Sudhir Venkatesh

American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto

In a typically thoughtful commentary on Loic Wacquant’s stirring (1997) attack on academic treatments of the American ghetto, Sharon Zukin (1998) wonders what has actually changed inside and outside the ghetto since the 1960s, and argues that ‘a more rigorous social science is needed ... to trace the historical failures of communal and public institutions, deal with metatheoretical issues of space and time, and analyze contemporary cultures of materialism and violence’ (p. 514). Sudhir Venkatesh’s remarkable and important American Project is exactly the sort of work that Zukin and no doubt many others were waiting for. Since the 1960s, there have been numerous, lengthy accounts of public housing in the US, both academic and journalistic; countless articles debating the existence and dubious terminology of an African-American ‘underclass’, and vast amounts of time and ink devoted to issues of urban segregation, ‘concentrated poverty’, violent crime and the drug economy, welfare retrenchment, gang formation and tactics, the spatial mismatch of housing and employment, and so on. This book is the most readable, balanced and sensitive piece of scholarship I have come across in this vast literature; a landmark study based on several years of meticulous research that I hope will prove instructive and valuable to scholars and students of housing, of sociology, of ethnography, of geography and of the changing American inner city. American Project is about the birth, life and impending death of the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago’s South Side, the largest and perhaps most notorious housing project in the United States. There is a common misconception among urban scholars and their students that all housing projects in American cities have discriminatory origins, but Venkatesh reminds us that the Robert Taylor Homes were a massive Le Corbusian experiment in social reform with admirable intentions. Built ‘to provide Chicago’s overcrowded black population with decent, affordable housing’ (p. 15), a stepping-stone to permanent detachment from poverty and slum malaise, 28 identical 16-storey ‘towers in the park’ housed over 27 000 people when they were completed in the early 1960s, and were opened amidst a fanfare of progress and celebration of American ideals. The author carefully documents the history of the housing development’s fall from grace; it is astonishing how quickly optimism eroded, how hope was displaced by despair, how promise evaporated as neglect set in. The explanation for what went wrong is a familiar one to scholars of public housing and ghetto formation in American cities: decades of municipal negligence; mismanagement by the Chicago Housing Authority (woefully left to their own meagre devices by successive federal governments, particularly the Reagan administration’s ‘New

Are we a family or a business ? History and disjuncture in the urban American street gang

After 1987, in pool halls and city parks, high school football games, storefront churches, youth centers, and other sites where police presence was minimal, high-ranking leaders from Chicago’s largest AfricanAmerican street gang ‘‘Nations’’ began meeting to discuss the latest period of change in their respective associations. Adorned in jewelry and expensive designer clothes, and transported in luxury cars, the leaders left little doubt that underground commerce was at the heart of the gang’s activities. In between discussions of collective exigencies, most of which centered around management of their crack-cocaine trade, members ‘‘signi¢ed’’ with stories of failed or successful money laundering, new opportunities for investment, or a recent commodity purchase. Crack cocaine had arrived in the city and, with it, lucrative pro¢ts for a twenty- and thirty-something class of young black men living in the poorest neighborhoods. The involvement of gang members in the burgeoning underground trade was by no means ubiquitous: not all of Chicago’s neighborhood gangs were entrepreneurial, nor did all members of the successfully commercial groups earn revenue that could support conspicuous consumption ^ in fact, the majority earned slightly above minimum wage. 1 However, such activity was without precedent: organized entrepreneurship was an atypical venture for many of these thirty-year old gang families.

A Perversion of Choice : Sex Work Offers Just Enough in Chicago's Urban Ghetto

In an apartment building on Chicagos Southside, fifty of the seventy-five residents are sex workers. Our study uses in-depth interviews and participant observation of Chicagos sex work economy to argue that sex work is one constituent part of an overall low-wage, off-the-books economy of resource exchange among individuals in a bounded geographic setting. To an outsider, the decision to be a sex worker seems irrational; in this article we argue that specific localized conditions invert this decision and render it entirely rational. For the men and women in our study, sex work acts as a short-term solution that “satisfices” the demands of persistent poverty and instability, and it provides a meaningful option in the quest for a job that provides autonomy and personal fulfillment.

The Reflexive Turn: The Rise of First-Person Ethnography

In the early to mid-20th century, ethnographic research enjoyed an exalted position within sociology. Fieldwork and direct engagement of researchers with their objects of study was the dominant modality through which theory was organized, data were amassed, and concepts were refined. In the late 1960s, as sociology embraced scientific protocols, distinguishing itself from humanistic and anthropological modes of producing knowledge, ethnography (and ethnographers) grew less influential. Participant observation with a small sample—of people, neighborhoods, groups, or organizations—was overshadowed by large-scale studies that were amenable to quantitative analysis. By no means did fieldwork-based case studies and participant observation disappear, but the most significant disciplinary initiatives were no longer directed by ethnographers; leadership came from organizational analysts, demographers, specialists of immigration, selfdescribed “theoreticians,” economic sociologists, institutional analysts, and mathematical modelers. In fact, even within its traditional home, urban studies, ethnographers assumed a backstage role. There were many reasons for this shift, and none has necessarily been proven in any systematic way, but an important one seems to be the shifting public tastes for sociological studies. Sociological research became invaluable for understanding mass behavior—public opinion, consumer tastes, industrial organization—and so sociologists employing methods that could shed light on such patterns were in great demand. Various national social surveys that are now commonplace were put into place, enabling systematic documentation of major American trends, including shifts in immigration, family formation, and education and work. In the last decade, sociology has seen a resurgence in ethnographic research, for reasons that are also not altogether easy to establish (c.f., Lewis and Russell 2011. Across many subfields of sociology, scholars are returning to direct fieldwork. But, some novel developments have taken root in this process. The rise of so-called “mixed methods” has placed ethnographers in conversation with a wide range of scholars, from survey researchers to demographers, thereby enabling all researchers to break free from a simple (and mostly inaccurate) stereotype: Ethnographers study “qualitative” data, while survey researchers use “quantitative” data. In these studies, the presence of numerical information has become an insufficient criterion for determining whether a scholar is “ethnographic” (or not). Ethnography becomes one tool in the

