Sociology and Social Policy

Herbert J. Gans is Robert S. Lynd Professor Emeritus of sociology at Columbia University. His many books include People, Plans, and Policies: Essays on Poverty, Racism, and Other National Urban Problems (1991) and The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community (Legacy Edition, 2017), both from Columbia University Press.

How good to have this exceptionally stimulating collection of essays that deploy decades of learning to probe fundamental challenges of political economy, race, and bases of identity. Written by a master sociologist in his characteristically lucid, accessible prose, these deep and compelling ruminations offer challenges to thought and action on every page. -- Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University These essays remind us of the balance and the wonderful clarity and compassion that inform all of Gans's work on urban and other social problems. And they remain acutely insightful and compelling at this perilous moment in American history. -- Frances Fox Piven, the Graduate Center, City University of New York Herbert J. Gans is among the most original and prolific students of American urban society. For over fifty years, he has taken up some of the nation's most vexing problems-racism, poverty, immigration-writing with clarity, urgency, and keen intelligence. In my own work, I find myself going back to Gans again and again, learning something new each time. Uncompromising yet pragmatic, clear-eyed yet hopeful, this brilliant new collection of essays is essential reading. -- Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City A valuable reader for undergraduate classes in urban, economic, and race sociology, as well as a book valuable to policy analysts and makers. A great contribution to the field. -- Deirdre Oakley, Georgia State University

• Preface and AcknowledgmentsPart I: The City1. Some Problems of and Futures for Urban Sociology: Toward a Sociology of Settlements2. The Sociology of Space: A Use-Centered View3. Involuntary Segregation and the Ghetto: Disconnecting Process and Place4. Concentrated Poverty: A Critical AnalysisPart II: Poverty5. Studying the Bottom of American Society6. The Challenge of Multigenerational Poverty7. The Benefits of PovertyPart III: Jobs and the Political Economy8. Superfluous Workers: The Labor Market’s Invisible Discards9. Work-Time Reduction: Possibilities and Problems10. Basic Income: A Remedy for a Sick Labor Market?11. Seeking a Political Solution to the Economy’s Problems12. High School Economics Texts and the American EconomyPart IV: Race and Class13. Race as Class14. “Whitening” and the Changing American Racial Hierarchy15. The Moynihan Report and Its Aftermaths: A Critical AnalysisPart V: Ethnicity16. The Coming Darkness of Late-Generation European-American Ethnicity17. The End of Late-Generation European Ethnicity in America?Appendix: Working in Six Research Areas—a Multi-Field Sociological Career