Dr. Elijah Anderson is the William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Sociology at Yale University. He is one of the leading urban ethnographers in the United States. Anderson has served on the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and is formerly a vice-president of the American Sociological Association.
He has also served as a consultant to a variety of government agencies, including the White House, the United States Congress, the National Academy of Science and the National Science Foundation. Additionally, he was a member of the National Research Council’s Panel on the Understanding and Control of Violent Behavior.
The
Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life
Click to order via
Amazon
Hardcover: 318 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (March 28, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0393071634
ISBN-13: 978-0393071634
Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
Nominated for a 2011 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Non-Fiction
Following his award-winning work on inner-city violence, Code of the
Street, sociologist Elijah Anderson introduces the concept of the
“cosmopolitan canopy”—the urban island of civility that exists amidst the
ghettos, suburbs, and ethnic enclaves where segregation is the norm. Under
the cosmopolitan canopy, diverse peoples come together, and for the most
part practice getting along. Anderson’s path-breaking study of this setting
provides a new understanding of the complexities of present-day race
relations and reveals the unique opportunities here for cross-cultural
interaction.
Anderson walks us through Center City Philadelphia, revealing and
illustrating through his ethnographic fieldwork how city dwellers often
interact across racial, ethnic, and social borders. People engage in a
distinctive folk ethnography. Canopies operating in close proximity create a
synergy that becomes a cosmopolitan zone. In the vibrant atmosphere of these
public spaces, civility is the order of the day. However, incidents can
arise that threaten and rend the canopy, including scenes of tension
involving borders of race, class, sexual preference, and gender. But when
they do—assisted by gloss—the resilience of the canopy most often prevails.
In this space all kinds of city dwellers—from gentrifiers to the homeless,
cabdrivers to doormen—manage to co-exist in the urban environment, gaining
local knowledge as they do, which then helps reinforce and spread tolerance
through contact and mutual understanding.
With compelling, meticulous descriptions of public spaces such as 30th
Street Station, Reading Terminal Market, and Rittenhouse Square, and
quasi-public places like the modern-day workplace, Anderson provides a rich
narrative account of how blacks and whites relate and redefine the color
line in everyday public life. He reveals how eating, shopping, and
people-watching under the canopy can ease racial tensions, but also how the
spaces in and between canopies can reinforce boundaries. Weaving colorful
observatio
A
Place on the Corner: A Study of Black Street Corner Men
Click to order via
Amazon
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; Second Edition, Second Edition
edition (October 16, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0226019594
ISBN-13: 978-0226019598
Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
This paperback edition of A Place on the Corner marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Elijah Anderson's sociological classic, a study of street corner life at a local barroom/liquor store located in the ghetto on Chicago's South Side. Anderson returned night after night, month after month, to gain a deeper understanding of the people he met, vividly depicting how they created—and recreated—their local stratification system. In addition, Anderson introduces key sociological concepts, including "the extended primary group" and "being down." The new preface and appendix in this edition expand on Anderson's original work, telling the intriguing story of how he went about his field work among the men who frequented Jelly's corner.ns with keen social insight, Anderson shows how the canopy—and its lessons—contributes to the civility of our increasingly diverse cities.my of Science and the National Science Foundation. Additionally, he was a member of the National Research Council’s Panel on the Understanding and Control of Violent Behavior.
Streetwise:
Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community
Click to order via
Amazon
Paperback: 283 pages
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (November 15, 1992)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0226018164
ISBN-13: 978-0226018164
Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
Winner of the American Sociological Association’s Robert E. Park Award for the best published book in the area of Urban Sociology
In a powerful, revealing portrait of city life, Anderson explores the
dilemma of both blacks and whites, the underclass and the middle class,
caught up in the new struggle not only for common ground—prime real estate
in a racially changing neighborhood—but for shared moral community. Blacks
and whites from a variety of backgrounds speak candidly about their lives,
their differences, and their battle for viable communities.
