"A strength of this work lies in the diversity of global locations and identities of both the sites of social interactions, and the researchers. ... Bringing together such a diverse set of ethnographic accounts offers insights into a multiplicity of experiences of inequalities in urban social settings. The ethnographic microanalysis and theoretical explorations make this a must-read for scholars interested and engaged in understanding more about the contemporary mechanisms of a wide range of social inequalities." (Robyn Andrews, Urbanities-Journal of Urban Ethnography, Vol. 11 (1), May, 2021)
Chapter 2. Making Second-class Italians: A Case of Fabrication and Entrenchment of Inequality
Chapter 3. On Human Stupidity and Economic Policies: How Cities Inequality Generates Losses for All
Chapter 4.Precarious Employment and Social Exclusion: Athens in Crisis
Chapter 5. Women, Work and Family: Becoming Women Workers in the Context of Underdevelopment in Mardin
Chapter 6. Where Do We Find Money? Urban Inequalities under Financialization in Mardin, Turkey
Chapter 7. The Destiny of Urban Peripheries: Down-town Tel Aviv’s Contested Realities
Chapter 8. Unequal Citizens: Cairo between the Gated and the Informal
Chapter 9. Crisis, Disorder and Management: Smart Cities and Contemporary Urban Inequality
Chapter 10. Smart City Imaginations and Real Lives: A View from a Town in North India
Chapter 11. ‘Either you have money and you plan your treatment, or you don’t have money and you plan your death’: Tracing Inequalities in Breast Cancer Care in Greece
Chapter 12. Segregation from Womb to Tomb: The Legacies of Racial Inequalities in South African Cemeteries
Chapter 13. Urban Heritage, Inequalities and the Retrenchment of the Public Cultural Sphere
Chapter 14. Body and Soul: Boxing and Redemption
Chapter 15. The Zenit Ultras from Saint Petersburg: Dynamics of Social Inclusions and Exclusions.
Italo Pardo is Honorary Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Kent, UK. He established and co-edits the journal Urbanities and co-founded and presides over the not-for-profit association, International Urban Symposium-IUS.
Giuliana B. Prato is Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Social Anthropology at the University of Kent, UK. She chairs the Commission on Urban Anthropology (IUAES), co-founded the International Urban Symposium-IUS, of which she is Secretary-Treasurer, and co-founded and serves on the Board of Urbanities.
‘The conceptual and geographic scope of this timely collection of ethnographically-based writings is exceptionally rich. The authors explore inequalities in relation to citizenship, policy, precariousness, social exclusion, transformation, sovereignty, class, gender and kinship to illuminate the predicament of urban communities as they structure their daily lives in the context of deepening socio-economic divides.’
—Hana Cervinkova, Professor of Anthropology, Maynooth University, Ireland
‘In this volume, Italo Pardo and Giuliana Prato interrogate the complex and nuanced phenomenon of urban inequalities. Ethnographic insights from across the globe tease out the relations of the varieties of ways in which inequalities are perpetuated, nurtured and imposed, most often reinforcing what already fragments the society. A very timely volume to aid reflexive thoughts on the present and future of humankind.’
—Subhadra Channa, Professor of Anthropology (retired), University of Delhi, India, Senior Vice President of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) and Chair of the IUAES Commission on Marginalization and Global Apartheid
This collection brings together leading thinkers on human beings in urban spaces and inequalities therein. The contributors eschew conceptual confusion between equality — of opportunity, of access, of the right to compete for whatever goal one chooses to pursue — and levelling. The discussions develop in the belief that old and emerging forms of inequality in urban settings need to be understood in depth, as does the machinery that, as masterfully elucidated by Hannah Arendt, operates behind oppression to sustain power and inequality. Anthropologists and fellow ethnographically-committed social scientists examine socio-economic, cultural and political forms of urban inequality in different settings, helping to address comparatively these dynamics.