclass state dependence had come to be seen as a badge of exclusion rather than a guarantee of inclusion. There has been a gradual shift of emphasis in recent commentary from concern with social rights to anxiety about social obligations, much of which relates to the enforcement of the work ethic. Implicit in much of the literature is an inconclusive examination of gender roles, and particularly the failure of single mother to fulfil their social duties. The ambiguities and contradictions of this postion are uncovered. So too is the neglected issue of migrant labour and its use as a source of labour on terms not acceptable to the native population. The implications of this phenomenon for questions of social inclusion and the definition of the underclass are then considered in the wider context of the social construction of the labour market. The book has emerged from the author's long standing interest and research in unemployment, labour market change, gender relations and social policy. It will be of interest to students and researchers in all of these fields.
Download or read book Living Conditions and Targeted Aiding Mechanisms of the Urban Underclass in China written by Zhu Li and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-26 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on the approaches of questionnaire and interview, this book studies the urban subalterns formed with a considerable scale in China since the 1990s. By investigating their living status in detail, it depicts the mental conditions, class consciousness, migration, living difficulties and dilemmas of the subaltern class. It’s worth noting that in addition to the group at the bottom of the economic pyramid, this book expands the definition of subaltern by including the deviant underclass. Then it examines the factors causing the living dilemmas and provides suggestions aiming to mitigate them from the perspective of social succor. In the last chapter, this book focuses on the theoretical discussions on subaltern studies. New concepts such as the deviant subaltern group and social vigilance are created, and new theories such as production and transmission mechanism of the subaltern group are put forward.
Download or read book The Underclass Debate written by Michael B. Katz and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do ominous reports of an emerging "underclass" reveal an unprecedented crisis in American society? Or are social commentators simply rediscovering the tragedy of recurring urban poverty, as they seem to do every few decades? Although social scientists and members of the public make frequent assumptions about these questions, they have little information about the crucial differences between past and present. By providing a badly needed historical context, these essays reframe today's "underclass" debate. Realizing that labels of "social pathology" echo fruitless distinctions between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, the contributors focus not on individual and family behavior but on a complex set of processes that have been at work over a long period, degrading the inner cities and, inevitably, the nation as a whole. How do individuals among the urban poor manage to survive? How have they created a dissident "infrapolitics?" How have social relations within the urban ghettos changed? What has been the effect of industrial restructuring on poverty? Besides exploring these questions, the contributors discuss the influence of African traditions on the family patterns of African Americans, the origins of institutions that serve the urban poor, the reasons for the crisis in urban education, the achievements and limits of the War on Poverty, and the role of income transfers, earnings, and the contributions of family members in overcoming poverty. The message of the essays is clear: Americans will flourish or fail together.
Download or read book Labour Mobility and the Dynamics of the Construction Industry Labour Market written by Chairil Anwar and published by Cuvillier Verlag. This book was released on 2004 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Against the Wall written by Elijah Anderson and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-12-30 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Typically residing in areas of concentrated urban poverty, too many young black men are trapped in a horrific cycle that includes active discrimination, unemployment, violence, crime, prison, and early death. This toxic mixture has given rise to wider stereotypes that limit the social capital of all young black males. Edited and with an introductory chapter by sociologist Elijah Anderson, the essays in Against the Wall describe how the young black man has come to be identified publicly with crime and violence. In reaction to his sense of rejection, he may place an exaggerated emphasis on the integrity of his self-expression in clothing and demeanor by adopting the fashions of the "street." To those deeply invested in and associated with the dominant culture, his attitude is perceived as profoundly oppositional. His presence in public gathering places becomes disturbing to others, and the stereotype of the dangerous young black male is perpetuated and strengthened. To understand the origin of the problem and the prospects of the black inner-city male, it is essential to distinguish his experience from that of his pre-Civil Rights Movement forebears. In the 1950s, as militant black people increasingly emerged to challenge the system, the figure of the black male became more ambiguous and fearsome. And while this activism did have the positive effect of creating opportunities for the black middle class who fled from the ghettos, those who remained faced an increasingly desperate climate. Featuring a foreword by Cornel West and sixteen original essays by contributors including William Julius Wilson, Gerald D. Jaynes, Douglas S. Massey, and Peter Edelman, Against the Wall illustrates how social distance increases as alienation and marginalization within the black male underclass persist, thereby deepening the country's racial divide.
