Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets For my final paper I choose to sociologically analyze the book Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh. Newsweek describes Gang Leader for a Day as being “Compelling…dramatic…Venkatesh gives readers a window into a way of life that few Americans understand.” (Newsweek) Gang Leader for a Day tells the story of a young sociologist named Sudir Venkatesh and his search for answers to poverty problems in the urban projects. After being constantly warned of which areas not to visit, Venkatesh decided to ignore all the forewarnings and goes and walks into Lake Park Projects, to conduct surveys for his professor. On his trip into the projects Venkatesh ends up meeting a gang leader named J.T. After spending the night in the projects Venkatesh is allowed to leave after J.T. states “You shouldn’t go around asking them silly-a** questions —- With people like us, you should hang out, get to know what they do, how they do it. No one is going to answer questions like that .You need to understand how young people live on the streets.” (2008 : 21) From that day on Venkatesh would come to end up befriending J.T and spending almost all of his time in the projects. It isn’t until J.T gets relocated to the notorious Robert Taylor Housing that the real study begins. Over the next seven years Venkatesh would not only gather information from J.T but, also befriend everyone from the other neighborhood dealers, crackheads, squatters, prostitutes, pimps, activists, cops, organizers, and officials. Through his time spent with the residents and officials of the Robert Taylor Homes Venkatesh not only was able to gain insight on the day to day life of... ... middle of paper ... ...ontinue to structure society in ways that value some lives more than others. (Andersen and Collins, pg 1) “Let me tell you something about us. We may be poor, but when you come over here, don’t pity us, don’t pardon us and don’t hold us to a lower standard than you hold yourself up to.” (42) Overall, Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets allows a look into a world that few had access to. Venkatesh’s journey through the Chicago projects shows how residents of the projects live Venkatesh, Sudhir. 2008. Gang Leader for a Day: A Rouge Sociologist Takes to the Streets. Penguin Books. Manza, Jeff and Michael Sauder. 2009. Inequality and Society: Social Science Perspectives on Social Stratification. New York: Norton. Andersen, Margaret L. and Patricia Hill Collins. 2012. Race, Class & Gender: an Anthology, 8th edition. Wadsworth Cengage.
As time went by, J.T. and Venkatesh met less and less and in the year 1998, most of the Robert Taylor buildings would be demolished. As their encounters were coming to an end, J.T. offers Venkatesh names of gang members in Newark and in New York, to enable Venkatesh to pursue his research elsewhere since his dissertation had long ago been finished which was written on the ways that people living in poverty made a living to get them by day-to-day.
1-The story tells, Real facts occurred in the 1940s, where it was a racist society. Gangs were scattered throughout the cities, and regions, and the streets. To live, you have full get away, or belonging to one of them. You should help the gang members that they were right or on falsehood. Also, it is a kind of bigotry, not much different from intolerance, national, ethnic, and sectarian That were prevalent in American society. in fact, it is the inevitable result of this society. When the corruption becomes prevails, injustice and lawless prevails too, and justice will disappear.
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rouge Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh is the ideologies rooted in the African American community. The ideal facts cannot be denied here. The idea of being black and poor is not a simple answer of, very bad, somewhat bad, neither, somewhat good or very good. Being black and poor is a lifestyle. Being black and poor is a community. This book will give you understanding how structural racism among blacks is installed throughout history. The system is created to make sure the subject matter, blacks, in this case are subjected to fail. The crack epidemic in a Chicago neighborhood was only the beginning.
This book also has the perspective of the police, which show the gang violence as a more black and white or good versus evil issue, and their militant approach to gang reformation. Jorja Leap holds a view that to stop gang violence, the same members that were once gangbanging need to divert the youth away from the same lifestyle.
Michael Sierra-Arevalo received his B.A. in sociology and psychology (high honors) from the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include urban sociology, race and ethnicity, gangs, social network analysis, violence prevention, and policy implications of gang violence.
