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Localising the Social: The Rediscovery of Urban Poverty in Western European ‘Affluent Societies’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2015

CHRISTIANE REINECKE
CHRISTIANE REINECKE*
Affiliation:
Institute for Cultural Studies, University of Leipzig, Beethovenstr. 15, 04107 Leipzig; [email protected]
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Abstract

Concentrating on the production of knowledge of poverty and homelessness, this article discusses how particular spatial settings influenced the construction of social problems in the 1960s and 1970s. Exploring the practices of three kinds of knowledge producers – social scientists in academic circles, ‘practitioners cum activists’ engaging in advocacy research and experts in governmental committees – the analysis focuses on the early stages of a rediscovery of poverty in Western Europe as it was debated in international fora as well as in West Germany and France. It shows that the way in which poverty was represented as a new challenge to Western ‘affluent societies’ was in many respects an urban story, as the ongoing housing crisis and newly defined problem areas served as major points of reference for the revived interest in social deprivation. Moreover, urban actors – locally active NGOs and municipal authorities – played a preeminent role in launching debates on the apparent paradox of poverty in affluence. With their own work often grounded in particular urban problem zones, many contemporary observers tended to spatialise poverty. For them, poverty was bound to particular places; it was an exceptional sphere that helped generate a particular behaviour that made it difficult for ‘the poor’ to rise. While a growing part of the population had access to housing of a standard previously reserved to the middle class and had become able to choose where to live, life in peripheral shantytowns or dilapidated inner cities became the ultimate signifier of a social position beyond the established class structure.

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Articles
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Contemporary European History , Volume 24 , Special Issue 4: Urban Societies in Europe , November 2015 , pp. 555 - 576
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

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