Soulside: Inquiries into Ghetto Culture and Community

By Ulf Hannerz

Book Overview

For an outsider, the prospect of blending into the fabric of an urban African American ghetto might be an intimidating one. But for a Scandinavian scholar, the idea of getting to know one of Washington DC's toughest neighborhoods from the inside during the racially tense, late 1960s, could well have seemed impossible. Conducting fieldwork in and around Winston Street, Ulf Hannerz did just that. Soulside details the everyday lives of the ghetto inhabitants he observed and participated with during this period, revealing their beliefs and expectations and the diversity of their life styles. Originally published 35 years ago, Soulside became an urban anthropological classic. The book helped to dispel many false impressions about ghetto life and questioned the idea, precipitated in the influential Moynihan Report and in notions of a "culture of poverty," that the poor had chosen to lead the lives they do. Raising central moral and political questions about American society in a turbulent period, Soulside became an example of public engagement in anthropology. In a new afterword, Ulf Hannerz discusses the book's place in the debates of the time and its relevance to current arguments in anthropology.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 023103363X
• ISBN13: 9780231033633
• Release Date: January 1969
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 236 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Dated, but effective inquiry into the "ghetto culture"

This book is difficult to read for a modern reader. It's written in 1960s style, which means it is very dense, and sometimes hard to get to the parts that further the author's hypothesis. With that said, however, I appreciated the look into the ghetto subculture of the mid 1960s, and see where it has implications for dealing with urban poverty now. Rather than focus entirely on the groups that cause problems, the author tells about how the entire community functions, that most people want to live in a better neighborhood, want more for their families, and so on - but the opportunities are few and far between. Particularly interesting is the fact that even the locals view certain people as fringe members of society, and avoid them where possible - those people responsible for the majority of the crimes and other heartache faced by visitors. Certainly not as accessible as later books from the 80's and 90's, Soulside gives a strong glimpse at what things were like at the forefront of the civil rights movement, the urban renewal phase, and the end of an era.