Ghetto Residents Research Articles

Delegitimizing protest: Psychology's omissions and commissions

AbstractPsychological research has failed to take accountability for the ways it has aligned with State interests, at the expense of solidarity with Black people protesting the criminal legal system and pursuing liberation in the U.S. Through a case study analysis of six psychological research articles, ranging from 1968 to 2022, this paper tracks evidence of psychology's alignment with the State's interests. Evidence emerges in clinical disease(s) assigned to enslaved and incarcerated Black people (drapetomania, protest psychosis) and in empirical assumptions and (il)logics binding research methods and analyses. While theoretical and methodological frameworks, language (“patients,” “rioters,” “ghetto residents,” “minority group members”) and levels of analysis (psyche, personality, social, community, identity, movement) evolve over time and across subdisciplines, racialized carceral ideologies persist across psychological research approaches. By tracing carceral footprints across this vast psychological literature, this analysis reveals how traditional empirical research weaponized pathologizing and criminalizing accounts to delegitimize Black protests of State violence from the Civil Rights Movement to the Movement for Black Lives and beyond.

Warsaw Ghetto Police: The Jewish Order Service During the Nazi Occupation by Katarzyna Person (review)

Reviewed by: Warsaw Ghetto Police: The Jewish Order Service During the Nazi Occupation by Katarzyna Person Gary Bruce Person, Katarzyna–Warsaw Ghetto Police: The Jewish Order Service During the Nazi Occupation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021. 232 p. In the late summer of 1942, the Jewish Order Service of the Warsaw ghetto brought roughly 6,000 people a day to the Umschlagplatz, where German authorities then deported them to Treblinka. The Service was savage in their rounding up of adults and children alike, many of the latter from Janusz Korczak’s orphanage. Jozef Szmerling, who oversaw the Umschlagplatz, was bestial. How it came to pass that Jews ruthlessly helped to dispatch other Jews to their deaths is the central question of Warsaw Ghetto Police. The Warsaw ghetto police was established in September 1940 when Adam Czerniakow, chairman of the Warsaw ghetto Judenrat (Jewish council), received orders to form a Jewish police force to assist with keeping order in the ghetto. Although the Service had some room to maneuver, it was never fully independent, reporting to the Judenrat, Polish Blue Police, and, the ultimate authority, the German civil administration. Czerniakow appointed Jozef Szerynski, a Jew who had converted to Catholicism, to oversee the roughly 2,000 strong ghetto police. It became immediately evident to ghetto residents that a position in the new police force would be advantageous. The author, Katarzyna Person, makes [End Page 232] a compelling case that the Service did not represent a cross-section of Jewish society, but was tilted towards the wealthy. The majority of the force had been office workers, merchants, or industrialists, as they were able to bribe their way into an organization that allowed them to avoid the roundups to labour camps. Although historians refer to the ghetto “police” as a shorthand, many of its tasks were more mundane than those of a police force, typically involving sanitation. They maintained general cleanliness in the ghetto, removed debris from pavement and roadways, monitored carts for safety, ensured horses were not overburdened, checked the ghetto walls for holes made by smugglers, and the like. Significantly, they were forbidden from conducting criminal cases, which remained the purview of the Blue Police and the German authorities. As time passed, their duties evolved to become more expansive and grislier. They established checkpoints in front of Judenrat buildings, collected debts from shops, and dealt with children who lay in the streets abandoned or dead. During “typhoid checks” on random dwellings, they beat Jews mercilessly and stole their money. In the spring of 1941, they began to round up Jews for labour detail and even furnished some of the guards at the labour camps. Such actions earned them the derogatory nickname “catchers” by other Jews and comparisons to officers in tsarist Russia who delivered Jews to the Russian military authorities. A tipping point in their duties came in November and December 1941 when the Jewish Order Service was used as an auxiliary in the execution of other Jews being held in a German prison. “For many,” Person writes, “these executions became a symbol of the final moral collapse of the Jewish police” (p. 74). Because of incidents like this, the service’s excessive use of force, and its terrible corruption, the service was vilified by ghetto residents, who described the force as “a collection of smugglers, Gestapo informers, and war profiteers” (p. 76). Oneg Shabbat, the underground group that ran the Ringelblum Archive, denounced the force as collaborators and betrayers of their own people. Emanuel Ringelblum himself was very critical of the force as well. Person is careful to point out that the force was not an “outsider” force of Jews who had converted to Catholicism, as might be implied by the situation of the Service’s leader. It was primarily composed of unassimilated Jews. This book is driven by a strong chronological narrative, with the occasional pause for analysis. Because Person’s analysis is so thoughtful, readers would no doubt desire more of it. One of the most intriguing sections of the book, for example, is her discussion of the concept of violence. As much as the Jewish policemen hid behind the standard refrain that “round ups carried out...

