Absent men.

The article reports that after two decades in which liberal social scientists have tip-toed nervously around the question of family break-up and welfare dependency, debate on the campus has begun to shift ground towards the poor in the U.S. Two books about the inner-city poor published this year illustrate the change. Among a recent crop of studies that returns to this tradition, one, at the University of Chicago, has been particularly instrumental in persuading liberals to recognize what is happening in the ghettos. Part of the impetus behind this new consensus has been several academic studies of the inner-city poor, known in the jargon as ethnography.