[URBANTH-L]NEW BOOK: Cracks in the Pavement

Lindsay Wong lindsay.w at ucpress.edu
Wed Jul 23 12:42:57 EDT 2008


Dear Urbanth-L:


The University of California Press  is pleased to announce the publication of:

Cracks in the Pavement: Social Change and Resilience in Poor Neighborhoods

Martín Sánchez-Jankowski is Professor of 
Sociology and Director of the Center for Urban 
Ethnography at the University of California, 
Berkeley. He is author of Islands in the Street: 
Gangs and American Urban Society (UC Press), 
among other books.

http://go.ucpress.edu/Jankowski

Woven throughout with rich details of everyday 
life, this original, on-the-ground study of poor 
neighborhoods challenges much prevailing wisdom 
about urban poverty, shedding new light on the 
people, institutions, and culture in these 
communities. Over the course of nearly a decade, 
Martín Sánchez-Jankowski immersed himself in life 
in neighborhoods in New York and Los Angeles to 
investigate how social change and social 
preservation transpire among the urban poor. 
Looking at five community mainstays-the housing 
project, the small grocery store, the barbershop 
and the beauty salon, the gang, and the local 
high school-he discovered how these institutions 
provide a sense of order, continuity, and 
stability in places often thought to be chaotic, 
disorganized, and disheartened. His provocative 
and ground-breaking study provides new data on 
urban poverty and also advances a new theory of 
how poor neighborhoods function, illuminating the 
creativity and resilience that characterize the 
lives of those who experience the hardships 
associated with economic deprivation.

Full information about the book, including the 
table of contents, is available online: 
http://go.ucpress.edu/Jankowski





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