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642 Annals 124, *
July, 2012
The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science
IN THIS ISSUE: BRINGING FIELDWORK BACK IN: CONTEMPORARY UR-
BAN ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH: An Ethnographic Portrait of a Precarious
Life: Getting By on Even Less
NAME: By WAVERLY O. DUCK
BIO: Waverly Duck is an assistant professor of sociology and a faculty associate at the Center on Race and Social Problems at the University of Pittsburgh. He completed a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University and served as associate director of the Yale Urban Ethnography Project. His areas of interest are urban ethnography, qualitative methods, and inequality based on race, class, gender, and age.
NOTE: Funding for this study was provided by the Center on Race and Social Problems at the University of Pittsburgh.
While doing fieldwork at a summer camp in 2006, I found myself playing Monopoly with four young black boys who lived in the neighborhood. Given the themes of property, rent, utilities, money, debt, and jail that pervade the game, the play elicited many comments from the children that seemed to be based on real-life situations familiar to them. They demanded, "Pay me my money" and asked, "Oh ho, where's my rent?" "Pay your lights and water bill or I'm going to turn them off," they threatened.
As a last resort, they ordered, "Get off my property." There were [*125] also egalitarian moments: when Victor went bankrupt, Ali said that he could join his team. n1
The boys miscounted the dice to prevent another player from going to jail and gave the "get out of jail free card" to another player so he could rejoin the game. Their comments afforded intriguing insights into their concerns.
Later, I met and interviewed one of the boys' mothers, whom I call Benita, and from her I learned about the daily realities these boys faced. Like many other poor, single, black women, Benita struggled to make ends meet in a game where the odds seemed to be stacked against her. Benita first became pregnant at the age of 14. She had another child with the same man a year later, and two more children with a different man when she was 17 and 18. She and her four children lived in a very small three-bedroom brick row house. Although they were better housed than many poor families, their tenancy involved constant deception and was only temporary. Benita's

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642 Annals 124, * story reveals the strategies that she and many in similar positions use to deal with their lack of resources and the instability of their support networks. It details how she maintains these networks and what forces have combined to make them increasingly precarious.
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Doing Fieldwork in Bristol Hill
This study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Bristol Hill, a small city in the northeastern United States, over a five-year period (2005-2010). In addition to extensive observations in the field, the study relied on participant observation, discussions and interviews with residents, volunteer work, myriad social encounters, and interviews with key informants.
Bristol Hill is a struggling postindustrial city that has repeatedly tried to save itself without any visible success. It is located in a predominantly middle-class county that includes some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the state. At its height in 1950, the population was sixty-six thousand. By 2010, the population had declined to just over about half that level. It remains predominately African American (75 percent) and
Hispanic (18 percent) (U.S. Census Bureau 2011). One-third of its residents, and about half of its children, live in poverty. One-fifth of adults are unemployed. By state standards, the school system is underperforming. About one-fifth of homes are owner-occupied; two-fifths are subsidized housing owned by the city, state, or county; and approximately two-fifths are rented out by individuals and real estate companies. Efforts to revive the economy and clean up the city have ultimately been selfdefeating. For example, in a bid to improve the local economy, the county government planned a series of developments including a state prison and a casino. The intention was to create [*129] jobs, but both projects failed to deliver on their promises to hire local residents. According to reports from both companies, applicants from
Bristol Hill could not pass required background checks and drug screening. Furthermore, because both businesses were tax-exempt, they contributed no additional direct revenue to the city.
Bristol Hill has felt the effects of policy changes in many areas, including policing and education. The robust drug trade has prompted a heavy police presence, leading to patrols and arrests by local, county, state, and federal law enforcement agencies.
Intensive policing has failed to reduce the availability of drugs, however, and since the 1980s the neighborhood has suffered from disproportionate police activity with little benefit to anyone. Police contact occurs in the home as well as on the street, and most residents interact with law enforcement in some way, from neighborhood patrols to calling the police to report a crime. The neighborhood also faces serious edu-

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642 Annals 124, * cational problems. In recent years, the Bristol Hill school system has had the worst performance in the state. The state took over the public schools, established two K-8 charter schools, and placed the only high school in the hands of a private corporation.
A year later, two public schools (one elementary and one middle school) were closed.
While changes in federal housing policy helped poor families to find affordable housing outside of publicly owned concentrated projects and TANF moved some women from welfare to work, both involved substantial disruptions in the lives of poor families. Evictions, strained finances, poor-quality learning opportunities, and arrests are nothing new to low-income families; what is new is the disproportionate concentration of these "reform" policies on poor people and their cumulative impact on family stability.
In Bristol Hill, disruptions in housing and family income are common. Required job training programs placed many women in low-paying jobs in health care that do not enable them to make ends meet. In Benita's case, state takeover of the neighborhood schools meant that her children now attend different schools even though they are close in age. When mothers are absent for more hours, are their children more likely to get into trouble? Do frequent moves and changing schools impair children's academic progress?
Gaining Trust
I bonded instantly with Ali, Benita's oldest son, who was seven at the time he was attending the day camp where I was volunteering. It was important to me to work in the neighborhood where I was conducting my observations. The day camp was run by a nondenominational, faith-based organization that leased gym and recreation space from a local church. While most of the social service programs for children in this community relied heavily on faith-based organizations, most were funded by federal, state, and local tax dollars. Unlike public schools, many churches and mosques have ample library and gymnasium space. The program where I worked was limited to twelve children and ran from 7 a.m. until 5 [*130] p.m. On my first day at camp, Ali chose me to play checkers with him. Initially I indulged him by playing along while watching him make illegal moves and allowing him to beat me four games straight.
He was not the only one to cheat; I lost rigged games of Speed, Tonk, and Uno to other kids. They even cheated at kickball and basketball, but I went along, curious to see how far it would go. Not only did I want to be the cultural dope who is treated like an outsider and needs to learn the rules, but I wanted to know whom I could trust.
The next day I decided to play by their rules; I made illegal moves and played illegal cards. They quickly corrected me: "No, uh uh, you can't do that." "But you did it," I said. "I know, because you didn't know the rules." Within a day, the cheating stopped.

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My fascination with Ali began while playing Monopoly. Three other boys also played with us: eight-year-old Kamal, nine-year-old David, and nine-year-old Victor.
After explaining the rules, I told the boys that whoever rolled the highest number could go first. Ali instantly said, "Come on, Big Seven" and Victor said, "Big Red," both references to craps. During an hour of play I heard interesting accounts of evictions and utilities being shut off, as well as a shared desire to avoid going to jail. Over the course of the summer I learned that Ali's father was in jail, as are many men from the neighborhood.
Benita, at 5 feet 5 inches, had a medium-brown complexion, high cheekbones, and thick black shoulder-length hair. Then 26, she had dropped out of high school in the tenth grade but earned her GED at age 24. She left home at 17 to live with the father of her two children; they lived together for five years. At first, I found her utterly disarming. Her voice is low and soft, but rises when she is excited or upset. She constantly smiles when we talk, and she has a tendency to take deep breaths when she tries to explain things to me. Yet when her face is at rest, when listening intently, or when she is focused on running errands while I am around, she looks sad and melancholy. Her eyes seem to water as if she were constantly on the verge of tears.
Benita and I talked weekly on the phone and I would sometimes visit her at home, usually while I was taking her to run errands, including grocery shopping, dropping her off at her nurse's aide job, and picking up the kids from school. Our relationship was something of an equal exchange. I shared as much information about my life as she shared about hers. Our most intimate conversation, however, was about how the crack cocaine epidemic had changed cities all over the country. "Crack was something else," Benita told me. "I had family [who] sold crack. My cousin use to sell crack in the late eighties. He was killed when I was in the second or third grade. To this day nobody knows who did it. They found his body in a vacant lot in another city, shot up. My mother and my aunt had a falling out because my cousin tried to get my brother to sell. Crack was crazy, man; I mean people were, like, leaving their babies at our house, coming back days later. Didn't make any sense. The robbing, the raids, family members stealing from you--crack was something else."
The cycle of "unpredictable" disruptions of Benita's own life is relatively predictable. Every few months, she would be evicted for not paying the rent and have to move, lose her job because of some crisis related to her children at home, [*131] or change her phone number because she could not pay the bill. We routinely lost touch and then reconnected. To keep herself motivated, Benita created an imaginary alter ego to help get through each day. This person has her life together: she has a successful career and has none of Benita's problems, such as insufficient child care, low wages, housing trouble, and unsupportive men as the fathers of her children. Benita

