Monday, 9 May 2016

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

WZB Distinguished Lecture in Social Sciences by Matthew Desmond, Harvard University

Discussant: Ruud Koopmans

For many poor Americans eviction has become a way of life. Matthew Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences and Codirector of the Justice and Poverty Project at Harvard University, has followed tenants and landlords swept up in the process of eviction. Combining urban reportage with original statistical data, he shows that eviction is a cause, not just a condition, of poverty and that the face of America’s eviction epidemic belongs to mothers and children. Presenting new insights into the fundamental role housing plays in deepening inequality in America, Desmond affirms the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.

Matthew Desmond is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences and Codirector of the Justice and Poverty Project at Harvard University. He is a leading ethnographer and theorist of race and poverty in the United States. In 2015, he won a prestigious MacArthur "Genius" Award.