„Najlepsze dziecko Prezesa” – poczta w getcie łódzkim (1939–1944)

Po ogłoszeniu decyzji o utworzeniu w Łodzi getta poczta niemiecka w lutym 1940 r. wstrzymała dostarczanie przesyłek żydowskim adresatom. Przełożony Starszeństwa Żydów Mordechaj Chaim Rumkowski, chcąc zagwarantować płynne przekazywanie korespondencji żydowskim adresatom, uruchomił w ramach administracji Wydział Pocztowy. Autorka omawia w artykule jego funkcjonowanie w możliwie wszystkich wymiarach oraz systematyzuje wiedzę na jego temat. Charakteryzuje zasady, które regulowały działanie poczty, rodzaje przesyłek oraz odbiorców. Obrazuje pracę cenzury, zasady i kryteria, jakim kierowała się, zatrzymując korespondencję mieszkańców getta. Rozważania na temat praktyk stosowanych przez cenzorów zostały oparte na analizie adnotacji umieszczonych na przesyłkach oraz zależności między nimi a treścią poczty. Tekst nie jest ogólnym opracowaniem traktującym o korespondencji jako źródle do badań nad Zagładą. Sygnalizuje jedynie zagadnienie korespondencji w postaci kart pocztowych jako takiego źródła, szczególnie w odniesieniu do warunków życia w getcie, komunikowania się jego mieszkańców między sobą i ze światem zewnętrznym, tego, w jaki sposób i o czym informowali, a przede wszystkim jako świadectwa ofiar. Ważną częścią artykułu jest opis niewysłanych kart pocztowych przechowywanych w Archiwum Państwowym w Łodzi w zespole Przełożony Starszeństwa Żydów w Getcie Łódzkim. Zbiór liczy ponad 22 tys. sztuk pocztówek. W ogromnej większości są to niewysłane przez pocztę karty napisane przez osoby osadzone w getcie łódzkim. Pocztówki były zatrzymywane na podstawie decyzji gettowej cenzury bądź wskutek czasowego zawieszenia Postsperre ruchu pocztowego w okresie deportacji Żydów do obozów zagłady

Этноконфессиональные иммигрантские гетто как проблема национальной безопасности в современном общественно-политическом дискурсе Дании

The ghettoisation of immigrant areas in Denmark is a lengthy and objective process of the emergence of ethno-religious ‘parallel societies’ in the state. Cultural and religious principles that are often at odds with the democratic values of Danish society guide the actions of ghetto residents. Danish social and political discourse pictures this ideological difference between the host society and Muslim immigrant minorities as a potential threat to Denmark’s national security caused by a combination of political, social, and economic factors. The ensuing social disunity and violation of the country’s territorial integrity take the problem to a regional and international level. Through analysing public speeches of Danish social and political actors, this article reconstructs key stages in the development of parallel societies in Denmark. Another focus is official government strategies to prevent isolated immigrant areas from turning into ghettoes: the Government’s Strategy against Ghettoisation (2004), Return of the Ghetto to Society: Confronting Parallel Societies in Denmark (2010), and One Denmark without Parallel Societies: No Ghettos in 2030 (2018). The escalation of the social conflict calls for the Danish authorities to take decisive action against the enclavisation of segregated immigrant communities. This study employs discourse analysis to evaluate the efficiency and identify the shortcomings of government action to integrate ethno-confessional minorities into society. Particular attention is paid to analysing public reaction to the criteria for identifying ghettoes as well as to annual publications of official ghetto lists.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND THE LONG, HOT SUMMER OF 1967 IN THE UNITED STATES

