Abstract
The Invention of the ‘Underclass’ offers, in the words of the author Loïc Wacquant, ‘a ‘microhistory’ of the ‘underclass’, centred on the period of its hegemony’ in the US, between riots in New York in 1977 and the emergence of ‘welfare reform’ policies in the mid-1990s (p. 3). The book is a significant contribution to an already extensive list of publications considering the cleavages between those impoverished groups that are deemed to be either deserving or undeserving.
Wacquant sketches out his approach to the topic of the ‘underclass’ in the prologue to the book. Here, he draws inspiration from the Begriffsgechichte of Reinhart Koselleck and the reflexive sociological approach of Pierre Bourdieu to analyse the conceptual history of the ‘underclass’, including some domestic and international antecedents, those involved in promoting usage of the term, and the ends to which it was deployed. Wacquant argues that, although there are long histories of concepts similar to the ‘underclass’, it actually has ‘no real precedent in American history due to the triple stigma of class, caste, and place it carries and no counterpart in Western European countries’ (p. 30).
The main text of the book is divided into two parts. The first focuses on the ‘tale’ of the ‘underclass’, with the first chapter focusing on the emergence of the concept and its ‘shifty’ nature. The second chapter is a short, but detailed and fascinating explication of the arguments made in a Congressional hearing about the ‘underclass’ and the coming together of scholarship and politics in a ‘policy theater’ which dramatized the ‘tragedy’ of the ‘underclass’ in an effort to generate political and public support for intervention. In the third chapter, Wacquant turns to analyse the ‘anatomy’ of the ‘underclass’, focusing on its ‘three faces’: a structural position; a behavioural problem; and a neo-ecological conception, focusing on the relation between neighbourhood and marginality. The fourth chapter examines the ‘career’ of the concept, looking at its rise and fall and some of the institutions and funding arrangements which helped to initially bring it to the public’s attention and the keep it there for nearly two decades. The fifth and final main chapter in the first part examines the impact of the concept for researching and understanding urban marginality. A short ‘exit’ chapter provides some background on the feminine and masculine personifications of the ‘underclass’: the ‘welfare mother’ and the ‘gang-banger’.
The second half of the book focuses on lessons that can be learned from Wacquant’s interrogation of the ‘underclass’ concept. It is here, in a wide-ranging discussion on the ‘quandaries and consequences of naming’, the importance of ‘forging robust concepts’, the ‘epistemic opportunity costs’ of engaging with such concepts and the need to avoid ‘bandwagons, speculation and turnkeys’ that Wacquant’s sociological contribution to this genre feels most distinctive and original. He also advances an interesting ‘cautious case for precariat’ to describe those that often fall under the umbrella term ‘underclass’. The final two contributions to the text are a Coda, where Wacquant purports to resolve ‘the trouble with “race” in the twenty-first century’ in a little under 10 pages, and an appendix documenting the ‘nine lives of the “underclass”’, predominantly through data on newspaper references and citations of the concept.
For those readers familiar with Wacquant’s work, there is much to enjoy and admire here. The investigation is focused, rich and detailed and the writing is robust and engaging. Extensive notes provide numerous opportunities to engage with further reading on specific aspects of the ‘underclass’ debate. Quibbles are, for the most part, relatively minor, but some are worthy of mention. The rap group Public Enemy are not from Compton, LA as stated, but from Long Island, NY - an insignificant error in the context of the book, but a very obvious one to most people with some knowledge of contemporary Black culture in the USA. The Coda on the ‘resolution’ of ‘the trouble with of “race”’ feels out of place and uncomfortable in its location at the end of the book. And is there really no similar concept to the American ‘underclass’, given the international reach of the term, and the long history of similar concepts? Opportunities to explore this argument, which could build on Wacquant’s argument of the ‘American exportation of penal common-sense’ in Prisons of Poverty (2009: 2), or which could echo Robbie Shilliam’s recent exploration of the processes of racialization in deserving and underserving groups across history from a British perspective in Race and the Undeserving Poor (2018), are not examined here, but certainly warrant further exploration.
In summary, the book is an excellent addition to scholarship in this area and will undoubtedly become an important reference point for future sociological work on the construction of undeserving and marginalised groups.