The debate on the underclass: urban poverty and segregation at the end of XX century

Journal title SOCIOLOGIA URBANA E RURALE
Author/s Camillo Tidore
Publishing Year 2017 Issue 2017/113
Language Italian Pages 19 P. 120-138 File size 475 KB
DOI 10.3280/SUR2017-113008
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

Studies on poverty had always gone beyond their scientific aim itself, leading to the search for solutions and to draw lines of intervention, so assigning to the scientific observer a not fully neutral position. The fact that the explanations of phenomena never completely separate from the solutions of social problems introduces an unavoidable pragmatic and axiological perspective. Studies on the condition of the poor contain an ethical commitment that makes them both a witness of an era, and a representation of its cultural and political milieu. In the last decades of XX century, during the Welfare State crisis and the post-Fordist transformations, a revival of the reflection on poverty has been seen. The debate on the underclass fits in that historical transition and offers interesting reflexive ideas to understand the present. This essay reconstructs that debate by taking into account the main elaborations of the underclass theory and their political and values orientations.

Keywords: Urban poverty, segregation, welfare state, underclass, post-Fordism, USA.

  1. Aponte R. (1990). Definitions of the Underclass: a critical analysis. In Gans H.J., Sociology in America. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
  2. Ardigò A. (1980). Crisi di governabilità e mondi vitali. Bologna: Cappelli.
  3. Auletta K. (1982). The Underclass. New York: Random House.
  4. Bagguley P., Mann K. (1992). Idle thieving bastards? Scholarly representation of the Underclass. Work, Employment & Society, 6: 113-126.
  5. Bernardi B. (1973), Oscar Lewis e la cultura della povertà. Bologna: il Mulino.
  6. Booth C. (1902). Life and labour of the people in London. London: MacMillan.
  7. Castells M. (1989). The informational city. Oxford: Blackwell.
  8. Crompton R. (1996). Classi sociali e stratificazione. Bologna: il Mulino.
  9. Darby M.R. (Ed.). (1996). Reducing poverty in America. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
  10. Dolci D. (1957). Inchiesta a Palermo. Torino: Einaudi.
  11. Ferrarotti F. (1974). Vita di baraccati. Napoli: Liguori.
  12. Ferrarotti F. (1979). Roma da capitale a periferia. Bari: Laterza.
  13. Gans H.J. (1995). The war against the poor. New York: Basicbooks.
  14. Goffman E. (1968). Asylums. Torino: Einaudi.
  15. Gonzalez Faus J.I. (1995). Vicari di Cristo. Bologna: EDB.
  16. Guidicini P., Pieretti G. (1992). Le radici dell’impoverimento. Milano: FrancoAngeli.
  17. Guidicini P., Pieretti G., Bergamaschi M. (a cura di). (1995). Povertà urbane estreme in Europa. Milano: FrancoAngeli
  18. Hannertz U. (1970). Soulside: inquiries into ghetto culture and community. New York: Columbia University Press.
  19. Hartmann H. (1990). Povertà nella Comunità Europea: problemi e strategie di lotta. In Negri N., Povertà in Europa e trasformazione dello stato sociale. Milano: FrancoAngeli.
  20. Hirschman A.O. (1991). Retoriche dell’intransigenza. Bologna: il Mulino.
  21. Hughes M.A. (1989). Misspeaking truth to power: a geographical perspective on the “underclass” fallacy. Economic Geography, 65: 189-207. DOI: 10.2307/143834
  22. Jencks C., Peterson P.E. (Eds) (1991). The urban underclass. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
  23. Johnson J.H. (1996). The real issues for reducing poverty. In Darby M.R., Reducing povery in America: views and approaches. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
  24. Kasarda J.D. (1993). Urban industrial transition and the underclass. In Wilson W.J. (ed.). The ghetto underclass. Social science perspectives. Newbury Park: Sage.
  25. Katz M.B. (1989). The undeserving poor. New York: Pantheon Books.
  26. Lavalette M., Pratt A. (Eds.). (1998) Social policy. A conceptual and theoretical introduction. London: Sage.
  27. Lewis O. (1973). La cultura della povertà e altri saggi di antropologia. Bologna: il Mulino.
  28. Macnicol J. (1987). In pursuit of the underclass. Journal of Social Policy, 2: 293-318. DOI: 10.1017/S0047279400015920
  29. Manella G. (2008). Nuovi scenari urbani. Milano: FrancoAngeli.
  30. Mann K. (1992). The making of an english “underclass”? Buckingham: Open University Press.
