"Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality"

I listen a lot. Not much anymore to music, and not much to "talk radio" (except occasionally the Pacifica and NPR varieties), but mostly to (for want of a better term) talks--lectures and presentations--of which there is now a wealth of MP3s on the web. One of the better talks I've found recently (on one of the better aggregators, UChannel) is by Loïc Wacquant, with remarks by Vincenzo Ruggiero and questions from their audience at the RSA. Their presentation focuses on Wacquant's new book "Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality" and his encounters with the South Side of Chicago and the Paris banlieue La Courneuve (et al). Wacquant "attempt[s] to understand the emergence of the new forms of inequality characteristic of the 21st century" and their effects on the urban "precariat" at the bottom of the class, ethnic, and spatial hierarchies. Wacquant and Ruggiero compare and contrast the histories and geographies of the urban American ghetto with the western European banlieue, finding them much not the same, and demolishing the "tale of the underclass" into the bargain. If you can't listen to the whole thing (about an hour), at least try the first 5-10 minutes. (Keep it on your player and listen to the rest when you have time.)