Whither the ‘socially isolated’ city?

This article analyses William J. Wilson’s use of the concept of social isolation in studying the urban poor. It traces the origins of Wilson’s use of the concept in human ecology, focusing upon critical aspects of the ‘socially isolated’ city and its influence upon ethnographies of the urban poor. His particular focus is upon the interaction of the poor with the mainstream. While Wilson places considerable emphasis upon the role of the state, those appropriating his concept have not adequately incorporated government institutions and discourse into their analyses of culture and practice.

Chicago's Pragmatic Planners

Chicago is a mythic city. Its representation in the popular imagination is varied and has included, at various times, the attributes of a blue-collar town, a city in a garden, and a gangster’s paradise. Myths of Chicago ‘‘grow abundantly between fact and emotion,’’ 1 and they selectively and simultaneously evoke and defer attributes of the city. For one perduring myth, social scientists may be held largely responsible: namely, that Chicago is ‘‘one of the most planned cities of the modern era,’’ with a street grid, layout of buildings and waterways,

Black and Blue

The tangled web of race, policing, and justice in America.

Herbert J. Gans: An Introduction

One is hard pressed to find a sociologist who has not been touched by the work of Herbert J. Gans. The scholarship, criticism, and commentary from Gans’s pen have informed social science and public opinion for more than four decades. This is a volume of essays by several social scientists, of diverse background and interests, who have been influenced by Gans’s work. It should be noted that Gans’s reach has never been confined to social science—or to the academy, for that matter. A quick look at his biography shows the trajectory of a scholar who has moved across wide-ranging institutional terrain. Gans received his Ph.D. in planning and worked at various municipal and federal agencies (Chicago Housing Authority, U.S. Housing and Home Finance Agency), before landing at Columbia University’s Department of Sociology in 1971. Gans has remained in the Department, holding since 1985 the title of Robert S. Lynd Professor. He has written a dozen books and over 170 articles, but he has been equally prolific as a writer of opinion and social criticism outside of academic venues. Gans served as President of the American Sociological Association (1989). He was honored in 1999 with the ASA’s Award for Contributions to the Public Understanding of Sociology, and in 2005 Gans was recognized by the Association for his Career of Distinguished Scholarship. In the last decade, social scientists have become obsessed—and justifiably so—with the growing irrelevance of the discipline to the world beyond the academy. Some have called for greater engagement between scholars and policymakers, others have pushed sociology to collaborate with those working in organizations and at the grassroots, and still others believe that writing outside of sociological forums (or making journal-based writing more accessible) is needed. Amid this recent clamor to revive sociologist’s “public intellectual” agenda, Gans’s corpus of scholarly material stands out as truly public and intellectual. Looking over Gans’s career, one finds a veritable instruction manual for the ways in which sociology can deepen its public profile. Gans has written in the most exclusive (and esoteric) journals, he has published critical essays in popular magazines, and he has dispatched editorials to top-flight newspapers. Each carries the signature of a Gans argument: using sociology to debunk what is often taken as self-evident; deploying categories, data, and argument to counter stereotypes whether those promulgated by conservative mavens or liberal do-gooders. We began research for this essay—and the special issue of the journal—by identifying those areas of social science to which Gans has contributed. The list kept growing. Urban studies, planning, poverty, race and ethnic studies, the media and popular culture are

Why Criminals Tell Us the Truth

I have been conducting ethnographic research on crime for two decades. My fieldwork is most often situated in urban neighborhoods—disproportionately among the poor, but occasionally with the middle and upper classes. As an ethnographer, I need individuals to trust me enough to provide truthful information over an extended period of time. My observation will last at least 2 years, so I’m depending on a high level of commitment from my research subjects.

Gang Life in Two Cities: An Insider’s Journey

a workers’ center in Boise, and the former economic advisor to the state legislature has retired and formed his own economic nonprofit to document current inequalities in the public and private sectors. Doussard’s Degraded Work is an important book. His ability to weave ethnographic, statistical, demographic, and methodological materials into a readable and persuasive narrative is trenchant. As important, his call for more transparency on the part of writers, researchers, and activists working in local labor markets is crucial at this point in our history. The gains in human and labor rights were won with the blood and sweat of our predecessors, and we are witnessing the rapid dissolution of laws and social mores that recognize the rights of all people over legal fictions. We have the means at our disposal to challenge and reverse these violations of human rights. Yet we need models like those presented by Doussard to put the tools of labor advocacy back into our hands.