Increasing impoverishment in inner-city localities has prompted the development of new concepts such as William Julius Wilson's 'social isolation' and 'concentration effects'. It is said that these concepts refer to the community-level effects of economic restructuring in the United States. For this reason it is argued that such concepts differ from Oscar Lewis's 'culture of poverty' notion; they do not imply a self-perpetuating, autonomous cultural entity. Nevertheless, Wilson's work is being fiercely debated. In attempting to clarify this aspect of the discussion I will examine the conceptual foundations of Wilson's view of 'the underclass'.
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