Perseus Academic: The Ghetto by Ray Hutchison

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• Subject Postcard:
  Sociology Spring 2013 BC
• Title Postcard:
  The Ghetto

Too often the term “ghetto” is simply applied to any African American community, to the inner city as a whole, or recently to anything that is degraded or unrefined. But what is a ghetto? Does it arise organically from cities, or is it a consequence of social conflict and government policy? Are the banlieues, barrios, favelas, shantytowns, and slums of Europe, South America, and other continents similar to the American ghetto?

The Ghetto invites us to reexamine our assumptions by addressing these and other critical questions. Concise, original essays from top scholars around the world clearly describe essential arguments and discoveries, making the current discussion of marginalized urban spaces accessible for all readers and students of urban studies and sociology.

Ray Hutchison is professor of sociology and chair of urban and regional studies at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. He is senior editor of The Encyclopedia of Urban Studies and coauthor (with Mark Gottdiener) of The New Urban Sociology (Westview Press).

Bruce D. Haynes is associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis. His publications include Red Lines, Black Spaces: The Politics of Race and Space in a Black Middle-Class Suburb.