Sudhir Venkatesh Gang Leader Summary

1491 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Gang leader for a day essay

Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader for a Day provides readers with an in depth understanding of life for the poverty stricken in 1980s Chicago, Illinois. More specifically, Venkatesh's research focuses on African-Americans living in the Robert Taylor public housing units, which were notorious for gang activity and general onslaught of crime. Despite the clear picture Venkatesh is able to exhibit by throwing himself into this alien world, the information he garnered was not acquired without fault. Since the publication of his research, Venkatesh's research methods have been scrutinized for negligence and naivety from academics and casual readers alike.

Venkatesh's research began rather intimately; he focused on individuals and the stories they had to tell. Ultimately, Venkatesh's objective grew as he strove to encapsulate the Robert Taylor Homes as a whole, as opposed to given tenants. It is in this instance that Venkatesh's research methods took an unethical turn. Venkatesh initially walked into the projects with a clear cut plan, boasting surveys with …show more content…

Bailey. At the point that this situation occurs, Venkatesh has gained substantial trust at Robert Taylor. However, when it was learned that he had shared this private information, that trust was quickly revoked. As it was, JT and Ms. Bailey were already extorting as much money as they could from tenants doing 'under the table' work in Robert Taylor - IE: prostitution, hair styling, day care, etcetera. When an essential master list of everyone making money in Robert Taylor was provided to them, an opportunity arose for them to make even more money off of everyone they were unaware was working out of their homes. Naturally, this blatant breach of confidentiality and trust was quickly traced back to

Show More
Related

  • The Stay Together Gang Summary

    1053 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • 38th Street Gang Research Paper

    871 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Book Summary Of A Gang Leader For A Day

    1362 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The World's Most Dangerous Gang

    1955 Words  | 4 Pages

    A)Socialization/page 67: The process by which people learn the characteristics of their group- the knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, norms, and actions thought appropriate for them.

    Read More

  • Sociological Reasons behind Gang Violence in South Central Los Angeles

    1077 Words  | 3 Pages

    Over the past 60 years there has been a recent phenomenon in the development and rise of gangs and gang violence. This is exceptionally apparent in South Central Los Angeles where the Bloods and the Crips have taken control of the social structure and created a new type of counter culture. Poverty in this area is an enormous problem caused by a shear lack of jobs; but just because there is a lack of jobs doesn’t mean that there will be a lack of bills to pay, so sometimes selling drugs in order to keep a roof over your head seems like the most logical option. Crime often times flourishes in these regions because the inconvenient truth is; crime pays. Senator Tom Hayden stated “It’s been defined as a crime problem and a gang problem but it’s really an issue of no work and dysfunctional schools.” this statement is in fact true, but with an exception it is a more broad issue than just involving school, and lack of jobs but goes beyond into social structure as a whole and more specifically the judicial system, this can all be supported by three sociologists Chambliss, Anderson, and Durkheim.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Punished By Victor Rios

    1127 Words  | 3 Pages

    Victor Rios is a previous gang member, whom “was given the opportunity” to get out of the youth control complex. In his book “Punished”, he analyzes the experiences of young black and Latino boys in Oakland, California. Rios gives us an intimate description of some of the everyday forms of “hyper discrimination” these minority boys experience. This book review will focus on the main concepts explained in chapters one through three from the book Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys.

    Read More

  • Self-Interest as a Driving Force in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things

    1426 Words  | 3 Pages

    Roy asserts that people’s fears of upsetting the power balance based in the caste system often leads to a blind acceptance of the status quo and a continuous sense of self-deprecation by individuals at the bottom of the hierarchy. When Velutha’s father fears that his son’s affair with a Touchable will have potentially disastrous consequences for him, he serves his own self-interest and is willing to endanger is son. He exposes the affair to the grandmother of the woman his son is having an affair with, revealing the extreme degree to which caste and conforming to societal norms drive the behaviors of individuals in Indian society; “So Vellya Paapen had come to tell Mamamachi himself. As a Paravan and a man with mortgaged body parts he considered it his duty…they had made the unthinkable thinkable and the impossible really happen…Offering to kill his son. To tear him limb from limb” (242). His fear of disrupting the status quo (i.e. the Indian social hierarchy) is so great that he is willing to sacrifice his own son’s life to protect his own. Rather than considering the genuine...