AbstractDuring the summer of 1967, the United States experienced a series of race riots across the nation's cities as largely black neighbourhoods rebelled against the conditions in which they were living. The crisis reached its apogee in July when the worst riots since the American Civil War struck Detroit. In this atmosphere, legislators were faced with a stark choice of punishing rioters with stricter crime measures or alleviating living conditions with substantial federal spending. Despite being a minority in Congress, elected Republicans found themselves holding the balance of power in choosing whether the federal government would enforce law and order or pursue social justice for ghetto residents. While those Republicans who pursued ‘order’ have been given prominence in historiographical narratives, such politicians only represent one side of the Republican response. Indeed, moderate and progressive Republicans rallied to save Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty and a host of urban spending initiatives that had appeared politically doomed. These actions reveal that scholars have overestimated Republican conservatism during the 1960s. Nonetheless, the rioting left a long-term legacy that enabled ‘order’ eventually to triumph over ‘justice’ in the following five decades.

The Emigrants: Straight Outta Compton, Dope, and Emerging from the Ghetto

Many recent movies about African American life have focused on people leaving the ghetto. Earlier movies about groups living in ghettoes have portrayed the ghetto as a permanent reality. Moviemakers explored ghetto life as an interesting subject and a source of cultural innovation. Life was hard, but social and cultural ways to cope with difficulty helped. Now, the ghetto is presented as a dangerous and depressing place. The only effective way to cope with it is to leave and find more nurturing environments. A few talented individuals and hard workers can succeed that way. They are seen as heroic because they refuse to accept defeat or failure. Few ghetto residents can take this route out of the ghetto, and the many who cannot are ignored or blamed. The audience can applaud the few successes and find a happy outcome to ghetto movies.

Toronto Museums Span Gamut From Head to Toe

Whether you are of a mind to visit an exhibit that documents a Jewish photographer’s view of a World War II Polish ghetto or one that shows how shoes reflect culture and history, Toronto’s museums are bound to enlighten.

Beyond Warsaw and Łódź: The Importance of Social Ties for Coping with Nazi Oppression in Three Smaller Polish Ghettos: Piotrkow, Tranow and Lachwa

This essay develops a narrative of survival and resistance in three smaller Polish ghettos, Pitrokow, Tarnow and Lachwa. Drawing from archival sources and new interviews, it asserts that residents of the Jewish ghettos were obliged to marshal a full range of creative responses. Survival depended on success as an economic, political and social actor. Evidence for this adaptability supports Yehuda Bauer’s emphasis on ‘amidah’ and confirms his assertion that Holocaust victims did not meet their fate passively. As the survivors from Tarnow and Piotrokow attest, ghetto residents formed strong dyadic social bonds that functioned to guarantee physical and emotional survival. By extending this initial analysis through comparison with Lachwa, one of the few ghettos that saw collective resistance, we can observe how individual survival mechanisms interacted with leadership and community variables. The Jews of Lachwa pursued strategies similar to those seen in Tarnow and Piotrokow. The unique variable at Lachwa which led to broad-based resistance was the structural advantage of a small, easily manageable village which facilitated the transition from individual survival strategies to collective action at a crucial moment.