Fiske, R., & Cyrus, V. (2005). Experiencing Race, Class, and Gender in the United States: Fourth Edition. Boston: McGrawHill
In Sudhir Venkatesh’s ethnography Gang Leader for a Day, is his research is through the University of Chicago in the 1990s and chose to do research on poor black people. He stated about his experience with JT in the Robert Taylor Housing and to understand how their life if differentiates from others. Throughout this paper I will be speaking about Venkatesh’s research, the limitation, my opinion in how Venkatesh understood all of his findings, and how his experience mesh with my own. The novel is his dissertation, his ethnography where he collected data record their observations, and find a way to understand the meaning behind it all.
“Just another day as an outsider looking at life from the inside”, says Sudhir Venkatesh, who is referring to his research study. Venkatesh is a self proclaimed “rogue sociologist” who wanted to study the lives of poor black families living in Chicago. Instead of solely conducting interviews and surveys, Venkatesh took it a step further and immersed himself in the environment that he was studying. Gang Leader for A Day describes Venkatesh’s experiences with the Black Kings, and ultimately explores gang life through a lens that not many would be willing to adopt.
In the first two chapters of the novel Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh The book opens during Venkatesh’s first week as a graduate student at the University of Chicago. During orientation lectures, students are warned repeatedly to stay in the safe areas of the city and not to venture outside them. Venkatesh lives on the edge of one of these safe zones, on the border between the university campus and a poor, black neighborhood. He has recently moved to Chicago from California and spends his time exploring the city. He is especially interested in the poor black neighborhoods; when he walks in these areas he is the subject of intense scrutiny but feels perfectly safe. Venkatesh then introduces some of the basic ideas of sociology, explaining that sociologists usually collect large amounts of information using survey and then translate the results into statistical data. This is the quantitative approach and has been criticized by some sociologists, who prefer to “observe” the subjects—the people—of their research in a more intimate way. Venkatesh favors the observational approach, as he finds that quantitative methods are often too abstract, too far removed from the reality of people’s lives. In the second chapter
The first ever gang-group was created just after the American Revolution ended around 1783. This group consisted of White European immigrants, mainly English, German, and Irish. However, the first serious gang originated around 1820 in New York City. At many times gangs were made informally, in 1826, in the back room of Rosanna Peer’s greengrocery, the first well-organized gang was formed. Through the 1860 to 1980’s period, many more gangs produced in New York City. Asian and European descent, the Chinese, Italians, Austrians, and many more began to create even worse slum conditions for the City. The criminal activity had started to shift around New York, from Manhattan to East Harlem, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. Many fighting gangs soon began to emerge from the African descent, and a little ways after, black gangs appeared around 1950. Later in the 1950’s, a “slum clearance” project in the City began where several thousan...
There is a deep seated hatred between rival gangs, which makes it difficult for the gang’s members to let go. Gangs became a source of income for some people, which made it difficult for many young African Americans to escape the gangs. Significance: This film shows how the police saw activist groups such as the Black Panthers and the U.S. Organization as a threat, which led to repression despite the Civil Rights Movement. This repression leads to anger and hatred and the need for a sense of belonging amongst the African American community.
...g measures out there. The reader is given plenty of background information on gangs allowing someone with little knowledge of the subject or the cities’ history to jump right in. Statistics, interviews, surveys and personal observations of the authors during ride-alongs make up much of the source material. The book’s strengths lie in the amount of research contained within it, as well as an insider look at the gang unit and what it takes to be an officer in that specialization. However, if it is not being used to supplement another research paper or study, the book comes off as a difficult and boring read, making a reader likely to put it down otherwise.
Hallswort, S. And Young, T. (2004) Getting Real About Gang. Criminal Justice Matters [online]. 55. (1), pp 12-13 [Accessed 10 December 2013]
Many stereotypes of gangs have been fabricated. The problem is that a majority of gang members do not fit these stereotypes, which, in turn, makes it hard for the to be caught (Klein). Traditionally they organize their group around a specific neighborhood, school or housing projec...
Kerbo, H. R. (2012). Social stratification and inequality: class conflict in historical, comparative, and global perspective (8th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.