Abstract

This article aims at clarifying sociological definitions with the help of an original tool, the logical table of contingency, which has characteristics in common with both the statistical table of contingency and Carroll’s bilateral diagram. The unclear notion of ghetto is taken as a test-case. Successive tables of contingency are applied to various defining properties and various sociohistorical situations. Cladistic methods are then used to make the relationships between all ghetto-like situations explicit.