ABOUT THIS BOOK

Since the 1990s, popular culture the world over has frequently looked to the ’hood for inspiration, whether in music, film, or television. Habitus of the Hood explores the myriad ways in which the hood has been conceived—both within the lived experiences of its residents and in the many mediated representations found in popular culture. Using a variety of methodologies including autoethnography, textual studies, and critical discourse analysis, contributors analyze and connect these various conceptions.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Chris Richardson is a PhD candidate at the University of Western Ontario. Hans Skott-Myhre is associate professor in the Department of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University and the author of Youth and Subculture as Creative Force: Creating New Spaces for Radical Youth Work.

REVIEWS

“Habitus of the Hood provides an important and timely corrective to exaggerated accounts of social and moral decline. The contributions in the book demonstrate the considerable utility and versatility of habitus for understanding lived experience, practices, and representations of low-income urban neighborhoods.”

— Housing Studies

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction
      Chris Richardson and Hans A. Skott-Myhre
Part I: The Hood As Lived Practice
      Chris Richardson and Hans A. Skott-Myhre
2. Resistance to the Present: Dead Prez
      Hans A. Skott-Myhre
3. Sì Siamo Italiani!: Ethnocultural Identity, Class Consciousness, and Anarchic Sensibilities in an Italian-Canadian Working-Class Enclave
      Stephen L. Muzzatti
4. Precarious Life: On Dwelling, Mobility, and Artistic Intervention
      Erin Morton and Sarah E.K. Smith
5. Living "The Strip": Negotiating Neighborhood, Community, and Identity on Australia's Gold Coast
      Sarah Baker, Andy Bennett, and Patricia Wise
6. Habitus and Rethinking the Discourse of Youth Gangs, Crime, Violence, and Ghetto Communities
      Tamari Kitossa
7. Activist Literacy in the Hood: Lessons for Youth and Urban Education
      Pamela Hollander and Justin Hollander
8. The Girls from Compton Go to College
      Donna J. Nicol and Jennifer A. Yee
Part II: Representing the Hood in Music, Film, and Art
      Chris Richardson and Hans A. Skott-Myhre
9. Making "Changes": 2Pac, Nas, and the Habitus of the Hood
      Chris Richardson
10. The Mobile Hood: Realness and the Rules of the Game
      Thomas R. Britt
11. Hip Hop's Cultural Relevancy in the Hood: Examining the "Subversive" in Urban School Curricula
      Katie Sciurba
12. The Hood is Where the Heart is: Melodrama, Habitus, and the Hood Film
      Andrew deWaard
13. Do Not Believe the Hype: The Death and Resurrection of Public Housing in the American Visual Imagination
      Nicola Mann
14. From the Bronx to Berlin: Hip-Hop Graffiti and Spatial Reconfigurations of the Hood
      David Drissel