Description
The modern slum is as prevalent as its stereotypes. Today, a slum is often understood to be a place of extreme poverty in the developing world-a place disordered, lacking the basic amenities of life, traumatized by violence, and perpetuated by dysfunctional families and disaffected extremists. Yet the word "slum" was not coined in the twenty-first century's developing world or its recent past. The word emerged in early nineteenth-century London, and its use expanded as modernization created what is now the developed world and its client territories.The Oxford Handbook of the Modern Slum explores the history of the modern slum, connecting nineteenth-century iterations through multiple pathways to its contemporary existence. With chapters by more than twenty scholars, this Handbook brings an array of important and original perspectives and methodologies to bear on slums, real and imagined. Its analysis ranges across Europe, North America, Latin America, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and sub-Saharan Africa.The Handbook probes the impact of gender and race on urban social disadvantage and traces the development of private and state-sponsored intervention-as well as tourist interest-in urban poverty. It suggests that characterizations of slumland disequilibrium, dysfunctionality, and unsustainability should be offset by evidence of make-do enterprise, strategic determination, resilience, homeliness, and neighborliness. Drawing upon anthropology, archaeology, architecture, geography, history, politics, sociology and urban planning, the Handbook delves into households and communities whose existence has been hidden by stereotypes.
Table of Contents
CONTENTSContributorsIntroduction: Slums and the Modern WorldAlan MaynePART I. FUNDAMENTALS1. "What's in a Name?"Alan Mayne2. Women and Wages in Britain's "Classic" SlumsEllen Ross3. The Intimate Relationship between Slums and Racial Segregation: a South African Case StudyVivian Bickford-SmithPART II. URBAN DISADVANTAGE IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD4. Informality as Process and the Social Construction of Slums: Southeast Asian CasesRoss King5. Slums: City Spaces of Governance and Global DisadvantageWinnie Mitullah6. Slum Statistics in IndiaAmitabh Kundu7. Pride and Shame: the History of the Slums in Recife, BrazilFlávio de Souza8. The Spatial Politics of US Homelessness: The Evolution of Boston's "Skid Row"Ella Howard9. The Rise and Decline of the European Struggle against Social ExclusionRob AtkinsonPART III. PERSPECTIVES ACROSS TIME: FROM THE OUTSIDE10. The Discovery of "Slums" in mid-Nineteenth Century Cincinnati, OhioHenry C. Binford11. Social Geographies of Poverty in Victorian and Edwardian LondonRichard Dennis12. How Slumming makes the SlumFabian Frenzel13. Slums: Neglect, Clear, or Improve?Richard Harris14. Haussmann and the Rebuilding of Paris, 1853-70: A ReassessmentAntoine Paccoud15. Regulations of Slums and Slum Improvement in British Colonial HistoryRobert Home16. The Spillover Effects of Fire, Riot and Epidemics from SlumsAlan Smart and Eliot Tretter17. The Political Construction of Slums in IndiaNandini Gooptu18. The Return of the Slums in Postwar AmericaAlexander Von Hoffman19. Slums and Communism: (Un-)Slumming the (Post) Soviet CityIvan Nevzgodin20. NGO Representation of Informal Settlements: the case of Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI)Marie HuchzermeyerPART IV. PERSPECTIVES ACROSS TIME: FROM THE INSIDE21. Notting Dale: The Making and Breaking of a West London Slum, 1865-1946Jerry White22. The Historic Fires of SingaporeKah Seng Loh23. The Archaeology of Immigrant Lives and Livelihoods at New York City's Five PointsRebecca Yamin24. Historical Archaeology and the Evolution of Twentieth-Century Slums in DetroitKrysta Ryzewski25. Archaeologies of Disadvantage in the Modern City: Sydney and Melbourne ComparedTim Murray26. Popular Housing Processes in Caribbean ColombiaPeter Kellett27. La Perla, Puerto Rico: Beyond Formal and InformalFlorian Urban28. Living at the Center, Pushed to the EdgeKalpana Sharma
