Store in the Hood

Steven J. Gold is professor and graduate program director in the department of sociology at Michigan State University. The past chair of the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association, Gold is the author, coauthor or coeditor of six books and the coeditor of The New Americans book series from LFB Publishers.

The story of ethnics and enterprise captures both the American dream and the American nightmare, since the same people who seem to be pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, seem to also find themselves in conflict with their neighbors and customers. In The Store in the Hood, Steven Gold revisits this American perennial, taking the long view to tell a surprising story about the conflicts both engendered and avoided by the past century’s waves of ethnic entrepreneurs. This deeply researched, well-written book will appeal to students and scholars alike.

• PrefaceAcknowledgmentsChapter 1: IntroductionChapter 2: Black Entrepreneurship from 1900 until 1935Chapter 3: Immigrant Entrepreneurs' Relations with Customers in the Early 20th CenturyChapter 4: The Fate of Minority Merchants during Depression and WarChapter 5: Government Policy, Ghettos, and Merchant-Customer Conflict after World War IIChapter 6: Demographic Change and Urban Transformation: Interactions between Immigrant Business Owners and Customers, 1970 to 2005Chapter 7: The Informal Economy as a site of Competition between Disadvantaged Populations and Ethnic MerchantsChapter 8: Ethnic Merchants in a Black Majority City: The Case of Detroit (with Joe Darden)Chapter 9:Social Inequality and Merchant-Customer ConflictsNotes BibliographyIndexAbout the Author