“Soulside’s pathbreaking description and explanation of US ghetto life is one of the greatest works of urban ethnography produced since the end of the Chicago School. This new edition will continue to inform a wide general readership while inspiring, in a sophisticated way, new generations of students trying to grapple with age old questions of culture and poverty.”

Mitch Duneier, author of Sidewalk and Slim’s Table

"The reissuing of Soulside attests to its status as a classic in the field of urbhan anthropology whose theoretical and methodological contours Ulf Hannerz has helped to shape."

Gisa Weszkalnys | Critique of Anthropology

"The reissuing of Soulside attests to its status as a classic in the field of urban anthropology whose theoretical and methodological contours Ulf Hannerz has helped to shape. [...] At a time when spatial governance, modes of surveillance and the privatization of space have become paramount themes in urban anthropology, the publicness of the urban life depicted in Soulside appears remarkable. One could attempt, in Hannerz’s spirit, a dispassionate rather than a nostalgic revisiting of street corner society. One could inquire, for example, into the place-making practices of the ghetto dwellers, and the ways in which people made sense of, managed and manoeuvred within an environment they perceived to be, as Hannerz repeatedly notes, difficult and dangerous. Soulsideis open to this kind of re-reading, which takes the city to be not merely a setting but a product of the sociality so magnificently portrayed by Hannerz."

Critique of Anthropology