In No Shame in My Game, anthropologist Katherine Newman presents a view of inner-city poverty radically different from that commonly accepted. The all-too-prevalent picture we get of the poor today--in the media, in the political sphere, and in scholarly studies--is of alienated minorities living in big-city ghettos, lacking in values and family structure, criminally inclined, and permanently dependent on government handouts. This is the nightmare image of an underclass of "welfare queens" and deadbeat dads who, supported by the tax dollars of the hardworking middle class, have no desire for employment. What Newman reveals, however--as she focuses on the working poor in Harlem, one of the country's most depressed urban areas--is a community of people who are committed to earning a living, struggling to support themselves and their families on minimum-wage dead-end jobs, and clinging to the dignity of a regular paycheck, no matter how meager. For two years, Professor Newman and her assistants followed people in Harlem--from work to school to the streets to their homes--and spent hundreds of hours talking to employees, and their bosses and supervisors, their friends and families. From observations and interviews, we come to understand not only the essential contribution that low-wage earners make to the survival of poor households, but also the ways in which these jobs affect young people's attitudes, prospects, and self-image. Most powerfully, we listen as low-wage earners speak about their jobs, their ambitions, and their values--especially their devotion to family and belief in the work ethic. This is a too often neglected segment of society, whose members, contrary to popular assumptions, desperately want to work. Despite their best efforts, however, inner-city residents are trapped in communities where there are fourteen applicants for every entry-level job in industries like fast food, where the real value of the minimum wage is at or below 1979 levels, and where there are few opportunities for advancement. Recent shifts in public policy toward the poor have impacted not only public aid recipients but also inner-city workers, who are often members of the same households. The stories Newman brings us speak eloquently about the enormous burdens that child care, health care, and an influx of low-wage job-seekers place on already struggling families. Finally, Newman proposes how we might, on the federal and local levels, help the working poor by increasing occupational opportunities in depressed urban areas, and by building bridges to better jobs. No Shame in My Game is an incisive, lucid, and vital new contribution to the debate on poverty and work in inner-city communities.

No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City

Politics & Social Sciences

Newman, Katherine S.

Social Sciences

KNOPF

"Powerful and poignant.... Newman's message is clear and timely." --The Philadelphia Inquirer In No Shame in My Game, Harvard anthropologist Katherine Newman gives voice to a population for whom work, family, and self-esteem are top priorities despite all the factors that make earning a living next to impossible--minimum wage, lack of child care and health care, and a desperate shortage of even low-paying jobs. By intimately following the lives of nearly 300 inner-city workers and job seekers for two yearsin Harlem, Newman explores a side of poverty often ignored by media and politicians--the working poor. The working poor find dignity in earning a paycheck and shunning the welfare system, arguing that even low-paying jobs give order to their lives. No Shame in My Game gives voice to a misrepresented segment of today's society, and is sure to spark dialogue over the issues surrounding poverty, working and welfare.

Business & Money

Economics

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Declining Fortunes: The Withering Of The American Dream

Shedding new light on downward mobility and the politics of resentment, the author of Falling from Grace describes the damage that economic decline has done to the people of America. $25,000 ad/promo.

Basic Books

American society has reneged on its promise to the baby-boom generation. Young people for the first time find themselves unable to duplicate, let alone surpass, their own parents' standard of living. Declining Fortunes sheds new light on a driving issue of our day: downward mobility and the politics of resentment.

In the last decade, school shootings have decimated communities and terrified parents, teachers, and children in even the most "family friendly" American towns and suburbs. These tragedies appear to be the spontaneous acts of troubled, disconnected teens, but this important book argues that the roots of violence are deeply entwined in the communities themselves. Rampage challenges the "loner theory" of school violence, and shows why so many adults and students miss the warning signs that could prevent it.Drawing on more than 200 interviews with town residents, distinguished sociologist Katherine Newman and her co-authors take the reader inside two of the most notorious school shootings of the 1990s, in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and Paducah, Kentucky. In a powerful and original analysis, she demonstrates that the organizational structure of schools "loses" information about troubled kids, and the very closeness of these small rural towns restrained neighbors and friends from communicating what they knew about their problems. Her conclusions shed light on the ties that bind in small-town America.

