Social isolation, and concentration effects: William Julius Wilson ­revisited and re-applied

Abstract

Two concepts employed by William Julius Wilson in his effort to advance scholarship on race and urban poverty in America are social isolation and concentration effects. These concepts help comprise a conceptual scheme that provides an alternative lens to that which centres on the behaviour of the urban poor as the principal source of their troubled lives. This article elucidates a research agenda that asserts that the impact of social isolation and concentration effects extends beyond measures of distance or proximity to institutions and individuals that can enable greater efficacy for the urban poor. Rather, social isolation and the concentration of disadvantaged people within bounded geographic regions also facilitates serial patterns of social contact and exposure that become crucial factors for how people construct interpretations of social reality. These interpretations are crucial factors for initiating (or, in some cases, inhibiting) individual action on the part of the urban poor.