Edward C. Banfield

Poverty. Illiteracy. Crime. Unemployment. Riots. Big cities so often appear to have terrible problems, and Americans have a long history of convincing themselves that urban areas are in crises and that the federal government must do something to improve matters. Edward C. Banfield argues the conventional wisdom is incorrect. In The Unheavenly City Revisited, he presents rigorous analyses showing that "by any conceivable measure of material welfare the present generation of urban Americans is, on the whole, better off than any other large group of people has ever been anywhere." He furthermore argues that there is little evidence that the billions of dollars of government spending is improving matters. Indeed, well-intended government actions have proved harmful in some instances. The Unheavenly City Revisited cautions policymakers that their biases may affect their perceptions of America's metropolitan areas. Improving the lives of people in cities through government action is an exceedingly complex enterprise. Government officials and citizens alike must be realists about what government action can achieve.

Government Project tells the story of an attempt by theUS government to remake the lives of some of its citizens by establishing a cooperativefarm in Pinal County, Arizona, in 1937. These individuals were among the mostdesperately poor and disadvantaged in the nation. Casa Grande Valley Farms was an elaborate venture that providedthe Americans who volunteered to settle there with housing, work, and theopportunity to earn income. For five years, the farm succeeded. The revenuesfrom the sale of its crops gave the Casa Grande settlers material comfort andwealth far beyond what they had ever possessed. But in the farm's seventh year of operation, the inhabitantsshuttered it and walked away with hardly anything, to the shock and dismay ofthe government officials overseeing it. Government Project explains what went wrong at CasaGrande. In telling this story, it illuminates larger truths about human natureand the limits of governance.

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Looking at how nepotism and family-centric societies sacrifice the public good, Edward C. Banfield uses a study of the people of southern Italy to argue how self-interested families can lead to poverty.Analyzing families in southern Italy in 1955, Moral Basis of a Backward Society discusses how poverty is a result of the inability to trust or associate strongly outside of immediate family. Challenged and argued for years, Edward C. Banfield’s study has become accept by many people in the modern age.