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642 Annals 124, * sees herself as having the potential to be anything she wants to be, but lacking the economic resources to move forward. She believes she is a "beautiful, caring, and compassionate person." She wants to figure out a way to do better for herself and her children, but right now she has too many obstacles to overcome. She sees her situation in very individualistic terms and attributes most of her problems to poor decisions on her part, from relationships and pregnancy to the lack of a college education.
Benita makes no judgment on the fairness or equity of the system itself. In this respect, she adopts a middle-class attitude.
Benita's kinship network has been tapped out. Her brother, who lives out of state, refuses to accept her calls after not hearing from her for four years. Benita's father says she failed to repay a series of loans from him. Her sister, who also lives out of state, is cautious about contacting Benita because of her previous relationships with drug dealers and her constant moves. Benita's mother, who lives in the community, avoids her because she does not like being used for child care. The kinship network on which so many poor black women rely has been severely compromised, and Benita has few places to turn to for support.
When she has a job, she works for a health care company that provides assistance to seniors. Soon after I met her, Benita's unemployment and application for welfare required her to participate in Work First, a welfare-to-work program that a private agency contracts with the state to provide. Applicants receive training and assistance with job searches. Men are typically put into automotive repair and carpentry, and women are sent into childcare or health care. Benita says that most of the decent jobs paying $ 10 an hour are outside the city, while the few that are available in the city pay a little over $ 7 an hour. Working conditions in the suburbs are better than in the city as well. There is a reciprocal relationship between welfare reform and work: welfare increases a woman's job prospects through training but sanctions her financially if she tries to gain education outside the program. She cannot afford housing or utilities. The networks she relies on are fragile at best and, at worst, have been strained beyond the breaking point.
During my five years of fieldwork, Benita moved five times and had four different jobs, one as a daycare worker and three in nursing homes. Consistent with Stack's findings, Benita has a positive relationship with her neighbor, who looked after her children when Benita spent a few days in jail because she was unable to pay off the traffic fines she had accumulated going to work. Benita believes that these relationships are vital because she would be stranded without them. One of her children's fathers contributed the most money after her arrest, followed by her sister and a neighbor she has known for a short time. She is thankful and appreciative, but knows that she is indebted to them for repayments. She had broken up [*132] with her former

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642 Annals 124, * lover because he was a drug dealer and she did not want him around her children, but she became indebted to him for his help after her arrest.
Being Arrested because of Unpaid Debts
In 2010, Benita was arrested for unpaid driving tickets. While most Americans rarely accumulate enough traffic tickets and unpaid fines to be arrested, this sequence of events is surprisingly common in Bristol Hill. In an attempt to curb the drug trade, local law enforcement agencies received additional state and federal funding to patrol areas surrounding Bristol Hill. Traffic stops are a byproduct of the extra vigilance.
Although Benita is not a direct target of increased police coverage, she was caught in the net.
While public transportation is available within Bristol Hill, Benita usually works in suburban areas that are accessible only by car. While driving in the suburbs, Benita received tickets for speeding, driving an uninsured vehicle, failing to wear her seatbelt, and improperly displaying her license plate. "I had the license plate in my window instead of in back of the car," she told me. "I can't remember why. I just got the plates to put on the car and I didn't have the screws to screw it in so I just stuck the plate in the window. And they pulled me over for that [laughing]. The city doesn't care about that. So it's like, it's outside the city--suburban areas, mainly, like, when
I'm goin' to work, or, you know, goin' to look for a job--where you get a ticket."
She could not pay the tickets immediately, and penalties for unpaid fines increased the amount she owed to $ 2,200. At that point, Benita was arrested for failing to pay the tickets; she served three days in jail and lost her driver's license. Now Benita has to be even more cautious, because driving without a license is a serious offense, but she must drive to the suburbs to work or she will lose her job. She has insured her car under the name of a licensed driver. But that will not protect her if she is stopped.
When a financial emergency occurs, Benita tries every possible avenue to secure funds, from a bail bondsman to pawning jewelry and electronics; using rent and utility money; and even borrowing from strangers whom, she admits, she is unlikely to repay. Benita regularly uses a payday loan service, which, she says, is designed to put her deeper in debt. For a $ 300 loan, she must bring in a bank statement and pay a $
50 "interest" fee upfront. The loan company calls her employers for employment verification and a reference. She must give the company a check for the amount of the loan. If she does not repay it by the next payday or pay the interest fee, they deposit the check. If the check bounces, the company will attempt to deposit it every week. In one recent instance, the payday loan company tried to deposit her check five times--at
$ 37 each time in returned check fees. She could not repay the loan because she had

