[URBANTH-L]WWW: Demonizing the Inner City - Ideology and the Urban Poor

[JerryKrase at aol.com]

Stephen: Thanks. I took a look and  will use the video in my "Visual 
Sociology of Urban Neighborhoods" classes  at Brooklyn College. Remind me to put the 
$15 Czech in the male. As you show/  speak the phenomenon (stigmatizing and 
demonizing the poor; and its correlates  the anti-urban bias and racism) long 
predates the 1980s and even the 1880s. To  add to your archive of materials; when 
I was doing community organizing in the  late 60s and through the 70s I 
employed a visual strategy which can be found in  my NYU dissertation "The 
Presentation of Community in Urban Society" (1973) from  which a book Self and 
Community in the City (1982 which is on line at: 
_http://www.brooklynsoc.org/PLG/selfandcommunity/index.html_ 
(http://www.brooklynsoc.org/PLG/selfandcommunity/index.html) ) and two foundational articles were generated.  
"Reactions to the Stigmata of Inner City Living." Journal of Sociology and 
So­cial  Welfare." Vol. IV, No. 7 (September) 1977: 997‑1011.; 
 
"Stigmatized Places‑Stigmatized  People: Crown Heights and Prospect‑Lefferts‑
Gardens." in Rita Seiden  Miller (eds.) Brooklyn  U.S.A.: The Fourth Largest  
City in America. New  York: Brooklyn  College and Columbia University Press, 
1979: 251‑62.;  and  
"Community in the Inner City as a Moral Problem." Humanity and Society. Vol. 
3, No. 1  (February). 1979: 35‑52. 
The most recent incarnation of the logic which we share can  be found in  
“The  Visual Presentation of Community: What Does Community Look Like?” in 
Senses of Place: Urban Narratives as  Public Secrets, edited by Robert Chapman, 
Pace University Institute for  Environmental and Regional Studies (PIERS), 
Volume 4, 2005: 151-75.  
As someone who spent the first 9 years of my life in The Red  Hook Houses 
(low-income housing project) and then in a neighborhood outsiders  defined as a 
growing slum (Prospect Heights, Bedford/Stuyvesant) because it was  being 
"invaded" by African-Americans, I always apprecaite those who recognize  the 
powerful stigma of place as well as race in American and many other  societies. The 
irony today is that Red Hook,  Prospect Heights and Bed-Stuy are "threatened" 
by invading hordes of yuppies. A  kind of visual circuit of capital. As you 
might imagine I have done some visual  work on this flip side as well: "Poland 
and  Polonia: Gentrification as ethnic aesthetic practice and migratory 
process." In  Gentrification in Global  Perspective, edited by Rowland Atkinson and 
Gary Bridges. London: Routledge, 2005:  185-208.  
I  will cut and paste and send you message to the International Visual 
sociology  list serve as well as my Community and Urban Sociology Section of the 
American  Sociological Association. I doubt whether Rudy will be using it in his 
hopefully  ill-fated run to replace W. 
All  the best, Jerry 


Jerome Krase,  Ph.D.
Emeritus and Murray Koppelman Professor
Brooklyn College
The City  University of New York