This Modern Guide provides a new conceptual framework and vocabulary for understanding and addressing urban poverty in contemporary societies. Contributing authors examine detailed case studies from cities in the Global North and South, adopting a range of approaches from quantitative analyses to in-depth ethnographies.Chapters highlight how large groups of newly urbanized populations develop informal strategies to cope with extreme living conditions in poor neighborhoods ...

Three experienced Italian sociologists explore the structural and cultural dimensions of poverty in their country. Comparing Italy’s regime with other European countries, they consider the interplay of conditions in the labour market, the family and welfare arrangements as causes of poverty.This in-depth analysis explores how forced familialism, unbalanced gender arrangements, territorial cleavages and sluggish growth have rendered Italy vulnerable to financial crisis. As old risks...

Since its emergence at the end of the seventeenth century, industrial capitalism as a specific form of social organisation has set recurrent challenges to its own persistence, and until today, it has proved to be successful to develop new ways of accumulation based on its capacity of adaptation. Is this process of transition now accelerating or reaching an end point? This book is a critical exploration of capitalism in transition, bringing together cutting edge, world renowned scholars who...