Editing Underclass (section)

==Definitions==

Various definitions of the underclass have been set forth since the term's initial conception; however, all of these definitions are basically different ways of imagining a category of people beneath the working class. The definitions vary by which particular dimensions of this group are highlighted. A few popular descriptions of the underclass are considered as follows.

===Focus on economics===
Marxian sociologist [[Erik Olin Wright]] sees the underclass as a "category of social agents who are economically oppressed but not consistently exploited within a given class system".<ref name="Interrogating">{{cite book|last=Wright|first=Erik Olin|title=Interrogating Inequality: Essays on Class Analysis, Socialism and Marxism|url=https://archive.org/details/interrogatingine00wrig|url-access=limited|year=1994|publisher=Verso|location=New York, NY|isbn=0-86091-633-2|pages=[https://archive.org/details/interrogatingine00wrig/page/n31 48]}}</ref> The underclass occupies the lowest possible rung on a class ladder. According to Wright, the underclass are oppressed. He believes this is because they are generally denied access to the labor market, and thus they cannot rise above their status easily but also thus are "not consistently exploited" because the opportunity for their economic exploitation is minimal for the classes above.

Unlike the working class, which he believes is routinely exploited for their labor power by higher classes, the underclass in Wright's view, do not hold the labor power worthy of exploitation. Wright argues his highly doctrinaire opinion of class malevolence that:

{{quote|The material interests of the wealthy and privileged segments of American society would be better served if these people simply disappeared…The alternative, then, is to build prisons, to cordon off the zones of cities in which the underclass live. In such a situation the main potential power of the underclass against their oppressors comes from their capacity to disrupt the sphere of consumption, especially through crime and other forms of violence, not their capacity to disrupt production through their control over labor.<ref name="Interrogating"/>}}

This quote partly concerns the spaces and locations for the underclass and reflects the leftist view of the other classes as acting against the underclass in unison, as opposed to other sociological views seeing class actors behaving as individuals reacting to individual incentives within society.

===Focus on space and place===
The underclass generally occupies specific zones in the city. Thus, the notion of an underclass is popular in [[urban sociology|Urban Sociology]], and particularly in accounts of urban poverty. The term, ''underclass'', and the phrase, ''urban underclass'', are, for the most part, used interchangeably.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Marks|first=Carole|title=The Urban Underclass|journal=Annual Review of Sociology|year=1991|volume=17|pages=445–466|jstor=2083350|doi=10.1146/annurev.soc.17.1.445}}</ref>  Studies concerning the post-civil rights African American [[ghetto]] often include a discussion of the urban underclass. Many writings concerning the underclass, particularly in the U.S., are urban-focused.

[[William Julius Wilson|William Julius Wilson's]] books,'' The Declining Significance of Race'' (1978)<ref name="DeclSig">{{cite book|last=Wilson|first=William Julius|title=The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions|year=1978|publisher=University of Chicago Press|location=Chicago, IL|isbn=0-226-90129-7|url=https://archive.org/details/decliningsignifi00wils}}</ref> and ''The Truly Disadvantaged'' (1987),<ref name="TDA">{{cite book|last=Wilson|first=William Julius|title=The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy|year=1987|publisher=University of Chicago Press|location=Chicago, IL|isbn=0-226-90131-9|url=https://archive.org/details/trulydisadvantag00wilsrich}}</ref> are popular accounts of the black urban underclass. Wilson defines the underclass as "a massive population at the very bottom of the social ladder plagued by poor education and low-paying jobs."<ref name="DeclSig"/> He generally limits his discussion to those trapped in the post-civil-rights [[ghetto]] in the American [[rust belt]] (see "Potential Causes and Proposed Solutions" section of this entry for a more detailed summary of Wilson on the underclass).

[[Elijah Anderson (sociologist)|Elijah Anderson's]], ''Streetwise'' (1990),<ref name="Streetwise">{{cite book|last=Anderson|first=Elijah|title=Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community|url=https://archive.org/details/streetwiseracecl0000ande|url-access=registration|year=1990|publisher=The University of Chicago Press|location=Chicago, IL|isbn=0-226-01816-4}}</ref> employs [[Ethnography|ethnographic methods]] to study a [[gentrifying]] neighborhood, "The Village" (pseudonym), bordering a black ghetto, "Northton" (pseudonym), in an American city. Anderson provides the following description of the underclass in this ghetto:

{{quote|The underclass of Northton is made up of people who have failed to keep up with their brethren, both in employment and sociability. Essentially they can be seen as victims of the economic and social system. They make up the unemployed, the underskilled, and the poorly educated, even though some hold high-school diplomas. Many are intelligent, but they are demoralized by racism and the wall of social resistance facing them. In this context they lose perspective and lack an outlook and sensibility that would allow them to negotiate the wider system of employment and society in general.<ref name="Streetwise"/>}}

===Focus on behavior===
[[Lawrence M. Mead]] defines the underclass as a group that is poor and behaviorally deficient. He describes the underclass as ''dysfunctional.'' He provides the following definition in his 1986 book, ''Beyond Entitlement'',

{{quote|The underclass is most visible in urban slum settings and is about 70 percent nonwhite, but it includes many rural and white people as well, especially in Appalachia and the South. Much of the urban underclass is made up of street hustlers, welfare families, drug addicts, and former mental patients. There are, of course, people who function well – the so-called 'deserving' or 'working poor' – and better-off people who function poorly, but in general low income and serious behavioral difficulties go together. The underclass is not large as a share of population, perhaps 9 million people, but it accounts for the lion's share of the most serious disorders in American life, especially in the cities.<ref>{{cite book|last=Mead|first=Lawrence M.|title=Beyond Entitlement: The Social Obligations of Citizenship|year=1986|publisher=The Free Press|location=New York, NY|isbn=0-7432-2495-7|pages=22}}</ref>}}

[[Ken Auletta]], often credited as the primary journalist who brought the underclass term to the forefront of the American consciousness, describes the American underclass as non-assimilated Americans, and he suggests that the underclass may be subcategorized into four distinct groups:

{{quote|(1) the passive poor, usually long-term welfare recipients; (2) the hostile street criminals who terrorize most cities, and who are often school dropouts and drug addicts; (3) the hustlers, who, like street criminals, may not be poor and who earn their livelihood in an underground economy, but rarely commit violent crimes; (4) the traumatized drunks, drifters, homeless shopping-bag ladies, and released mental patients who frequently roam or collapse on city streets.<ref name="Underclass" />}}

===Controversies amongst definitions===
Each of the above definitions are said to conceptualize the same general group – the American underclass – but they provide somewhat competing imagery. While Wright, Wilson, and Anderson each position the underclass in reference to the labor market, Auletta's definition is simply "non-assimilation" and his examples, along with Mead's definition, highlight underclass members' participation in deviant behavior and their adoption of an antisocial outlook on life. These controversies are elaborated further in the next section ("Characteristics of the Underclass").

As evident with Mead and Auletta's framing, some definitions of the underclass significantly diverge from the initial notion of an ''economic group'' beneath the working class. A few writings on the underclass distinguish between various types of underclass, such as the social underclass, the impoverished underclass, the reproductive underclass, the educational underclass, the violent underclass, and the criminal underclass, with some expected horizontal mobility between these groups.<ref name="Kelso">{{Cite book | author=Kelso, Williams | title=Poverty and The Underclass | year=1994 | publisher=NYU Press | location=N.Y. | isbn=0-8147-4661-6 | url-access=registration | url=https://archive.org/details/povertyunderclas0000kels }}</ref> Even more divergent from the initial notion of an underclass are the recent journalistic accounts of a so-called "genetic underclass", referring to a genetic inheritance of a predisposition to addiction and other personality traits traditionally associated with behavioral definitions of the underclass.<ref>{{cite news| url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/specials/sheffield_99/446035.stm | work=BBC News | title=Fears of genetic underclass unfounded | date=1999-09-16 | access-date=2010-05-26}}</ref><ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1345952/Commission-head-warns-of-genetic-underclass.html | work=The Daily Telegraph | location=London | title=Commission head warns of 'genetic underclass' | first=Rachael | last=Sylvester | date=2000-07-01 | access-date=2010-05-26}}</ref><ref>{{cite news| url=http://news.scotsman.com/topstories/Genetic-underclass-warning.2263621.jp | location=Edinburgh | work=The Scotsman | title=Genetic underclass warning | date=2001-09-24}}</ref><ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/30/health/personal-health-addiction-a-brain-ailment-not-a-moral-lapse.html?sec=health | work=The New York Times | title=PERSONAL HEALTH; Addiction: A Brain Ailment, Not a Moral Lapse | first=Jane E. | last=Brody | date=2003-09-30 | access-date=2010-05-26}}</ref> However, such distinctions between criminal, social, impoverished, and other specified underclass terms still refer to the same general group—those beneath the working class. And, despite recent journalistic accounts of a "genetic underclass", the underclass concept is primarily, and has traditionally been, a social science term.