Vice, Crime, Poverty How the Western Imagination Invented the Underworld by Dominique Kalifa

Poverty has always existed but, in particular in the XIX century, the moment of the birth of industrialization, the arrival of wagons of people also from closest countrysides in search of a best life, created new social conditions.

People of letters described, wrote, published books, pamphlets, diaries, journals, about the meaning of being poor or the meaning of living in certain areas and in certain ways; places, that ones not too recommended of big cities as Paris, New York, London.

In this new book published by Columbia University Press Vice, Crime,

Poverty How the Western Imagination Invented the Underworld by Dominique Kalifa thanks to literature, from Victor Hugo to Dickens, from Jack London to diaries written by people who worked in slums, or witnesses interested to discovering the fatiscent conditions in which poor people lived, we have a clear idea of that kind of life: it is traced with precision.

Was it an imagination the underworld built by the so-called western civilization? No, of course. It was a society that later would have created Jack the Ripper in 1888; the Victorian Age, with its contraditions, with people left behind, with the excluded ones from the society.

People who lived in slums, in the poorest part of a big city, it could be Paris, it could be London or also other ones, there is not at all a great difference because poverty is poverty, were not "good people" in the real sense of the word. 

They could be criminals, but also prostitutes, vandals, beggars, they could be people mentally sick, and at that time without any kind of possibility for being cured for their problems. All these people lived in fatiscent conditions where death, but also persistent smell of escrements were part of their daily life. 

It's from the past, anyway, remarks the author that  people tried to define what it meant goodness and badness; good realities and cities nests of sin. Kalifa takes in examination for example a city like Babylon considered a horrible one because everything permitted.

For trying to better the conditions of all these poor people,also thanks to literary works in grade of making some pressure on the institutions at various levels, sometimes politicians loved to spend some time with poor people, visiting their workplaces, their houses, trying to have an idea of their poverty; sometimes they sent someone for understanding what it was going on for, later, trying to be helpful. Works by Victor Hugo, are illuminating. We musn't forget Charles Dickens, where in A Christmas Carol portrays a realistic picture of Scrooge's employer and his family, they didn't have the possibility of curing their beloved son or eating properly. 

Beautiful book, rich of literature, anecdots, story. 

Highly recommended.

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori