Books & ideas

The fabric of a communal ghetto in India

Léo Pellerin — 2025-02-24T10:53:50Z

What constitutes a ghetto? Zeyad Masroor Khan offers an intimate portrayal of life in a marginalized neighbourhood shaped by persistent communal violence. Writing from Aligarh in North India, he vividly describes the spatial, social, and emotional dimensions of the ghetto.

The Idea of the Ghetto

Nicolas Duvoux — 2017-05-04T07:00:00Z

The black ghetto has garnered much attention from researchers and American society alike. Revisiting the intellectual trajectory of many of its key thinkers, ethnographer Mitchell Duneier examines the consolidation of its progressive layers of meaning. An endeavour in intellectual, political, and social history.

Towards a critical approach to social mix

Éric Charmes — 2014-03-17T08:00:00Z

What if social mix was not always the best way to promote equality and social justice? Éric Charmes argues in favour of a pragmatic approach to diversity, and is not afraid of challenging some of our most deep-seated ideas about education, housing or urban policy. But how can we live together if public spaces are being increasingly restricted? Let the debate begin.

Ethnography of Everyday Racism

Linda Haapajärvi & Rébecca Ndour — 2013-11-01T12:39:56Z

Elijah Anderson focuses on the black ghetto as a major source of racial stereotypes and discrimination, and explains how it operates within the framework of changing race relations.

Ghettos: Centers of Jewish Resistance?

Florence Heymann — 2013-04-25T06:44:17Z

Running through this encyclopedic undertaking to map all the Jewish ghettos of World War II are Yad Vashem's contentions that the ghettos did not constitute a prerequisite for the Final Solution and that they were centers of Jewish resistance. What is innovative about this reference work is the huge amount of hitherto little-known documentation from the ex-USSR.

Exploiting the Urban Poor

Nicolas Duvoux — 2013-02-18T09:32:43Z

Although urban poverty in the USA is a subject that was largely absent from the 2012 American presidential campaign, it has reached very high levels. For a new generation of ethnographers now addressing this issue, exploitation is replacing abandonment as the explanation for the reproduction of urban poverty, in particular in the case of Afro-Americans.

Gated Communities: Ghettos for the Rich?

Éric Charmes — 2012-10-01T07:00:07Z

Gated communities are usually portrayed as ghettos in which the rich choose to seclude themselves out of fear of others and an exacerbated desire for security. According to Eric Charmes, this assessment ought to be more nuanced: many of the criticisms directed at gated communities are ill founded.

A Sociologist in the Ghetto

Jules Naudet — 2011-04-11T09:02:00Z

After several years of field work in a Chicago black ghetto, sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh gives a lively and thorough analysis of the survival strategies of its inhabitants. Halfway between solidarity and predation, the underground economy of the ghetto relies as much on money as on networks built on trust and exchange.