  31. Massey D.S., Eggers M.L. (1990). The ecology of inequality: minorities and the concentration of Poverty - 1970-1980. American Journal of Sociology, 95: 1153-1188. DOI: 10.1086/229425
  32. Massey D.S., Denton N.A. (1993). American Apartheid. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  33. Micheli G.A., Laffi S. (a cura di). (1995) Derive. Stati e percorsi di povertà non estreme. Milano: FrancoAngeli.
  34. Mingione E. (Ed.). (1996) Urban poverty and the underclass. A reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
  35. Murray C. (1984). Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980. New York: Basic Books.
  36. Murray C. (1990). The emerging British underclass. London: IEA.
  37. Murray C. (1994). Underclass: the crisis deepens. London: IEA.
  38. Murray C. (1996). Reducing poverty and reducing the underclass. Different problems, different solutions. In Darby M.R. (Ed.). Reducing poverty in America. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
  39. Negri N. (1995). I concetti di povertà e di esclusione. Polis, 1: 5-22.
  40. Negri N., Saraceno C. (1996). Le politiche contro la povertà in Italia. Bologna: il Mulino.
  41. Paci M. (a cura di). (1993). Le dimensioni della disuguaglianza. Bologna: il Mulino.
  42. Piachaud D. (1987). Problems in the definition and measurement of poverty. Journal of Social Policy, 2: 147-164. DOI: 10.1017/S0047279400020353
  43. Pugliese E. (1993). Sociologia della disoccupazione. Bologna: il Mulino.
  44. Rahner K. (1967). Teologia della povertà. Roma: Paoline.
  45. Robinson F., Gregson N. (1992). The “Underclass”: a class apart? Critical Social Policy, 34: 38-51. DOI: 10.1177/026101839201203403
  46. Rodger J. (1992). The welfare state and social closure: social division and the “underclass”. Critical Social Policy, 35: 45-63. DOI: 10.1177/026101839201203503
  47. Saraceno C. (1976). Povertà e cultura della povertà: il dibattito in corso in Inghilterra e negli Stati Uniti. Quaderni di Sociologia, 1: 85-101.
  48. Schmitter Heisler B. (1991). A comparative perspective on the underclass. Questions of urban poverty, race, and citizenship. Theory and Society, 4: 455-484. DOI: 10.1007/BF00157322
  49. Sen A. (1993). Il tenore di vita. Tra benessere e libertà. Venezia: Marsilio.
  50. Sgroi E. (1993). L’ordine veterourbano e il circuito della marginalità organizzata. In Guidicini P., Martinelli F. (a cura di). Le nuove forme di urbanità. Milano: FrancoAngeli.
  51. Silver H. (1996). Culture, politics and national discourses of the new urban poverty. In Mingione E. (ed.). Urban Poverty and the Underclass. A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
  52. Sullivan M.L. (1993). Absent fathers in the inner city. In Wilson W.J. (ed.). The ghetto underclass. Social science perspectives. Newbury Park: Sage.
  53. Tidore C. (2003). Esclusione urbana: strumenti per interpretarne i percorsi. In Mazzette A. (a cura di). La città che cambia. Milano: FrancoAngeli.
  54. Townsend P. (Ed.). (1970). The concept of poverty. London: Heinemann.
  55. Townsend P. (1990). Deprivazione del centro urbano e polarizzazione sociale a Londra. In Negri N. Povertà in Europa e trasformazione dello stato sociale. Milano: FrancoAngeli.
  56. Townsend P. (1993). The international analysis of poverty. London: MacMillan.
  57. Wacquant L., Wilson W.J. (1993). The cost of racial and class exclusion in the inner city. In Wilson W.J. (ed.). The ghetto underclass. Social science perspectives. Newbury Park: Sage.
  58. Wacquant L. (1996). Red belt, black belt: racial division, class inequality and the State in the French urban periphery and the American ghetto. In Mingione E. (ed.). Urban poverty and the underclass. A reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
  59. Wilson W.J. (1987). The truly disadvantaged: the inner city, the underclass and public policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  60. Wilson W.J. (1991). Studying inner-city social dislocation: the challenge of public agenda research. American Sociological Review, 2: 1-14. DOI: 10.2307/2095669
  61. Wilson W.J. (Ed.). (1993). The ghetto underclass. Social science perspectives. Newbury Park: Sage.
  62. Wilson W.J. (1996). When the work disappear. The world of the new urban poor. New York: Vintage Books.

Camillo Tidore, Il dibattito sull’underclass: povertà e segregazione urbana alla fine del XX secolo in "SOCIOLOGIA URBANA E RURALE" 113/2017, pp 120-138, DOI: 10.3280/SUR2017-113008