Civility in the City

Jennifer Lee is Associate Professor of Sociology, University of California, Irvine.

A brighter and more surprising picture of life in California is painted by sociologist Jennifer Lee in Civility in the City, a remarkable book that focuses on the mom-and-pop businesses in the inner city as a laboratory where we can study how blacks, Jews and Koreans actually perceive and deal with each other. Lee’s conclusions contradict what we were shown in Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing or the news footage of the 1992 Los Angeles riots: ‘Civility prevails in everyday life because merchants and their employees actively work to preserve it.’

• Acknowledgments 1. Introduction 2. The Ghetto Merchant Yesterday and Today 3. The Significance of Small Business and the Nature of the Niche 4. Life on the Street: The Everyday Encounters between Blacks, Jews, and Koreans 5. How Race Polarizes Interactions: Cultural Brokers and the Meaning of Black 6. The Coethnic Disadvantage of Serving Your Own 7. From Civility to Conflict: Individualism, Opportunity, and Group Position 8. Shopping While Black: Symbolic Racism or the Same Old Racism? 9. Conclusion: Forging a Culture of Reciprocity and Respect Appendix: Notes on Methodology and Tales from the Field Notes Index