Disadvantage, disorder and diversity

Disadvantage, disorder and diversity

The Political and Economic Forces Shaping Concentrated Poverty

Through the second half of the 1990s and into the early years of the twenty-first century, public attention to the plight of poor black Americans seemed to wane. There was scant media attention to the problem of concen trated urban poverty (neighborhoods in which a high percentage of the resi dents fall beneath the federally designated poverty line), little or no discussion of inner-city challenges by mainstream political leaders, and even an apparent quiescence on the part of ghetto residents themselves. This was dramatically different from the 1960s, when the transition from legal segregation to a more racially open society was punctuated by social unrest that sometimes expressed itself in violent terms, as seen in the riots that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But in 2005, Hurricane Katrina exposed concentrated poverty in New Orleans. When television cameras focused on the flooding, the people trapped in houses and apartments, and the vast devastation, many Americans were shocked to see the squalid living conditions of the poor. Of course, the devas tation of Katrina was broadly visited upon the residents of New Orleans, black and white, rich and poor, property owner and public housing tenant alike. But while many residents were able to flee, the very poor, lacking auto mobiles or money for transportation and lodging, stayed to wait out the storm with tragic results. And through Katrina, the nation's attention became riveted on these poor urban neighborhoods. Some people argued that Katrina demonstrated how foolhardy is reli ance on the government for protection, rather than self-reliance and control of one's own fate. However, it is unfair and indeed unwarranted to blame people with limited resources for being trapped in their neighborhoods and

Cultural Context, Sexual Behavior, and Romantic Relationships in Disadvantaged Neighborhoods

When culture is invoked to understand the consequences of growing up in disadvantaged neighborhoods, the isolation of ghetto residents from mainstream institutions and mainstream culture is often emphasized. This article attempts to reorient current theorizing about the cultural context of disadvantaged neighborhoods, particularly when it comes to adolescent decision making and behavior. I argue that rather than being characterized by the dominance of “oppositional” or “ghetto-specific” cultures, disadvantaged neighborhoods are characterized by cultural heterogeneity: a wide array of competing and conflicting cultural models. I apply this conception to sexual behavior and romantic relationships among adolescents using survey data from Addhealth. Analyses show that disadvantaged neighborhoods exhibit greater heterogeneity in cultural frames and scripts and that, in more heterogeneous neighborhoods, adolescents' frames and scripts are poorly predictive of their actual behavior.

Writing the Urban Discourse into the Black Ghetto Imaginary: Louise Meriwether's Daddy Was A Number Runner

