Urban Specters

“Urban Specters helps us make sense of the everyday harm caused by racial capitalism in two working-class urban neighborhoods. It offers us a fresh look at how class relationships are obscured by ideology and how place and race are linked in the minds and lived experiences of everyday people in the city.”—Contemporary Sociology

“A fascinating examination of both race relations and class dynamics in a changing city. [Mayorga’s] book makes a significant contribution to the study of both critical racial/ethnic studies and urban sociology, and perhaps more importantly to the theoretical underpinnings of these two traditions.”—Ethnic and Racial Studies

“A refreshing contribution to urban scholarship. . . . Urban Specters illuminates the ways racial capitalist dynamics haunt the everyday lived experiences of people and, most importantly, the stories people tell. . . . [A] valuable and generative resource for scholars of race, urban inequality, and political economy.”—Social Forces

"The book uses rich detail from the ground to show how racial capitalism is at work in everyday community life. It also shows the reader how to identify the seeds of abolitionist practices that can be nurtured, demonstrating that abolitionism is not in a different world but rather is present right where racial capitalism dominates and does the most harm.”—Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

“Urban Specters intimately compares and contrasts two local neighborhoods — Riverside and Carthage — and their residents while exploring the topic of racial capitalism. . . . Mayorga uncovers everyday manifestations of racial capitalism through the eyes of Cincinnati residents.”—Cincinnati CityBeat

“An in-depth analysis of material life within two neighborhoods in Cincinnati. . . . Urban Specters provides hope in interpersonal acts of resilience and a growing self-awareness made possible by public scholarship that looks at a different world.”—The Metropole

“Deeply relational. . . . Mayorga focuses on Riverside and Carthage, yes, but the book becomes most alive when she shows how these places are intimately connected to other worlds: development in other Cincinnati neighborhoods like Over-the-Rhine (p. 35), white flight to suburbs outside the city (p. 41), the migration (of workers and stereotypes
about ‘white trash’) from the broader Appalachian region that abuts the city (p. 9), or the places her respondents wish they could move (pp. 153–56).”—American Journal of Sociology

“[Mayorga] draws on an extensive collection of 117 in-depth interviews from across these two neighborhoods and across racial groups within these areas. The result is a fascinating examination of both race relations and class dynamics in a changing city. . . .  In a time of mounting racial strife and economic insecurity, her book provides a solid contribution to urban sociology, social stratification, and critical race studies.”—Ethnic and Racial Studies

“Insightful in the most sorrowful of ways. Mayorga pushes us to listen hard to hear not only how racial capitalism infects our relations with each other and keeps us apart, but also how the demons of racial capitalism take over our best selves, creeping into how and where we care and who we prop up. To build a new world we must fully encounter the old one, in all its ugliness and disappointment. This work takes us a step closer.”—Gargi Bhattacharyya, University of East London

“By linking theories of racial capitalism with tangible lived experiences, Sarah Mayorga takes the blinders off of the titular 'specters,' allowing us to see the bigger picture of capitalist underdevelopment and exploitative inclusion with greater clarity.”—Eileen O'Brien, Saint Leo University