Rampage: The Social Roots Of School Shootings

History

Americas

An anthropologist examines how Americans' national optimism makes it difficult for them to confront the new realities of living less prosperous lives than previous generations. First time in paperback.

Falling from Grace

Random House Value Publishing

Taxing the Poor: Doing Damage to the Truly Disadvantaged (Wildavsky Forum Series) (Volume 7)

This book looks at the way we tax the poor in the United States, particularly in the American South, where poor families are often subject to income taxes, and where regressive sales taxes apply even to food for home consumption. Katherine S. Newman and Rourke L. O’Brien argue that these policies contribute in unrecognized ways to poverty-related problems like obesity, early mortality, the high school dropout rates, teen pregnancy, and crime. They show how, decades before California’s passage of Proposition 13, many southern states implemented legislation that makes it almost impossible to raise property or corporate taxes, a pattern now growing in the western states. Taxing the Poor demonstrates how sales taxes intended to replace the missing revenue―taxes that at first glance appear fair―actually punish the poor and exacerbate the very conditions that drove them into poverty in the first place.

Taxing the Poor: Doing Damage to the Truly Disadvantaged (Volume 7) (Wildavsky Forum Series)

O'Brien, Rourke

University of California Press

This timely investigation reveals how sustained tight labor markets improve the job prospects and life chances of America's most vulnerable households Most research on poverty focuses on the damage caused by persistent unemployment. But what happens when jobs are plentiful and workers are hard to come by? Moving the Needle examines how very low unemployment boosts wages at the bottom, improves benefits, lengthens job ladders, and pulls the unemployed into a booming job market. &nbsp; Drawing on over seventy years of quantitative data, as well as interviews with employers, jobseekers, and longtime residents of poor neighborhoods, Katherine S. Newman and Elisabeth S. Jacobs investigate the most durable positive consequences of tight labor markets. They also consider the downside of overheated economies that can ignite surging rents and spur outmigration.&nbsp;Moving the Needle is an urgent and original call to implement policies that will maintain the current momentum and prepare for potential slowdowns that may lie ahead

Moving the Needle: What Tight Labor Markets Do for the Poor

Jacobs, Elisabeth S.

The question why certain kinds of legal institutions are found in certain kinds of societies has been little explored by anthropologists. In this book Katherine Newman examines a sample of some sixty different preindustrial societies, distributed across the world, in an attempt to explain why their legal systems vary. The key to understanding this variation, Professor Newman argues, is to be found in economic organization. Adopting a Marxian, or materialist, approach, she draws on original ethnographic sources for each culture in order to investigate how legal processes and institutions regulate basic aspects of economic life in societies with differing types of economic organization. She also examines the commonalities of law within various preindustrial 'modes of production' and shows that the patterning of legal institutions arises from underlying tensions in production systems. In offering an explanation of the distribution of legal institutions across preindustrial societies, as well as for the sources of conflict in such societies, the book makes an important contribution to the comparative study of legal systems. It will interest anthropologists and other readers concerned with the operation and development of legal institutions.

Law and Economic Organization: A Comparative Study of Preindustrial Studies

Anthropology

Cambridge University Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Newman, Katherine S.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Newman, Katherine S.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Newman, Katherine S.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City

No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City

Declining Fortunes: The Withering Of The American Dream

Declining Fortunes: The Withering Of The American Dream

Rampage: The Social Roots Of School Shootings

Falling from Grace

Taxing the Poor: Doing Damage to the Truly Disadvantaged (Volume 7) (Wildavsky Forum Series)

Taxing the Poor: Doing Damage to the Truly Disadvantaged (Wildavsky Forum Series) (Volume 7)

Moving the Needle: What Tight Labor Markets Do for the Poor

Law and Economic Organization: A Comparative Study of Preindustrial Studies