Date:
Location:
Kathryn J. Edin, H. Luke Shaefer, and Timothy J. Nelson
The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America
A Stone Inequality Book Talk
In this Stone Inequality Book Talk at 4pm on September 7, 2023, Kathryn J. Edin, H. Luke Shaefer, and Timothy J. Nelson will discuss their new book, The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America, in the Malcolm Wiener Auditorium at Harvard Kennedy School. The Wiener Auditorium is located on the lower level of the Taubman Building at HKS.
Raj Chetty, the William A. Ackman Professor of Economics at Harvard University, will introduce the event.
Kathryn J. Edin is the William Church Osborn Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University and International Affairs and the Co-director of The Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child Wellbeing.
H. Luke Shaefer is the Hermann and Amalie Kohn Professor of Social Justice and Social Policy and Associate Dean for Research and Policy Engagement at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.
Timothy J. Nelson is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Princeton University.
About the book: Three of the nation’s top scholars – known for tackling key mysteries about poverty in America – turn their attention from the country’s poorest people to its poorest places. Based on a fresh, data-driven approach, they discover that America’s most disadvantaged communities are not the big cities that get the most notice. Instead, nearly all are rural. Little if any attention has been paid to these places or to the people who make their lives there. This revelation set in motion a five-year journey across Appalachia, the Cotton and Tobacco Belts of the Deep South, and South Texas. Immersing themselves in these communities, pouring over centuries of local history, attending parades and festivals, the authors trace the legacies of the deepest poverty in America—including inequalities shaping people’s health, livelihoods, and upward social mobility for families. Wrung dry by powerful forces and corrupt government officials, the “internal colonies” in these regions were exploited for their resources and then left to collapse. The unfolding revelation in The Injustice of Place is not about what sets these places apart, but about what they have in common—a history of raw, intensive resource extraction and human exploitation. This history and its reverberations demand a reckoning and a commitment to wage a new War on Poverty, with the unrelenting focus on our nation’s places of deepest need.
Advance Praise for The Injustice of Place
"Captivating and insightful, The Injustice of Place sheds new light on how the places in which we live shape so many aspects of our lives. By interweaving big data with on-the-ground ethnography and historical analysis, the authors exemplify the best of social science today." -Raj Chetty, MacArthur Fellow and Professor of Economics, Harvard University
"This book challenges and enrages, humbles and indicts—and forces you to see American poverty in a whole new light.” -Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
"Woven with vivid, first-hand accounts and bolstered by fresh data, Injustice of Place convincingly knots present-day disadvantage to the long tail of racism and extractive capitalism." -Mona Hanna-Attisha, Flint pediatrician and author of What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City
"Incisive, surprising, enraging, and hopeful, The Injustice of Place is the book on poverty we’ve needed all along." -Reuben Miller, MacArthur Fellow and author of Halfway Home: Race, Punishment and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration
"A powerful, alarming portrayal of how poverty remains entrenched in unfairly forgotten places across America." — Kirkus Reviews
“This eye-opening account provides a powerful lens with which to view contemporary inequality in America." — Publishers Weekly
“Every few years, an academic work arrives that transcends genre, combining unparalleled research skills with engaging storytelling. The Injustice of Place… harnesses the most powerful aspects of big data while diving into historic narratives that continue to inform and instruct.” — Shelf Awareness
"An innovative study of American poverty." — Booklist
