Life Underground - Encounters With People Below the Streets of New York

Beneath the surface of Manhattan's Riverside Park run railroad tunnels, disused for decades, where over the years unhoused people took shelter. The sociologist Terry Williams ventured into the tunnel residents' world, seeking to understand life on the margins and out of sight.

List of contents

Prologue
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Descent
2. Genesis
3. Underground Ecology
4. Men Underground: Bernard, Kal, and Jason
5. Working Life
6. Food: Restaurants and Soup Kitchens
7. Women Underground: Tin Can Tina
8. Beatrice and Bobo
9. The Tagalong
10. The Rabbit Hole
11. Reflections on Life Under the Street
Endnote
Epilogue: Mediating the Underground: Bernard’s Exit
Appendix A: Income and Housing in New York City, 2002–2014
Appendix B: Behavior Mapping and Cartography
Appendix C: Interview Questions for Bernard, Princeton University, 2012
Appendix D: Bernard’s Dream and Postcard
Appendix E: Legacies of Harm: Policy and Policing
Appendix F: Where Are They Now?
Notes
Index

About the author

Terry Williams is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the New School for Social Research. His previous Columbia University Press books are The Con Men: Hustling in New York City (2015); Teenage Suicide Notes: An Ethnography of Self-Harm (2017); Le Boogie Woogie: Inside an After-Hours Club (2020); and The Soft City: Sex for Business and Pleasure in New York City (2022).

Summary

Beneath the surface of Manhattan’s Riverside Park run railroad tunnels, disused for decades, where over the years unhoused people took shelter. The sociologist Terry Williams ventured into the tunnel residents’ world, seeking to understand life on the margins and out of sight.

Product details

• Authors: Terry Williams
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 26.01.2024
• EAN: 9780231177931
• ISBN: 978-0-231-17793-1
• No. of pages: 320
• Series: The Cosmopolitan Life
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Education > Social education, social work; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Geosciences > Geography; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Social structure research; New York, New York City, Sociology, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Human Geography, Social Science, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Minority Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Poverty & Homelessness, Poverty & unemployment, Alternative lifestyles, Social groups: alternative lifestyles, Human Geography, Poverty and precarity