This episode with talk with David Grusky about the social and economic effects of the great recession and what every citizen should know about inequality in the United States.
Robert Sampson on The Neighborhood Effect
This episode we talk with Robert Sampson about his new book, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect. In the face of globalization and the widespread belief that the “world is flat,” Sampson shows how the world is actually very uneven, and that local communities make a great difference in how people live their lives across a wide range of phenomenon, from homicide and child health, to leadership networks, teenage pregnancy, altruism, and home foreclosures.
Joe Soss on Poverty Governance
Today we talk with Joe Soss, author of the forthcoming book, Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race, co-authored with Richard C. Fording and Sanford F. Schram. Soss traces the major changes and continuities in welfare provision and poverty governance in the United States over the past 40 years, and the racial, political, and economic factors in creating these policies.
Tom Stone on American Outsiders
This episode we speak with Tom Stone, the documentary photographer behind the evocative images featured in Mark Rank’s Spring 2011 feature Rethinking American Poverty. The photos are drawn from Stone’s “American Outsiders” series, which you can view online at tomstonegallery.com/art or on flickr.
Richard Lachmann on American Decline
This week we talk with Richard Lachmann, author of the article, The Roots of American Decline in the Winter 2011 issue of Contexts. Lachmann addresses common misunderstandings we Americans tend to have about our government’s spending, particularly military spending, and the current “fiscal crisis”. Lachmann compares the decline of American dominance with past empires and offers some lessons about what we might do to have a graceful decline as opposed to a painful, violent one.
© 2012 Office Hours
