ANTH 264 - The ‘Hood, the Slum and the Teeming Masses: An Anthropoligical Investigation of Urban Poverty

Urban poverty is represented everywhere: from the urban welfare queens of the Reagan era, to images of burgeoning slum growth in the “Third World,” to Jacob Riis’ infamous portraits in How the Other Half Lives. A central question of this class is: how are the “urban poor” produced in the imaginations of popular middle class media, governments and NGO’s? How do these imaginings affect the development of urban policies and practices? Through ethnography, this course will expose students to more nuanced portrayals of the lived realities of urban poverty, helping students to critically assess representations of the urban poor and the policy solutions that address urban poverty.