Making Sense of America: Sociological Analyses and Essays

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Rowman & Littlefield, 1999 - 361 pages
For four decades, Herbert J. Gans has been one of the leading sociologists in the United States. His writing on American communities, culture, and ethnicity have been widely read here and elsewhere, and his incisive analyses of antipoverty policy and other social policies have been influential in many policy analysis offices and government agencies. This new collection of Gans's scholarly and other writings, including excerpts from his most prominent ethnographic books, The Urban Villagers, The Levittowners, and Deciding What's News, will be a thought-provoking resource for social scientists, students, and all those who care about America.

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Contents

The Positive Functions of Poverty
73
The Federal Role in Solving Americas Urban Problems
89
Time for an Employees Lobby
111
Copyright

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About the author (1999)

Herbert Gans is a German-born American sociologist who was educated at the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania. Active in urban planning and housing at the beginning of his career, he taught planning and sociology at Columbia Teachers College and subsequently at Columbia University. He is best known for his work on American communities, including The Urban Villagers (1962), a study of Boston's West End and The Levittowners (1967). He has focused much of his research on the American middle class.

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