Writing the Urban Discourse into the Black Ghetto Imaginary:Louise Meriwether's Daddy Was A Number Runner E. Lâle Demirtürk Starting with the Great Migration in the early twentieth century, the city has emerged as a site of racial geography that constructs blackness and whiteness in terms of spatial definitions.1 The racialized urban space introduced a cognitive map of the predominantly white city where the ghetto became "an ideological construct" (Sugrue 229) even more than a physical one. Since the 1960s black ghettos have become the subject of serious sociological research that analyzes inner-city communities in close scrutiny.2 The sociopolitical and ideological constructs that caused the spatial isolation of black Americans were achieved by "a conjunction of racist attitudes, private behaviors, and institutional practices that disenfranchised blacks from urban housing markets and led to the creation of the ghetto" (Massey & Denton 83). Since the historical frame of reference of the term "ghetto"3 signifies a spatialized term, it also signifies, as the Kerner Report of 1968 suggests, that "white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto" (qtd. in Bernasconi 345).4 The fact that blacks are confined to the black ghetto is a forceful statement on the ideology of whiteness: the historical and political agency involved in the creation of the ghetto signifies "the collapse of public institutions"5 in the city since the mid-1970s (Wacquant, 438). Hence, the black ghetto, [End Page 71] in Joe W. Trotter's terms, draws attention to "the presence of white racism in the socioeconomic and political life of the city" (4). Segregation in ghettos has caused unemployment and the social isolation of black people, "reducing their chances of acquiring the human capital skills, including adequate educational training," that facilitate upward mobility (Wilson, "From Institutional to Jobless Ghettos" 121). The neo-racist strategy of racializing urban space in an attempt to pathologize black bodies results in seeing drug use, unemployment, prostitution, welfare dependency, and teenage childbearing as a natural outcome of the decline of inner cities. The 1965 Moynihan Report conceptualizes the black ghetto as a site of pathology, because of the socioeconomic system responsible for the black urban poor which causes other forms of pathology.6 The pathology of the ghetto is also at the basis of the culture-of-poverty argument that proposes the thesis that people are poor because their culture is defective, blaming the victim in its assertion that "basic values and attitudes of the ghetto subculture have been internalized and thereby influence behavior" (Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged 61). Starting in the 1960s, urban studies of ghetto life have utilized research data to show "how the experiences and the patterns of conduct of ghetto residents are shaped by powerful structural constraints in urban American society" (Wilson, "Introduction" xii). Sociologists investigate measurable conditions and observable social behaviors in terms of race, class, ethnicity, gender, and socio-economic status. But "urban culture has other dimensions that do not lend themselves so easily to quantitative analysis or narrative description" (LeGates & Stout, "Introduction" 91). Here, ghetto fiction plays a crucial role, as literary representations of the ghetto show different dimensions of ghetto life which cannot be measured by quantitative analysis. By its definition, ghetto fiction as an urban cultural genre forms a city discourse in which the black ghetto is the site of devalorization against the "white" city. Textualizing the ghetto becomes a way of seeing the city.7 We see ghetto residents are not passive victims; on the contrary, they struggle to find effective strategies of survival. Racialized urban space creates an ambivalence that obscures the interactions between the black ghetto and the white city. The ghetto signifies the social construction of a marginal space, reconstructing the city "as a mechanism of spatial exclusion, surveillance, and social control" (Smith ix). In this context, Louise Meriwether's Daddy Was a Number Runner (1970) belies the culture-of-poverty argument in both depicting black individuals' struggle for a better life and in privileging the point of view of the black ghetto resident. As ghetto fiction, Meriwether's novel restructures [End Page 72] the "urban imaginary"8 in situating our city-centric consciousness within the black ghetto. Here the primary...

Another Glance through the Historian's Lens: Testimonies in the Study of Health and Medicine in the Ghetto

The essay addresses the issues of health and medicine in the ghettos of eastern Europe, emphasizing the centrality of oral testimonies and memoirs to historical analysis. It opens with some general remarks on Holocaust testimonies and then moves on to a discussion of medicine in the ghettos. It first deals with the state of public health and medicine there, which was shaped by both the community's medical experience and the catastrophic results of the Nazi policy of starvation, persecution, terror, and killing. More than any other factor in ghetto life, public health and medicine represented the coalescence of the private and public spheres. What reinforced the meshing of private and public health was the “work as rescue” strategy, adopted by some Jewish Judenräte (ghetto administrative councils), on the assumption that the Nazis would not kill the workers they needed. As a result, the physical ability of ghetto residents to work became a central interest of the ghetto's Jewish authorities: a health department was established in all large and medium-sized ghettos.Documentation kept in the ghetto archives provided information about health services. Reports from clinics and hospitals on disease and mortality were included in Judenräte statistical bulletins. However, much of the activity of these health departments and doctors had to be concealed from the German authorities and thus is not reflected in formal ghetto records. Some information can be gleaned from the few surviving diaries and underground sources. Oral testimonies and memoirs not only fill in missing information but also contribute insights into the activities and efforts of the medical services. They are also centrally important for understanding the wider significance of these human efforts and their successes and failures in times of extreme crisis.

Natural Resilience and Innate Mental Health.

