The Invention of the 'Underclass': A Study in the Politics of Knowledge

by Loïc Wacquant

At century’s close, American social scientists, policy analysts, philanthropists and politicians became obsessed with a fearsome and mysterious new group said to be ravaging the ghetto: the urban “underclass.” Soon the scarecrow category and its demonic imagery were exported to the United Kingdom and continental Europe and agitated the international study of exclusion in the postindustrial metropolis.

In this punchy book, Loïc Wacquant retraces the invention and metamorphoses of this racialized folk devil, from the structural conception of Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal to the behavioral notion of Washington think-tank experts to the neo-ecological formulation of sociologist William Julius Wilson. He uncovers the springs of the sudden irruption, accelerated circulation, and abrupt evaporation of the “underclass” from public debate, and reflects on the implications for the social epistemology of urban marginality. What accounts for the “lemming effect” that drew a generation of scholars of race and poverty over a scientific cliff? What are the conditions for the formation and bursting of “conceptual speculative bubbles”? What is the role of think tanks, journalism, and politics in imposing “turnkey problematics” upon social researchers? What are the special quandaries posed by the naming of dispossessed and dishonored populations in scientific discourse and how can we reformulate the explosive question of “race” to avoid these troubles? Answering these questions constitutes an exacting exercise in epistemic reflexivity in the tradition of Bachelard, Canguilhem and Bourdieu, and it issues in a clarion call for social scientists to defend their intellectual autonomy against the encroachments of outside powers, be they state officials, the media, think tanks, or philanthropic organizations.

Compact, meticulous and forcefully argued, this study in the politics of social science knowledge will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, anthropology, urban studies, ethnic studies, geography, intellectual history, the philosophy of science and public policy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Loïc Wacquant is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Researcher at the Centre de sociologie européenne, Paris. His books include Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality (2008), Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (2009), and Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer (expanded anniversary edition, 2022).

Genres: Sociology, Economics, Politics, Nonfiction

246 pages, Paperback

About the author

Loïc Wacquant is a sociologist, specializing in urban sociology, urban poverty, racial inequality, the body, social theory and ethnography.

Wacquant is currently a Professor of Sociology and Research Associate at the Earl Warren Legal Institute, University of California, Berkeley, where he is also affiliated with the Program in Medical Anthropology and the Center for Urban Ethnography, and Researcher at the 'Centre de sociologie européenne' in Paris. He has been a member of the Harvard Society of Fellows, a MacArthur Prize Fellow, and has won numerous grants including the Fletcher Foundation Fellowship and the Lewis Coser Award of the American Sociological Association.

Reviews

[Marie Clare]

I want to bring the most rancid vibes possible to the kids table at the Boyle family Thanksgiving dinner

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are so many words and phrases in English that we can take to be synonyms – but they rarely are. I never really thought too much about the term ‘underclass’. As the author says here, a preposition ‘under’ is used as an adjective, making it an odd construction to start with. It is intended to be derogatory. As he also says, it seems to cover much the same ground of Marx’s lumpenproletariat, but there are differences, not least since Marx placed these within his overall understanding of how classes work within society. And that is one of the main criticisms of underclass in this book. That as a sociological category, it doesn’t do nearly enough work. The author also mentions that words acquire their meaning through usage, but most of the use of underclass reinforces the narrowness of the definition and the virtually anti-sociological nature of it as a descriptor. Ironically, enough, it is rarely used in relation to other classes in society – and so the ‘class’ part of the category is almost misplaced. It is interesting to note that ‘category’ is from Greek and means to accuse, to accuse someone of belonging to a set.

The term seems to have come into use mainly in Reagan’s time – something of a warning in that already – peaked in the 1990s and has suffered a decline since. Although, this decline has seen something of a resurgence recently. It is used to define the Black American urban poor. And is used to stereotype them as without work, dysfunctional and a danger to society at large. The racialised nature of the term is definitional.

The part of this book that I particularly liked was his discussion of how few books have been written on the very wealthy, while there are so many on poverty. It is as if these two ideas are disconnected – with one hardly being worthy of comment – rather than intimately interconnected – with one necessitating the other. Again, this is down to our recent rejection of all things class related. Noticing relationships might lead one to look to systemic solutions to problems, rather than merely allocating individual blame. The lack of a class perspective isn’t the only problem here – there is also a kind of blindness to the historical foundations of the underclass as a category too. The idea that Black Americans are work-shy or incapable of sustaining lasting relationships is taken as moral failings, rather than socially conditioned.

The term he proposes as an alternative is the precariat. This places whole sections of current society within a framework that categorises people according to social fields in relationship with each other and in competition with each other too. This comes from Bourdieu and not only echoes the proletariat, but also the idea of standing on shifting stands, where one’s footing is never secure. Rather than being a simple spatial metaphor of under and over – it gives a better, visual representation of the enforced insecurity of life for people in these social locations. It also points to the fact that the system itself creates such locations and that these are decisions the whole of society are responsible for – not just those forced to suffer under them.

An interesting book using ideas from Bourdieu to challenge a characterisation that does more to hide than to illuminate.

[Faith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely interesting and compelling.The author writes and uses words in way that can be hard to understand if not familiar with research and sociology concepts. I had to slowly grind through to fully get a grasp of what he was trying to argue.

Time to write my book report on it.

[Jennifer Stoloff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit slow going due to a lot of specialized jargon but worth the read. Explores and deconstructs the term “underclass”; what it means and doesn’t, how it was used, and what it elides.