Urban Desolation and Symbolic Denigration in the Hyperghetto

This paper is based on the ethnographic description of a devastated corridor of Chicago’s collapsing black ghetto at the end of the century and examines the links between the urban environment, the social structure, and collective psychology. It stresses the need for a theoretical and empirical foundation for studying the connections between urban desolation and symbolic denigration of poor neighborhoods in the polarized metropolises of advanced societies. It also discusses how the everyday experience of material shortages, ethnoracial seclusion, and socioeconomic marginality corrodes the self, stresses interpersonal ties, and skews public policy driven by the negative perceptions of these infamous places.