Download or read book Race Poverty and the Urban Underclass written by Clement Cottingham and published by Free Press. This book was released on 1982 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Urban Outcasts written by Loïc Wacquant and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-26 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Breaking with the exoticizing cast of public discourse and conventional research, Urban Outcasts takes the reader inside the black ghetto of Chicago and the deindustrializing banlieue of Paris to discover that urban marginality is not everywhere the same. Drawing on a wealth of original field, survey and historical data, Loïc Wacquant shows that the involution of America's urban core after the 1960s is due not to the emergence of an 'underclass', but to the joint withdrawal of market and state fostered by public policies of racial separation and urban abandonment. In European cities, by contrast, the spread of districts of 'exclusion' does not herald the formation of ghettos. It stems from the decomposition of working-class territories under the press of mass unemployment, the casualization of work and the ethnic mixing of populations hitherto segregated, spawning urban formations akin to 'anti-ghettos'. Comparing the US 'Black Belt' with the French 'Red Belt' demonstrates that state structures and policies play a decisive role in the articulation of class, race and place on both sides of the Atlantic. It also reveals the crystallization of a new regime of marginality fuelled by the fragmentation of wage labour, the retrenchment of the social state and the concentration of dispossessed categories in stigmatized areas bereft of a collective idiom of identity and claims-making. These defamed districts are not just the residual 'sinkholes' of a bygone economic era, but also the incubators of the precarious proletariat emerging under neoliberal capitalism. Urban Outcasts sheds new light on the explosive mix of mounting misery, stupendous affluence and festering street violence resurging in the big cities of the First World. By specifying the different causal paths and experiential forms assumed by relegation in the American and the French metropolis, this book offers indispensable tools for rethinking urban marginality and for reinvigorating the public debate over social inequality and citizenship at century's dawn.
Download or read book Gendering the City written by Kristine B. Miranne and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2000 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Extrait de la couverture : "Gendering the city provides a significant contribution to urban studies, balancing critiques of domination with analyses of how groups and individuals have actively carved out spaces that resist and recofigure dominant gender regimes. The collection draws on a wide range of empirical work, conducted in both canada and the United States, to explore the diversity of women's experiences. It is both grounded and provocative. - Ann Forsyth, Harvard University Graduate School of Design."
Download or read book Public Religion and Urban Transformation written by Lowell W Livezey and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2000-05-01 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American cities are in the midst of fundamental changes. De-industrialization of large, aging cities has been enormously disruptive for urban communities, which are being increasingly fragmented. Though often overlooked, religious organizations are important actors, both culturally and politically in the restructuring metropolis. Public Religion and Urban Transformation provides a sweeping view of urban religion in response to these transformations. Drawing on a massive study of over seventy-five congregations in urban neighborhoods, this volume provides the most comprehensive picture available of urban places of worship-from mosques and gurdwaras to churches and synagogues-within one city. Revisiting the primary site of research for the early members of the Chicago School of urban sociology, the volume focuses on Chicago, which provides an exceptionally clear lens on the ways in which religious organizations both reflect and contribute to changes in American pluralism. From the churches of a Mexican American neighborhood and of the Black middle class to communities shared by Jews, Christians, Hindus, and Muslims and the rise of "megachurches," Public Religion and Urban Transformation illuminates the complex interactions among religion, urban structure, and social change at this extraordinary episode in the history of urban America.
Download or read book Race Culture and the City written by Stephen Nathan Haymes and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book proposes a pedagogy of black urban struggle and solidarity.
Download or read book The Origins of the Urban Crisis written by Thomas J. Sugrue and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-27 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The reasons behind Detroit’s persistent racialized poverty after World War II Once America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit is now the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of America’s racial and economic inequalities, Thomas Sugrue asks why Detroit and other industrial cities have become the sites of persistent racialized poverty. He challenges the conventional wisdom that urban decline is the product of the social programs and racial fissures of the 1960s. Weaving together the history of workplaces, unions, civil rights groups, political organizations, and real estate agencies, Sugrue finds the roots of today’s urban poverty in a hidden history of racial violence, discrimination, and deindustrialization that reshaped the American urban landscape after World War II. This Princeton Classics edition includes a new preface by Sugrue, discussing the lasting impact of the postwar transformation on urban America and the chronic issues leading to Detroit’s bankruptcy.