"The sharpness of his observations and the simple clarity of his prose
recommend his book far beyond an academic audience. Vivid, unflinching,
finely observed, Streetwise is a powerful and intensely frightening picture
of the inner city."—Tamar Jacoby, New York Times Book Review
"The book is without peer in the urban sociology literature. . . . A
first-rate piece of social science, and a very good read."—Glenn C. Loury,
Washington Times
Code of the Street: Decency, Violence and the Moral Life of the Inner
City
Click to order via
Amazon
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company;
Reprint edition (September 2000)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0393320782
ISBN-13: 978-0393320787
Winner of the Komarovsky Award from the Eastern Sociological Society
Unsparing and important. . . . An informative, clearheaded and sobering
book.—Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post (1999 Critic's Choice)
Inner-city black America is often stereotyped as a place of random violence;
in fact, violence in the inner city is regulated through an informal but
well-known code of the street. How you dress, talk, and behave can have
life-or-death consequences, with young people particularly at risk. The most
powerful force counteracting this code and its reign of terror is the
strong, loving, decent family, and we meet many heroic figures in the course
of this narrative. Unfortunately, the culture of the street thrives and
often defeats decency because it controls public spaces, so that individuals
with higher, better aspirations are often entangled in the code and its
self-destructive behaviors. Writing in the tradition of Jane Jacobs and
William Julius Wilson, the author delineates the true workings of city
streets. His most interesting characters are not the bullies and dealers,
but the decent folks, young and old, who through entrepreneurship and
creative self-help strategies are forging a viable alternative, an escape
from the code of the street. Winner of the Komarovsky Book Award, this
incisive book examines the code as a response to the lack of jobs that pay a
living wage, to the stigma of race, to rampant drug use, to alienation and
lack of hope. An individual's safety and sense of worth are determined by
the respect he commands in public—a deference frequently based on an implied
threat of violence. Unfortunately, even those with higher aspirations can
often become entangled in the code's self-destructive behaviors.
Against the Wall: Poor, Young, Black, and Male
Click to order via
Amazon
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press (April 10, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 081222017X
ISBN-13: 978-0812220179
Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title
Typically residing in areas of concentrated urban poverty, too many young
black men are trapped in a horrific cycle that includes active
discrimination, unemployment, violence, crime, prison, and early death. This
toxic mixture has given rise to wider stereotypes that limit the social
capital of all young black males.
Edited and with an introductory chapter by sociologist Elijah Anderson, the
essays in Against the Wall describe how the young black man has come to be
identified publicly with crime and violence. In reaction to his sense of
rejection, he may place an exaggerated emphasis on the integrity of his
self-expression in clothing and demeanor by adopting the fashions of the
"street." To those deeply invested in and associated with the dominant
culture, his attitude is perceived as profoundly oppositional. His presence
in public gathering places becomes disturbing to others, and the stereotype
of the dangerous young black male is perpetuated and strengthened.
To understand the origin of the problem and the prospects of the black
inner-city male, it is essential to distinguish his experience from that of
his pre-Civil Rights Movement forebears. In the 1950s, as militant black
people increasingly emerged to challenge the system, the figure of the black
male became more ambiguous and fearsome. And while this activism did have
the positive effect of creating opportunities for the black middle class who
fled from the ghettos, those who remained faced an increasingly desperate
climate.
Featuring a foreword by Cornel West and sixteen original essays by
contributors including William Julius Wilson, Gerald D. Jaynes, Douglas S.
Massey, and Peter Edelman, Against the Wall illustrates how social distance
increases as alienation and marginalization within the black male underclass
persist, thereby deepening the country's racial divide.
Problem
of the Century: Racial Stratification in the United States
Click to order via
Amazon
Paperback: 480 pages
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation Publications (March 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 087154055X
ISBN-13: 978-0871540553
Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1 inches
In 1899 the great African American scholar, W.E.B.
DuBois, published "The Philadelphia Negro," the first systematic case
study of an African American community and one of the foundations of
American sociology. DuBois prophesied that the "color line" would be "the
problem of the twentieth century." One hundred years later, "Problem of the
Century" reflects upon his prophecy, exploring the ways in which the color
line is still visible in the labor market, the housing market, education,
family structure, and many other aspects of life at the turn of a new
century.
The book opens with a theoretical discussion of the way racial identity is
constructed and institutionalized. When the government classifies races and
confers "group rights" upon them, is it subtly rei nforcing damaging racial
divisions, or redressing the group privileges that whites monopolized for so
long? The book also delineates the social dynamics that underpin racial
inequality. The contributors explore the causes and consequences of high
rates of mortality and low rates of marriage in black communities, as well
as the way race affects a person’s chances of economic success. African
Americans may soon lose their historical position as America’s "majority
minority," and the book also examines how race plays out in the sometimes
fractious relations between blacks and immigrants. The final part of the
book shows how the color line manifests itself at work and in schools.
Contributors find racial issues at play on both ends of the occupational
ladder – among absente! e fathers paying child support from their meager
earnings and among black executives prospering in the corporate world. In
the schools, the book explores how race defines a student’s peer group and
how peer pressure affects a student’s grades.
"Problem of the Century" draws upon the distinguished faculty of
sociologists at the University of Pennsylvania, where DuBois conducted his
research for "The Philadelphia Negro." The contributors combine a scrupulous
commitment to empirical inquiry with an eclectic openness to different
methods and approaches. "Problem of the Century" blends ethnographies and
surveys, statistics and content analyses, census data and historical
records, to provide a far-reaching examination of racial inequality in all
its contemporary manifestations.
Related Links
http://www.elijahanderson.com/
