Herbert J. Gans an eminent sociologist who studied the communities and cultural bastions of America up close and shattered popular myths about urban and suburban life, poverty, ethnic groups and the news media, died on Monday at his home in Manhattan. He was 97.
For “The Urban Villagers” (1962), Dr. Gans immersed himself in Boston’s working-class West End, heavily populated by Italian Americans.Credit…
Dr. Gans challenged conventional wisdom about postwar suburbia in “The Levittowners,” his 1967 book about a middle-class development community in New Jersey.
In “The War Against the Poor” (1995), Dr. Gans attacked attitudes of the affluent and middle classes as well as words used to stereotype and stigmatize the poor.
In “The War Against the Poor” (1995), Dr. Gans scathingly attacked attitudes of the affluent and middle classes, and words used to stereotype and stigmatize the poor by questioning their morality and values. One culprit, he said, was “underclass,” with its connotation of permanence, and its presumption that all the men are lazy, all the women immoral and all the poor too undisciplined to escape welfare dependencies.
In a 2008 book, “Imagining America in 2033,” Dr. Gans depicted a utopian future that had overcome many economic, military and social problems.Credit…University of Michigan Press