Bonanno’s (January 2004) article on loss, trauma, and resilience represents another important step toward pointing psychology in a more positive and fruitful direction. Bonanno was right; psychologists have dramatically underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events. More important, psychologists have also failed to realize that the human capacity for resilience, highlighted by Bonanno, is natural and normal, part and parcel of the innate health built into all human beings. Bonanno concluded from his review of the research on grieving and posttraumatic stress disorder that resilience to interpersonal loss and traumatic events is common and represents healthy adjustment. This conclusion points to the existence of an innate human psychological immune capacity. For decades, researchers in fields like physiology and medicine have marveled at human beings’ innate physical immune system. Physicians assert that most of their interventions simply release this innate immune capacity that enables people to physically heal from the inside out. Furthermore, they attribute its source to an intelligent life force that they have yet to fully explain or quantify. Bonanno’s (2004) research suggests a psychological counterpart, an innate psychological immune capacity that, when unhampered, produces well-being and wisdom even during extremely aversive events and facilitates psychological healing from the inside out. The idea that all human beings have innate mental health, which includes a natural capacity for resilience, is the primary assumption of the principle-based psychology behind the prevention model known as health realization, which over the past two decades has been taught to hundreds of severely at-risk individuals (e.g., prison inmates, gang members, ghetto residents), empowering them to access and display the type of resilience chronicled by Bonanno (2004) (e.g., Kelley, 2003a, 2003b; Mills, 1995; Mills & Spittle, 2001; Pransky, 1997). Bonanno is right in asserting that focusing on coping and recovery following traumatic events is not enough. Psychology must begin to focus on psychological principles that combine to create all human experience and, using the logic of these principles, to design prevention programs that help people access their innate capacity for resilience and optimal functioning (e.g., Pransky, 1998, 2003). Bonanno (2004) is off the mark, however, in his assessment that there are multiple pathways to resilience. When resilience is viewed through the principles behind human psychological functioning, it appears clear that the primary source of genuine resilience is allowing the human mind to think in the natural, healthy way in which it was designed to think. The multiple pathways cited by Bonanno (e.g., selfenhancement, repressive coping, positive emotions) represent less efficient attempts by people to use their thinking agency in more functional ways. These roundabout pathways could be easily circumvented, however, if people understood how to use their thinking ability to their best advantage. Finally, Bonanno (2004) was right when he said that “dysfunction cannot be fully understood without a deeper understanding of health and resilience” (p. 26). Bonanno suggested, however, that this can be accomplished “by viewing resilient functioning through the same empirical lens as chronic forms of dysfunction and more time-limited recovery patterns” (pp. 26–27). Unfortunately, this empirical lens will inevitably lead, as it has already done with the study of dysfunction and is rapidly doing with positive psychology, to a proliferation of theories and models that promote a myriad of external sources and causes of resilience (e.g., Kelley, 2004). A more powerful lens that is more likely to produce breakthroughs in understanding health, resilience, recovery, and dysfunction is one that focuses on the psychological principles of mind, consciousness, and thought that combine to create all human experience and behavior from the inside out.

Inside the Zone

This article seeks to illumine the street-level, internal, meshing of social structure, strategy and experience in the contemporary black American ghetto by dissecting the practices of a professional `hustler' who works the streets of Chicago's South Side. A socioanalytic interpretation of Rickey's life - his background, worldview and social attachments, as well as his techniques of coping and methods of predatory entrepreneuralism - shows how individual strategies of survival at the core of today's `dark ghetto' can aggregate into a trajectory of collective destruction that gives all appearances of being self-inflicted, even as it is (over)determined by the twofold retrenchment of market and state and by the social entropy that these determine. Through an ironic historical reversal, it is whites who, having vanished from the social universe and consciousness of ghetto residents, have become the `invisible men' of the new sociospatial structure of relegation that consigns poor urban blacks to an internecine war with neither victors nor end. The analysis of a single individual lifeworld thus serves to illumine the whole system of material and symbolic relations, visible and invisible, local and societal, that compose the late 20th-century ghetto as instrument of relegation and lived reality.

