The Oxford Handbook of the Modern Slum (OXFORD HANDBOOKS SERIES)

The modern slum is as prevalent as its stereotypes. Today, a slum is often understood to be a place of extreme poverty in the developing world-a place disordered, lacking the basic amenities of life, traumatized by violence, and perpetuated by dysfunctional families and disaffected extremists. Yet the word “slum” was not coined in the twenty-first century's developing world or its recent past. The word emerged in early nineteenth-century London, and its use expanded as modernization created what is now the developed world and its client territories. __The Oxford Handbook of the Modern Slum__ explores the history of the modern slum, connecting nineteenth-century iterations through multiple pathways to its contemporary existence. With chapters by more than twenty scholars, this Handbook brings an array of important and original perspectives and methodologies to bear on slums, real and imagined. Its analysis ranges across Europe, North America, Latin America, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and sub-Saharan Africa. The Handbook probes the impact of gender and race on urban social disadvantage and traces the development of private and state-sponsored intervention-as well as tourist interest-in urban poverty. It suggests that characterizations of slumland disequilibrium, dysfunctionality, and unsustainability should be offset by evidence of make-do enterprise, strategic determination, resilience, homeliness, and neighborliness. Drawing upon anthropology, archaeology, architecture, geography, history, politics, sociology and urban planning, the Handbook delves into households and communities whose existence has been hidden by stereotypes. Dedication 6 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 12 Contributors 14 Introduction: Slums and the Modern World • Alan Mayne 20 PART I: FUNDAMENTALS 36 1. What’s in a Name? • Alan Mayne 38 2. Women and Wages in Britain’s “Classic” Slums • Ellen Ross 56 3. The Intimate Relationship between Slums and Racial Segregation: A South African Case Study • Vivian Bickford-Smith 72 PART II: URBAN DISADVANTAGE IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD 90 4. Informality as Process and the Social Construction of Slums: Southeast Asian Cases • Ross King 92 5. Slums: City Spaces of Governance and Global Disadvantage • Winnie V. Mitullah 108 6. Slum Statistics in India • Amitabh Kundu 128 7. Pride and Shame: The History of the Slums in Recife, Brazil • Flávio A. M. de Souza 145 8. The Spatial Politics of US Homelessness: The Evolution of Boston’s “Skid Row” • Ella Howard 165 9. The Rise and Decline of the European Struggle against Social Exclusion • Rob Atkinson 181 PART III: PERSPECTIVES ACROSS TIME: FROM THE OUTSIDE 198 10. The Discovery of “Slums” in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Cincinnati, Ohio • Henry C. Binford 200 11. Social Geographies of Poverty in Victorian and Edwardian London • Richard Dennis 219 12. How Slumming Makes the Slum • Fabian Frenzel 243 13. Slums: Neglect, Clear, or Improve? • Richard Harris 263 14. Haussmann and the Rebuilding of Paris, 1853–1870: A Reassessment • Antoine Paccoud 285 15. Regulation of Slums and Slum Improvement in British Colonial History • Robert Home 300 16. The Spillover Effects of Fire, Riot, and Epidemics from Slums • Alan Smart and Eliot Tretter 315 17. The Political Construction of Slums in India • Nandini Gooptu 332 18. The Return of the Slums in Postwar America • Alexander von Hoffman 351 19. Slums and Communism: (Un-)Slumming the (Post-)Soviet City • Ivan Nevzgodin 373 20. NGO Representation of Informal Settlements: The Case of Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI) • Marie Huchzermeyer 392 PART IV: PERSPECTIVES ACROSS TIME: FROM THE INSIDE 420 21. Notting Dale: The Making and Breaking of a West London Slum, 1865–1946 • Jerry White 422 22. The Historic Fires of Singapore • Kah Seng Loh 449 23. The Archaeology of Immigrant Lives and Livelihoods at New York City’s Five Points • Rebecca Yamin 464 24. Historical Archaeology and the Evolution of Twentieth-Century Slums in Detroit • Krysta Ryzewski 484 25. Archaeologies of Disadvantage in the Modern City: Sydney and Melbourne Compared • Tim Murray 505 26. Popular Housing Processes in Caribbean Colombia • Peter Kellett 521 27. La Perla, Puerto Rico: Beyond Formal and Informal • Florian Urban 535 28. Living at the Center, Pushed to the Edge • Kalpana Sharma 557 Index 574 ""Slum" is among the most evocative and judgmental words of the modern world. It originated in the slang language of the world's then-largest city, London, early in the nineteenth century. Its use thereafter proliferated, and its original meanings unraveled as colonialism and urbanization transformed the world, and as prejudice against those disadvantaged by these transformations became entrenched. Cuckoo-like, "slum" overtook and transformed other local idioms: for example, bustee, favela, kampong, shack. "Slum" once justified heavy-handed redevelopment schemes that tore apart poor but viable neighborhoods. Now it underpins schemes of neighbourhood renewal that, seemingly benign in their intentions, nonetheless pay scant respect to the viewpoints of their inhabitants. This Oxford Handbook probes both present-day understandings of slums and their historical antecedents. It discusses the evolution of slum "improvement" policies globally from the early nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. It encompasses multiple perspectives: anthropology, archaeology, architecture, geography, history, politics, sociology, urban studies and urban planning. It emphasizes the influences of gender and race inequality, and the persistence of subaltern agency notwithstanding entrenched prejudice and unsympathetically-applied institutionalized power. Uniquely, it balances contributions from scholars who deny the legitimacy of "slum" in social and policy analysis, with those who accept its relevance as a measuring stick of social disadvantage and as a vehicle for social reform. This Handbook does not simply footnote the past; it critiques conventional understandings of urban social disadvantage and reform across time and place in the modern world. It suggests pathways for future research and for alleviative reform"-- Provided by publisher