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642 Annals 124, * borrowed the money to get her car fixed and was unable to get to work until the car was running again. The fees ultimately totaled $ 235 on a $ 300 loan.
[*133] A day after her arrest, I asked her how she got to work. "Yeah, I drove," she replied, "because . . . how am I gonna get there? I can't lose my job, so now I'm cautious. I have to watch for the police and when I see them I turn off and go a whole
'nother route and then get back on track and then I'm off." To repay her debts to actual and fictive kin, she may have to reciprocate financially, offer them lodging, or perhaps even rekindle unwanted romantic relationships.
"Kids Don't Make Adult Choices about Sex"
Three years ago, Benita's eldest daughter missed a few days of school. News quickly spread that the 12-year-old was pregnant and that Benita, who was 27 at the time, was going to be a grandmother. The rumor proved untrue, but it provided the occasion for a candid discussion about Benita's own pregnancies and how she tries to prevent her own children, especially her daughters, from engaging in sex during their teen years. She is particularly concerned because her work schedule forces her to leave her children unattended.
Benita makes a compelling argument for teaching girls about what she defines as adult choices with lifelong consequences. She points out that nobody taught her about sex and that her early pregnancies could have been prevented had her parents, particularly her mother, explained the consequences of intercourse. In an effort to provide her daughters with the support Benita feels she herself lacked, Benita monitors her daughters' sexuality by supplying tampons, making sure they are having regular periods (all of the females in the house have their menstrual cycles at the same time), having very detailed discussions about condom use, threatening eviction if a daughter does not opt for abortion, and even monitoring their Facebook and text messages for sexual content.
Benita first became sexually active at 14, without intending to do so. A boy she liked passed her a note in class: "Do you like me? Circle yes or no." They had a shared understanding, she explains: "Of course you kiss and hug, show affection, but we thought if you're in a relationship, then you have sex, and that's exactly what we did. We were alone on his back porch and decided right then and there. A week later we broke up. It was not like most people described as a special time. . . . You then realize you gave him your virginity, which is not something you can just get back; it is then gone for good."
In response to her own experience, Benita argues that children cannot make adult choices unless parents teach them what the right choices are concerning sex. Her mother's strong Christian convictions made sex a taboo subject. Benita yearned for

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642 Annals 124, * her mother, who she felt was never available because she worked full-time. She feels that if her mother had had time for her, her life would have been different. She also feels that her father failed her because he was not around while she was growing up.
Now her father is trying to make up for missing most of her childhood. He calls frequently and has made several visits to see his grand-children. He even moved in for a few weeks to help her once when she was [*134] unemployed. She feels, however, that her mother's failure was more serious because the bond between mothers and daughters is most important.
Benita's first child's father, Curtis (her second boyfriend), was an 18-year-old college student. They met when Benita, who was just 15, was waiting outside school and he drove by and asked Benita for her phone number. They later talked on the phone and according to Benita, instantly became "boyfriend and girlfriend." In retrospect, she thinks that giving Curtis her number was the worst thing that has ever happened to her. She started skipping school to hang out with him. Benita liked the fact that he was older and attractive. Curtis was using drugs and hung out with older friends. One of them owned a bar, and Benita and Curtis often spent time there during the day because Curtis still lived with his parents. Her daughter was conceived in the bar--
Benita's second sexual experience. She says she did not understand the meaning of sex; indeed, she did not until she was 21. When Benita discovered that she was pregnant, she went to an abortion clinic with her mother and her older sister. When the staff explained the procedure to her, she became too scared to pursue an abortion and decided to raise the baby herself.
The Housing Merry-Go-Round
Keeping her family housed is a constant struggle for Benita. When she is unemployed, her income is only $ 700 per month, which is woefully insufficient to cover the family's necessary expenses. She was evicted at least four times in four years.
Like the tenants studied by Matthew Desmond (2010) in Milwaukee, Benita must deal with a deteriorating housing market, with limited means.
Although she has applied for public housing, it can take up to three years for an apartment to become available. The Housing Authority's shift to placing poor tenants in mixed-income housing has limited the number of available units. According to
Benita, it is virtually impossible to get into public housing because the children of families who already reside there are moved to the top of the waiting list when they turn 18, pushing outsiders further down the list. I later interviewed a housing authority representative who confirmed Benita's account.
Benita's tax refund had enabled her to get an apartment, since the deposit is always the biggest hurdle. But she had to lie on the application and say that she had a job.