Poverty and Economic Morphology of Ohio Central-City Neighborhoods

The authors examine the relationship between poverty and economic activities in 24 selected industries in more than 100 neighborhoods in Ohio central cities. As expected, local economies deteriorated as poverty levels increased. However, the economic deterioration began much earlier, and was much more serious, than has been suggested in earlier ghetto studies. Furthermore, the decline in neighborhood jobs associated with the economic deterioration was massive. If neighborhood jobs are seen as a road to economic and social recovery for ghetto residents, the findings are very bleak indeed.

Similarities in responses to extreme and unremitting stress: Cultures of communities under siege.

During World War II, eastern European ghettos served to contain and oppress ghetto residents. The organizational structures and processes that emerged within the ghetto are directly analogous to those in patients with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID, formerly MPD). This article explores the analogues between ghetto organization and the internal worlds of DID patients. Complex DID patients, like ghetto residents subjected to extreme and unremitting stress, develop homeostatic systems characterized by competing forces that serve agendas of help-seeking, communication to outsiders about atrocities and utilitarian efforts to prevent destabilization. The ghetto analogue to DID is offered as a descriptive teaching device for both clinicians and patients.

Significant silences: newspaper coverage of problems facing black Americans

The social responsibility theory that the press should warn the public when society's goals, e.g. equal opportunity and justice, are not being met, underlies this article. Items about black Americans were coded from 365 issues of four major US newspapers (1950s–1980s), analyzing problems facing African Americans. The topics covered were compared to ghetto residents' accounts of grievances that underlay the urban riots of the 1960s, and compared to those problems mentioned, but not explored in the newspapers' other coverage of black citizens.

The Cost of Racial and Class Exclusion in the Inner City

Discussions of inner-city social dislocations are often severed from the struggles and structural changes in the larger society, economy, and polity that in fact determine them, resulting in undue emphasis on the individual attributes of ghetto residents and on the alleged grip of the so-called culture of poverty. This article provides a different perspective by drawing attention to the specific features of the proximate social structure in which ghetto residents evolve and try to survive. This is done by contrasting the class composition, welfare trajectories, economic and financial assets, and social capital of blacks who live in Chicago's ghetto neighborhoods with those who reside in this city's low-poverty areas. Our central argument is that the interrelated set of phenomena captured by the term “underclass” is primarily social-structural and that the inner city is experiencing a crisis because the dramatic growth in joblessness and economic exclusion associated with the ongoing spatial and industrial restructuring of American capitalism has triggered a process of hyperghettoization.

Explaining Ghetto Consumer Behavior: Hypotheses from Urban Sociology

That ghetto residents are disadvantaged consumers is a conclusion with which no consumer economist would argue. Caplovitz's [8] classic study focused the attention of academicians and government officials upon the unethical and illegal practices which had become commonplace in the low-income marketing system. Indeed, the term economic deviance has been used to describe the ghetto market subeconomy which provides consumer goods to those who are excluded, voluntarily or involuntarily, from the marketplace which serves those of middle and high incomes. The general conclusions of research describing the consumer practices of low-income ghetto residents support the concept of a deviant submarket. Policy recommendations for helping low-income ghetto consumers usually center upon increasing consumer com petencies through formal or informal consumer education programs, strengthening the enforcement of state and federal consumer protection laws, and encouraging the patronage of retail establishments outside of this subeconomy. More recently, An dreasen [4] has noted that the most effective remedial action might be to improve the subeconomy market itself, mainly through in creasing competition within the area. A review of the recent urban sociological literature reveals new insights into the purchase behaviors of ghetto residents. Drawing upon the conclusions of Wilson [24] and Kapsis [15], two conflicting hypotheses will be proposed: (1) ghetto consumers in organized neighborhoods maximize their satisfaction when shopping in the