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Eviction and the Reproduction of Poverty Author: Matthew Desmond Dissertation School: University of Wisconsin-Madison Pages: 208 Publication Date: June 2010 Availability: Access Number: 10868 Abstract: Despite the vast literature on poverty, social scientists have all but ignored the significance of eviction in the lives of the urban poor. Eviction is perhaps the most understudied process affecting the lives of the urban poor today. Yet it is a major cause of residential mobility, material hardship, and homelessness; also, as I document below, it is a common occurrence in inner-city neighborhoods. I set out to study eviction not because it was a hot topic (it has since become one) but because it offered a unique opportunity to gain new perspectives on the reproduction of urban poverty and structural disadvantage. Studying eviction, for me, became an exercise in synecdoche sociology, so to speak, where the part (eviction) provided crucial insights into the whole (for example, network dynamics among the urban poor, the creation and recreation of social inequality, racial segregation, slum conditions). The study also allowed me to transcend conventional approaches that take as their scientific object entities delimited by location (groups) or by social classification (places); instead, I took as my object of analysis the entire configuration of relations among those entwined in the eviction process: different actors enmeshed in mutual dependence and struggle. Based in inner-city Milwaukee, I employed ethnographic fieldwork, an original survey, and documentary analysis to explore the causes, dynamics, and consequences of eviction and, more broadly, to plumb the intricate workings of poor neighborhoods and the low-cost housing market. |
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