....The first, more recent, tendency is the dilution of the notion of ghetto simply to designate and urban area of widespread and intense poverty, which obfuscates the racial basis and character of this poverty and divests the term of both historical meaning and sociological content. The second, century-old, tenet id the idea that the ghetto is a "disorganized" social formation that can be analyzed wholly in terms of lack and deficiencies (individual or collective) rather than by positively identifying principles that underlie its internal order and govern it specific mode of functioning. The third, flowing from the idea of disorganization, is the tendency to exoticize the ghetto and its residents, that is, to highlight the most extreme and unusual aspects of ghetto life as seen from outside and above, i.e., from the standpoint of the dominant... | Loïc Waquant | Three Pernicious Premises in the Study of the American Ghetto | <