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She explained, "The landlord is just looking at all this money I got, he's not gonna check anything, you know, so I told him I had a job. I put it down on paper that I was working and he got me the house." The problem was that her monthly income was less than her expenses.
I know I'll only get $ 700 a month, and that's gonna go towards the rent, so as far as the utilities ... that's how I ended up having to move, because I couldn't pay for the utilities. They ended up getting shut off and then I can't live there without the utilities, so I have to take the $ 700 and try to find somewhere else to go. So they're not gettin' their rent. . . . Now I have to look for another house and take this $ 700 and wait for the next [*135] month for the other $ 700 to even have a first month's rent and security deposit to put on another house. During that time I'm staying there [in the former apartment], and I know I can stay there for at least two months before they can evict me, with no utilities, so that's how it goes.
When she is lucky she can manage to live in an apartment for a month or two before eviction proceedings start and then two more after that. If she does not go to court, the bailiffs remove her belongings from the house. If she pleads hardship and asks for more time, the court can opt to give Benita up to 30 days to move out or come up with the money. After the court-ordered extension has passed, Benita moves out, concluding the eviction process. And so the merry-go-round continues to turn for her family--when she is lucky.
Andre, the father of Benita's two younger children, works at jobs that pay him under the table. When he was legally employed, half of his wages were deducted for child support, which he said meant that he could not afford to work and remain selfsufficient. He ultimately sought work in construction that paid in cash and off the books. He helps out with childcare on weekends and makes occasional cash contributions, but that is not enough.
It is clear from her account of her finances that Benita cannot afford housing. Although the average subsidized house in Bristol Hill rents for $ 500, unsubsi-dized rental units, especially for tenants with questionable credit, can range from $ 700 to $
800 per month. Benita plans to float from house to house in four- to five-month cycles of eviction until a slot opens up in public housing. This ongoing cycle of eviction and moving is typical, and in some sense landlords must be satisfied with the intermittent rent they get through this process. In this community, there is a large pool of people for whom it is virtually impossible to maintain housing payments without any outside assistance. As Benita sees it, slumlords are breaking the law; the houses are

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642 Annals 124, * unlivable or the landlord fails to pay utilities even when they are listed as included in the rent. She sees her own intention to break her contract as fair play.
For the first four years of this project, every time Benita contacted me or I tried to call her she had a different phone number. She uses a month-by-month service that allows her to sign up for a phone and new number under any name and with no contract. The service is cheap, and the company does not keep track of previous late payments. For the past year and a half Benita has managed to keep the same phone number, which suggests there may be more stability in her situation now. Her credit score is now 530, an improvement as well. She cannot get credit through conventional means, however, and must assume very high-cost loans when she needs them.
Father and Friends
When I asked Benita if she had ever been in love, she quickly explained the deep love and affection she still has for Andre, the father of her two youngest [*136] children. She was with him for five years, but they never married. She felt that he was reluctant to many her because they already had children together and there was no need for marriage. She wanted to marry him because she was young and in love, but marriage did not fit Andre's lifestyle as a drug dealer. Now she is very happy that they did not marry because of his criminal record and prison stints. After his release from prison, Andre married an older woman. Both he and his wife, Alana, are very involved in the lives of Benita's youngest children, the only children that Andre has.
Andre's wife's income from work is his primary means of support. Benita sympathizes with Andre, arguing that the amount of money he is required to pay in child support makes it very difficult for him to afford housing and transportation. While his financial contributions are sporadic, she greatly appreciates the time he spends with all of her children; even the two who are not biologically his recognize him as their father.
During our last interview, I asked Benita how she sees herself. She responded,
I see myself as somebody having the potential to be, you know, I can be whatever I wanted to be. I just don't have the tools to get over that barrier to, you know, even attempt to try to go on. ... I don't have the tools in front of me. But I mean, I'm a beautiful person, I work well with people, I'm caring, and me doing the job that I'm doing, I wanna continue to do that, but I wanna push further to, you know, be more at what I'm doing. 'Cause, like, right now, $ 9 an hour? I know so much stuff. I, like, know everything, and it's just ... I don't have the tools to, like, go on to college right now or even attempt to finish school. . . it's too much stuff going on. There's no way

