Woven throughout with rich details of everyday life, this original, on-the-ground study of poor neighborhoods challenges much prevailing wisdom about urban poverty, shedding new light on the people, institutions, and culture in these communities. Over the course of nearly a decade, Martín Sánchez-Jankowski immersed himself in life in neighborhoods in New York and Los Angeles to investigate how social change and social preservation transpire among the urban poor. Looking at five community mainstays—the housing project, the small grocery store, the barbershop and the beauty salon, the gang, and the local high school—he discovered how these institutions provide a sense of order, continuity, and stability in places often thought to be chaotic, disorganized, and disheartened. His provocative and ground-breaking study provides new data on urban poverty and also advances a new theory of how poor neighborhoods function, illuminating the creativity and resilience that characterize the lives of those who experience the hardships associated with economic deprivation.
Table of Content
List of Tables and Figures
Preface
Introduction
1. A Theory of Life, Social Change, and Preservation in Poor Neighborhoods
2. Hosting a Home: Competing Agendas for Life in Public Housing
3. Living Refuge: Social Change and Preservation in the Housing Project
4. Provisions for Life: Making the Mom-and-Pop Store a Neighborhood Institution
5. Taking Care of Business: Social Change and Preservation in the Mom-and-Pop Store
6. Not Just a Clip Joint: Hair Shops and the Institution of Grooming
7. Life on the Edge: Social Change and Preservation in the Hair Shop
8. The Gang’s All Here: Fathering a Bastard Institution
9. All in the Family: Mothering the Gang as a Bastard Institution
10. Whither the Neighborhood High School? Contending Roles and Functions
11. School Works: The Dynamics of Two Production Lines
Conclusion
Methodological Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Martín Sánchez-Jankowski is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Urban Ethnography at the University of California, Berkeley. He is author of Islands in the Street: Gangs and American Urban Society (UC Press), among other books.
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