Soulside: Inquiries into Ghetto Culture and Community - Softcover

Hannerz, Ulf

9780231086516: Soulside: Inquiries into Ghetto Culture and Community

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0231086512 ISBN 13: 9780231086516

Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr, 1969

For an outsider, the prospect of blending into the fabric of an urban African American ghetto might be an intimidating one. But for a Scandinavian scholar, the idea of getting to know one of Washington DC's toughest neighborhoods from the inside during the racially tense, late 1960s, could well have seemed impossible. Conducting fieldwork in and around Winston Street, Ulf Hannerz did just that. Soulside details the everyday lives of the ghetto inhabitants he observed and participated with during this period, revealing their beliefs and expectations and the diversity of their life styles.

Originally published 35 years ago, Soulside became an urban anthropological classic. The book helped to dispel many false impressions about ghetto life and questioned the idea, precipitated in the influential Moynihan Report and in notions of a "culture of poverty," that the poor had chosen to lead the lives they do. Raising central moral and political questions about American society in a turbulent period, Soulside became an example of public engagement in anthropology. In a new afterword, Ulf Hannerz discusses the book's place in the debates of the time and its relevance to current arguments in anthropology.

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About the Author:

Ulf Hannerz is a professor of social anthropology at Stockholm University. He is the author of several books including, most recently, Foreign News: Exploring the World of Foreign Correspondents, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Review:

“Soulside’s pathbreaking description and explanation of US ghetto life is one of the greatest works of urban ethnography produced since the end of the Chicago School. This new edition will continue to inform a wide general readership while inspiring, in a sophisticated way, new generations of students trying to grapple with age old questions of culture and poverty.” (Mitch Duneier, author of Sidewalk and Slim’s Table)

"The reissuing of Soulside attests to its status as a classic in the field of urbhan anthropology whose theoretical and methodological contours Ulf Hannerz has helped to shape." (Gisa Weszkalnys Critique of Anthropology)

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