In When Work Disappears (1997), Wilson examines the plight of the inner-city poor by integrating structural, cultural, and psychological variables into a liberal-structural research framework. He does so by examining how macro-level social structural variables have led to the development of ghetto-derived cultural variables. These ghetto-derived cultural variables, in turn, have created social psychological variables that adversely affect the self-efficacy or psychological disposition of individual underclass members. Wilson uses this liberal-structuralist research framework to make a class-centric argument about the plight of the urban underclass throughout the book and he concludes by using this argument to buttress his class-centric social policy proposals that aim to liberate the underclass from social exclusion. This essay seeks to elaborate on Wilson’s liberal-structural research framework and to emphasize his well-intentioned—but flawed—class-centric social policy proposals.
A full understanding of Wilson’s liberal-structuralist research framework requires us to review the main conclusions that he draws from empirical evidence in When Work Disappears. In this book, economic forces are the primary social structural variables that bring the underclass into existence. Specifically, Wilson’s central hypothesis is that the formation of the underclass has been caused by an economic shift from industrial to post-industrial societies from the 1970s onwards.[1] In the former low-skilled workers are in high demand whereas in the latter high-skilled workers are in high demand. This economic shift, moreover, has had acute unemployment effects for segregated African American communities since a significant proportion of this population worked in low-skilled manufacturing trades. This increase in unemployment is further compounded by secondary social structural variables, including institutional racism against the African American community as evident in unjust housing policies and discrimination in labour markets. In particular, Wilson argues that discriminatory federal housing policies after World War II ‘drew middle-class whites to the suburbs and, in effect, trapped blacks in the inner cities.’[2] This bourgeois exodus of middle-class white (and eventually middle-class black) families from urban neighbourhoods left behind the poorest community members, who were left in emerging ghetto neighbourhoods where investments in local businesses and institutions (e.g., churches, schools, community centres, etc.) deteriorated as a result.[3] This lack of business investment in emerging ghetto communities has lead to what Wilson calls a ‘spatial mismatch’ scenario where potential job opportunities are not located near the homes of job-seekers. This ‘spatial mismatch’ is problematic according to Wilson since inadequate public transportation systems and discrimination of blacks in suburban labour markets has left poor urban blacks jobless and socially immobile in ghetto neighbourhoods.[4] In summary, the primary social structural variable to Wilson is the economic transformation from industrial to post-industrial societies with the secondary social structural variable of institutional racism contributing in significant, yet secondary, ways.
Next, we shall explore how these aforementioned macro-level ‘social structural variables’ have created socially immobile underclass cultures that generate distinct cultural variables, including values, behaviours, and beliefs that are created in response to their social location. The summation of these cultural variables can be best understood by the abstract sociological term called ‘social disorganization.’ Social disorganization can be simply defined as the grease that keeps the community machine running. Neighbourhood values, behaviours, and beliefs that promote hard work, stable families, neighbourhood safety, quality schools/community facilities, and meaningful social networks are all elements of social organization. Conversely, values, behaviours, and beliefs that legitimize economic inactivity, unstable single-parent families, high crime rates, poor schools, and distrust of others are all elements of social disorganization. Wilson argues that there is a negative correlation between joblessness and social organization in urban ghettos. As Wilson writes, ‘neighbourhoods plagued with high levels of joblessness are more likely to experience low levels of social organization: the two go hand in hand. High rates of joblessness trigger other neighbourhood problems that undermine social organization, ranging from crime, gang violence, and drug trafficking to family breakups and problems in the organization of family life.’[5] Wilson states, however, that such ghetto-related cultural variables are not biologically-determined values, behaviours, and beliefs of an inferior underclass race, but rather it is just people ‘adapting to difficult circumstances.’[6] There is a tinge of Mertonian functionalism is this argument since Wilson is saying that social disorganization characteristics—such as high rates of pick-pocketing or youth gangs—are rational, calculated, and conscious social actions of marginalized underclass members who wish to maximize their wealth and achieve quasi-familial affection, respectively, since legitimized routes to wealth accretion and to middle-class family lifestyles are not open to them. While underclass members may ‘endorse mainstream norms against this behaviour in the abstract but then provide compelling reasons and justification for this behaviour, given the circumstances in their community.’[7] In summary, economic structural variables yield disorganized cultural variables since ‘high joblessness neighbourhoods…feature problems of social organization and ghetto-related modes of adaptation.’[8]
