Transcript Operationalizing the “Underclass”

Street Wise: Race, Class
& Change in an Urban Community
• Operationalizing “Underclass”
• Social Science Methodologies
Ethnography
• Key Issues Anderson Revisits
• Focusing on Spatial/Social Isolation
• Expectations for Future Chapters
Operationalizing the “Underclass”
“Ghetto residents themselves seldom use the term
‘underclass’ when referring to the poor and
others who have trouble surviving by
conventional means. The category referred to by
that term is in effect socially constructed through
public observations of relatively better-off
residents concerned with their own status and
identity.”
(Anderson, 68)
Social Science Methodologies:
An Issue of Orientation or Grain Size
• Hirsch (Historiography)
• Historical, Archival, Citation-Intensive,
Focused Community & Institutional Orientation
• Piven & Cloward (Mixed, Comparative Historical)
• History, (limited) First Hand Accounts,
Comparative Organizational Orientation
• Massey & Denton (Demography)
• Statistically Rich, Modeling,
Institutionally & Socially Structured Orientation
• Oliver & Shapiro (Mixed, Survey Data & Interviews)
• Statistically Rich, Interviews,
Community & National Orientation
• Kotlowitz (Journalism)
• Story-Intensive, Literary License, Limited Citation,
Focused Local & Individual Orientation
Role of Ethnography: “Thick Description”
of The Village and Northton (Philadelphia)
• A method of studying and learning about a person or
community with subjects typically in their own
environment
• Relies on detailed understanding rather than broad
statistical information
• Accounts are descriptive because detail is imperative
(e.g., pages and pages of italics)
• Accounts are interpretive as the ethnographer
determines the significance of what s/he observes
Some Previously-Studied Themes:
• Role of Speculators (Old Timers)
• Eminent Domain (East City Redevelopment)
• Crime and the Drug Trade (Northton)
• Neighborhood Turnover (The Village)
Wealthy Settlers
(Aristocracy)
Irish & German
(Working Class)
African Americans
(from South)
Village Friends/
Quakers
Counterculturalists,
GLBT, Liberals,
Former Hippies
• Spatial Isolation Begets Social Isolation*
Yuppies
(1980s)
Social Construction of Boundaries:
Creating the Non-Physical Boundaries
“…boundaries are set through collective public
action, they are not static; rather, they are created
by social habit, situationally shaped and
determined by those who share the space.”
(Katz as cited in Anderson, 47)
Social Isolation:
Anderson’s Thick Description #1
• 1970s Youth Culture as Proxy for Racial Equality
On the streets of the Village in the 1970s, middle-class white
youths could be seen wearing dashikis…they would spike
their language with “man,” “cool,” and “right on,”imitating
the lower-income blacks with whom they shared the
neighborhood streets and sometimes their beds. Such shows
of familiarity with the black subculture… distanced them
from the wider white society and, some believed, drew them
spiritually and politically closer to blacks…placing them
firmly on the morally correct side of the continuing struggle
for racial equality.
(Anderson, 18)
Social Isolation:
Anderson’s Thick Description #2
• White Homeowners and African American Workers
…when [African American workers] come into a yard or a
house and are confronted by tenants – especially white
tenants, who tend to make few distinctions among the local
blacks – they feel the need to explain themselves, even
though they may have already been explained by their
sweeping up or painting and by the loud orders given them
by [their boss]. A sort of plantation mentality arises as white
landlords make use of local black men for jobs in Northton
and the Village that might otherwise cost them more.
(Anderson, 53)
Social Isolation:
Anderson’s Thick Description #3
• Asian Shopkeepers and African American Employees
[In Northton] Asian shops proliferate…Korean businessmen
began to hire more blacks. Now the common picture of the
Asian-owned establishment is of a number of trusted blacks
performing certain functions, from armed guard to grillman
at the hoagie shops, being supervised by an Asian, usually
male, who invariably stands at the cash register and takes the
money…
(Anderson, 53)
Expectations for the Coming Chapters
• Development of context for seemingly “culture of
poverty”-type observations (e.g., family structure,
crime, drug trade, etc.)
• Connections or (some) citations for context-void
conclusions (e.g., African American parents prefer
traditional education)
• Further the social construction analysis (e.g.,
fraternities as gangs, boundaries, behaviors)