The Poverty of the Ethnography of Poverty

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Loïc Wacquant (Professor of Sociology, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley)

The Poverty of the Ethnography of Poverty

Loïc Wacquant (Professor of Sociology, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley)

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
18 July 2025

Social interaction; Rural communities; Ethnic studies; Social research & statistics

Recapitulating the three ages of urban ethnography born in Chicago a century ago, this book puts into historical and analytical perspective a controversy over the ethnography of the nexus of race, class, and morality in and around the black American ghetto in the age of triumphant neoliberalism, in order to draw from it positive lessons for the theory and practice of fieldwork. Thoughtless empiricism, acceptance of problematics prefabricated by ordinary and political common sense, confusion between folk and analytical categories, confinement to the immediate perimeter of interaction, bifurcating moralism: these are all traps that every ethnographer encounters sooner or later on her path and that only collective vigilance can hope to thwart.

This epistemological return is an opportunity to pinpoint the danger of ethnographism, the tendency to want to describe, interpret, and explain a phenomenon based solely on the elements discerned through fieldwork, and to call for the correlative practice of an enactive, structural, and historicized ethnography that sets out to embed the micro-actions observed in the interlocking series of nested social spaces that shape them and give them sense. Such an ethnography allows us to avoid falling into one or another of the five fallacies of participant observation: interactionism, inductivism, populism, presentism, and the hermeneutic drift. And to move beyond Clifford Geertz's ""thick description"" with the ""thick construction"" inspired by Pierre Bourdieu, whose mission is to construct scientifically the ordinary social construction of reality.

By: Loïc Wacquant (Professor of Sociology Professor of Sociology University of California Berkeley)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780197804018
ISBN 10: 0197804012
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 18 July 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Loïc Wacquant is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Researcher at the Centre Européen de Sociologie et de Science Politique, Paris. His books have been translated into twenty languages and include Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer (expanded anniversary edition, 2022), The Invention of the ""Underclass"": A Study in the Politics of Knowledge (2022), Bourdieu in the City: Challenging Urban Theory (2023), and Racial Domination (2024).

Reviews for The Poverty of the Ethnography of Poverty

This is tour-de-force Wacquant at the height of his maturity, erudition, and analytical brilliance, mixing fireworks, reflexivity, humor, and empathy. His history of a hundred years of US urban ethnography offers a rock-solid platform for reconsidering the epistemological and practical pitfalls of fieldwork in the underbelly of the city and beyond. The illustrations from his fieldwork in a California criminal court reveal the nitty-gritty of fusing Bourdieu's 'polyamorous theory' with deep participant observation. Dive in headfirst and you will emerge smarter, more alert, and energized to carry out rich and rigorous fieldwork. * Philippe Bourgois, author of In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio and co-author of Righteous Dopefiend * The Poverty of the Ethnography of Poverty makes a compelling case for the undeniable power of ethnography, in its various modalities and practices, for understanding the richness, complexities, and messiness of the social world. Setting aside the polemic at its core, the book offers a thoroughly sourced, impressively capacious, and engagingly written history of the method-an invaluable resource for students and practitioners of the craft. * Cecilia Menjívar, author of Enduring Violence: Ladina Women's Lives in Guatemala * 10/02/2025