The Everyday Life of Urban Inequality: Ethnographic Case Studies of Global Cities

(Paperback)

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The Everyday Life of Urban Inequality explores how steadily increasing inequality and the spectacular pace of urbanization frame daily life for city residents around the world. Ethnographic case studies from five continents highlight the impact of place, the tools of memory, and the power of collective action as communities interact with centralized processes of policy and capital. By focusing on situated experiences of displacement, belonging, and difference, the contributors to this collection illustrate the many ways urban inequalities take shape, combine, and are perpetuated.

Reviews

Ethnographically based and cross-culturally comparative, this volume of articles provides students of anthropology with first-hand portrayals of urban life in different cities. Authors in this volume demonstrate that urban inequality is a multifaceted phenomenon: public policy, institutional arrangement, space, infrastructure, and even personal hygiene. Jointly, they made it clear that urban inequality is not merely a local story but a global reality with shared roots with various ramifications. -- Anru Lee, John Jay College, CUNY

A comprehensive compilation of ethnographic studies carried out in cities around the Global South, this book offers a brilliant insight into how excluded populations make sense, experience, and struggle with social inequality in an era of planetary urbanization. Covering a wide range of topics like gentrification, urban informality, citizenship participation, place making, and migration, The Everyday Life of Urban Inequality helps us understand the diversity of ways in which urban residents deal creatively with contemporary forms of exclusion while making the city. A must-read for anyone interested in reflecting anthropologically on the relationship between urban space and everyday life.

Author Bio

Jessica Bodoh-Creed is lecturer in anthropology at California State University, Los Angeles.



Megan Sheehan is assistant professor of anthropology at the College of St Benedict/St Johns University.



Angela Storey is assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Louisville.