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642 Annals 124, * that I could possibly do that right now. So now I have to try to figure out a way to do that just to, you know, do better and be better.
Conclusion
Benita's story shows that several of Stack's major points about poverty remain relevant today. For Stack's famous character. Ruby Banks, "making it" included swapping and sharing resources. For Benita and women like her, every friend and family member must be looked at as a potential resource. The consequences of being homeless, including the possibility that the children might be removed from the home, are uncomfortably close. Between high incarceration rates for black fathers; the rise in the cost of food, housing, and energy; the limitations imposed by government austerity measures; a service sector that depends on low wages and unstable jobs; limited adult supervision for children; and overextended social networks, the lives of the poor have become even more challenging.
To a careful observer, it is obvious that Benita is constantly anticipating and managing the crises that her circumstances precipitate. While her troubles with housing, job training, low wages, the police, and teen pregnancy seemed to me to be clearly related to wider societal issues, Benita sees these issues as temporary and the result of her personal failure. While visible class and racial disparities abound within her community, the constant effort to manage multiple crises seems to render them tangential in Benita's perspective. Her optimism is [*137] embedded in her ability to manage as best she can, making it by any means necessary.
Anderson's model of the three-pronged ghetto economy presents an informative outline of how people living in impoverished inner-city communities cope. For Benita, the culture is the way she makes sense of her situation, and her method is to exploit every opportunity to reconcile the discrepancy between the resources she needs and the limited and sporadic availability of opportunities to acquire these resources.
Benita works at a job that does not pay a living wage, uses deceptive tactics to maintain housing and get to work, ritualistically goes through the motions under welfare reform, and signs up for public housing despite knowing that both programs will ultimately fail. She does not even rebel against the reality that a new crisis is always looming as soon as she escapes the current one. Benita optimistically believes that things will turn out better and tries to keep her children from making the same mistakes she did.
Her circumstances are neither isolated nor unique. Problems of education, income, and housing affect most poor families. Without intervention and a reexamination of the synergistic effects of these separately conceived policies on poor families, many will continue to be placed in dire straits. Looking at this situation through the lens of

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642 Annals 124, * an interaction order shows how practices of law enforcement, employment, and welfare impose social requirements and interactional expectations that make impoverished families more susceptible to disruption. Using an interaction order approach to better understand people's sense-making, policy-related practices, and coping strategies is crucial if we are to better serve the poor who do make good-faith attempts at self-sufficiency.
References
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Anderson, Elijah. 1999. Code of the street: Decency, violence, and the moral life of the inner city . New York, NY: Norton.
Anderson, Elijah. 2011. The cosmopolitan canopy: Race and civility in everyday life .
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Desmond. Matthew. 2010. Evictions in Milwaukee County 2008-2009: Estimating the impact of aid from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act . Commissioned by
Community Advocates, Milwaukee, WI.
Gans, Herbert. 1995. The war against the poor.
New York, NY: Basic Books.
Garfinkel, Harold. 1963. A conception of and experiments with "trust" as a condition of stable concerted actions. In Motivation and social interaction , ed. O. J. Harvey,
187-238. New York, NY: Ronald Press.
Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in ethnomethodology . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
[*138] Glaze, Lauren E. 2010. Correctional population in the United States, 2009 .
Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Department of Justice. Available from http://wwwbjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus09.pdf.
Goffman, Erving. 1983. Presidential address: The interaction order. American Sociological Review 48:1-17.
Kingfisher, Catherine. 1996. Women in the American welfare trap . Philadelphia, PA
University of Pennsylvania Press.
Rawls, Anne Warfield. 1987. The interaction order sui generis: Goffman's contribution to social theory. Sociological Theory 2:136-49.
Rawls, Anne Warfield. 2000. Race as an interaction order phenomenon: W. E. B. Du
Bois's "double consciousness" thesis revisited. Sociological Theory 18:241-74.
Rawls, Anne Warlfield. 2009. An essay on two conceptions of social order: Constitutive orders of action, objects and identities vs. aggregate orders of individual action.
Journal of Classical Sociology 9 (4): 500-520.
Stack, Carol. 1974. All our kin . New York, NY: Harper & Row.

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Stack, Carol. 1997. Beyond what are given as givens: Ethnography and critical policy studies. Ethos 25 (2): 191-207.
Suttles, Gerald D. 1968. The social order of the slum . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
U.S. Census Bureau. 2011. City Statistics. Available from http://factfinder2.census.gov/main.html.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 2011. TANF. Available from www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ofa/. n1 Pseudonyms are used for all persons and places mentioned in the text. n2 See Anne Warfield Rawls (2009) for a discussion of constitutive orders of rule, Rawls (1987) for a discussion of interaction orders, and Rawls (2000) for a discussion of interaction orders of race.