From these structural and cultural arguments, Wilson moves to a more complicated argument that explores how exposure to adverse underclass cultural variables that lead to social disorganization become internalized, unconscious aspects of one’s self-efficacy or psychological disposition ‘whereby a person’s exposure to certain attitudes and actions is so frequent that they become part of his or her own outlook and therefore do not, in may cases, involve selective application to a given situation.’[9] Whereas in our previous discussion we examined that cultural variables that led to social disorganization (e.g., crime, youth gangs) were conscious, calculated, and rational decisions made by underclass members, Wilson contends that the social psychological variable of self efficacy is an internalization of these values, behaviours, and beliefs of their underclass environment that over time unconsciously dominate the disposition of underclass members. Simultaneously, self-efficacy also serves to create and perpetuate the values, behaviours, and beliefs that perpetuate an underclass environment. In order to understand self-efficacy better, one may relate this concept to Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. In Outline of a Theory of Practice, Bourdieu writes that habitus is a ‘structured structure’ and a ‘structuring structure.’[10] In other words, one’s habitus is an unconscious internalization of culture while at the same time a mental reality that is used to construct and perpetuate that culture. A crack-addict’s habitus, for example, does not only internalize the values, behaviours, and beliefs of the drug culture, but it also constructs and perpetuates the values, behaviours, and beliefs of this drug culture by engaging and expanding the existence of a drug culture. An underclass member’s self-efficacy, in other words, is moulded by one’s ghetto culture while at the same time one is also constructing and perpetuating this ghetto culture by ‘living-out' the values, behaviours, and beliefs of this culture. Wilson suggests that self efficacy shared among a community can be defined as collective efficacy. In terms of the inner-city ghettoes, collective efficacy can be generally defined as a crisis of self-esteem and self-worth of all underclass members. As Wilson writes, ‘beliefs in one’s ability to take the steps necessary to achieve the goals necessary in a given situation’ is eroded in underclass communities since they seriously doubt to accomplish what they expect and that any effort to accomplish their efforts will be ‘futile due to an environment that is unresponsive, discriminatory, or punitive.’[11] In summary, the psychological variables of self and collective-efficacy are internalized values of the ghetto culture while simultaneously a force that perpetuates the existence of the underclass culture.
In closing, this book review has outlined the research framework of Wilson’s underclass research. It is important to emphasize the class-centric solutions to the liberation of the underclass through social policy. According to Wilson, the underclass is a phenomenon that is ultimately derived from macro-level economic forces that create adverse cultural and psychological variables that contribute to the formation of the underclass. In response, social policy must be tailored to achieve social mobility of underclass members by investing in human capital policy-related programs (e.g., universal healthcare, education, workfare program like Works Progress Administration) that provide underclass members with a Third Way ‘hands up’ approach to ending their social exclusion. The fatal flaw to Wilson’s social policy ideas is that he assumes racial discrimination has a negligible effect on social exclusion since he believes that class-based policies will best facilitate upward social mobility. This is a contradiction in his work since he clearly pinpoints a long legacy of racial discrimination at both political and individual levels that clearly have circumscribed the social mobility of the poor blacks. Here is a brief sampling: ‘in addition to enduring the search and travel costs, inner-city black workers often confront racial harassment when they enter suburban communities;[12] ‘the federal government contributed to the early decay of inner-city neighbourhoods by withholding mortgage capital;[13] ‘public housing represents a federally funded institution that has isolated families for decades’;[14] and many employers consider inner-city workers—especially black males—to be uneducated, unstable, uncooperative, and dishonest.’[15] Given the long history of racial discrimination US social life, a class-centric approach to policy will inevitably be delimited as a result of institutional and individual racism. Therefore, what Wilson should be doing is coupling his broad human capital social policy approach with specific race-based anti-discriminatory statutes that reduce discrimination in housing, lending, and labour markets. It is only through this approach that poor urban minorities may have a chance at achieving upward social mobility.
[1] William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Vintage, 1997), 33.
[2] Ibid., 46.
[3] Ibid., 49.
[4] Ibid., 54-55.
[5] Ibid., 21.
[6] Ibid., 71.
[7] Ibid., 70.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., 71.
[10] Pierre Bourdieu, An Outline of a Theory of Practice (London: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 72.
[11] Wilson, 75.
[12] Ibid., 41.
[13] Ibid., 46.
[14] Ibid., 48.
[15] Ibid., 111.
