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.
