About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

501 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 8 (1989)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0501 and id is 1 raw text is: ANNALS, AAPSS, 501, January 1989

The Cost of Racial and Class
Exclusion in the Inner City
By LOIC J. D. WACQUANT and WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON
ABSTRACT: Discussions of inner-city social dislocations are often severed
from the struggles and structural changes in the larger society, economy, and
polity that in fact determine them, resulting in undue emphasis on the
individual attributes of ghetto residents and on the alleged grip of the
so-called culture of poverty. This article provides a different perspective by
drawing attention to the specific features of the proximate social structure in
which ghetto residents evolve and try to survive. This is done by contrasting
the class composition, welfare trajectories, economic and financial assets,
and social capital of blacks who live in Chicago's ghetto neighborhoods with
those who reside in this city's low-poverty areas. Our central argument is that
the interrelated set of phenomena captured by the term underclass is
primarily social-structural and that the inner city is experiencing a crisis
because the dramatic growth injoblessness and economic exclusion associated
with the ongoing spatial and industrial restructuring of American capitalism
has triggered a process of hyperghettoization.
LoYc J. D. Wacquant is pursuing doctorates in sociology at the University of Chicago and the
Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, Paris. He is presently a research assistant on the
Urban Poverty and Family Structure Project, investigating the relationships between class,
race, and joblessness in the United States.
A MacArthur prizefellow, William Julius Wilson is the Lucy Flower Distinguished Service
Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Chicago. He is the author of
Power, Racism, and Privilege; The Declining Significance of Race; The Truly Disadvantaged;
and coeditor of Through Different Eyes.
NOTE: This article is based on data gathered and analyzed as part of the University of Chicago's Urban
Poverty and Family Structure Project, whose principal investigator is W. J. Wilson. We gratefully
acknowledge the financial support of the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, the Institute for Research on Poverty, the Joyce Foundation,
the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the William T. Grant
Foundation, and the Woods Charitable Fund.

8

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

profiles profiles most