    Read More

  • National Gang Report

    686 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to the 2015 National Gang Report (NGR) from the National Gang Intelligence Center (NGIC) almost half of law enforcement juristictions across the United States reported a rise in street gang membership and street gang activitiy. My communitty is no exception.

    Read More

  • The Mighty Vice Lords: Book Review Of The Mighty Vice Lords

    852 Words  | 2 Pages

    This book was about a street gang called the Mighty Vice Lords. They were the second largest gang in Chicago with about 30,000 members. The Vice Lords started in the Illinois Training center (Juvenile Correctional Facility) for boys in St. Charles Illinois during 1958 and was led by Edward “Pepalo” Perry and Alfonso Alfred. This group was known to be brutal and violent. It discussed how a violent gang can become a community organization and change the way things were done for the betterment of the community. This information is important because it showed that gangs can become a positive force.

    Read More

  • The Gang Crackdown Summary

    779 Words  | 2 Pages

    A Climate of Fear “The Gang Crackdown”, provided by PBS, communicates the everyday struggles that the communities of Nassau County face every day. The video’s focus revolves around the homicidal and violent crimes that have been provided by the “MS-13” and the details of cracking down on their development. The Latin American gang from El Salvador is known for their audacity to target the young population of Long Island and their homicidal tendencies. They have targeted children and teenagers at their workplace, their home, and their school. These gang members have left the community defenseless and struck fear into the hearts of many parents along with the government itself.

    Read More

  • Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh

    1369 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sociology student Sudhir Venkatesh sets out on a journey within the Chicago housing projects with a quest of finding out how it feels to be black and poor. Sudhir was an Indian native from a middle class Californian family and he was unfamiliar with the black culture within Chicago. In his book Gang Leader for a Day, he tells of his sociology research within one of the roughest housing projects in Chicago. Sudhir starts his research by talking to a few elderly gentlemen he played chess with at the park. His conversation with them led him to the Robert Taylor Housing Projects which was described as one of the worst Ghettos in America. His research began the first day he arrived with his clipboard of questionnaires ready to ask the question, “How does it feel to be black and poor?” His intent was to interview a few families within the projects and then go home but something unexpected happened. He ended up spending much longer gaining an insight of the lives of poor blacks, gangs, and drug dealers.

    Read More

  • Homicide In Hoinsbeck Analysis

    895 Words  | 2 Pages

    CNN presents the documentary, Homicide in Hollenbeck, spotlighting gang activity in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Hollenbeck. This documentary explores the subculture of gangs existing within Hollenbeck from a several perspectives. The people documented include a mother who lost both of her sons to gang violence, a priest that has tried to help rehabilitate gang members, a police officer that has worked in Hollenbeck for five years in the gang unit, and a current gang member. For a conclusion, Homicide in Hollenbeck focuses on a juvenile exposed to gang life on the cusp of decided where they want their life to lead; gangs or freedom. Problems attributed to the high rate of gang activity and number of gangs in Hollenbeck are the high poverty rate, low employment rate, and broken families that make up the majority of Hollenbeck. The crime most discussed, as per the title of the documentary, is homicide The number of gang related homicides has risen even though the criminal behavior of gangs has ultimately decreased in the neighborhood. In order to fight the overwhelming gang presence, the police believe in increasing the amount of gun power on the streets and number of jailed gang members. The priest who runs Homeboy Industries stated that he feels most gang members are just young men who can’t get out of the gang life. With more funds and opportunities, he thinks the problem could be decreased. In the end, the documentary mentions that the FBI has formed a gang center where local law enforcement agencies can share information to gain more knowledge and to better fight the presence of gangs.

    Read More

  • Book Review: Policing Gangs in America

    1721 Words  | 4 Pages

    This book review covers Policing Gangs in America by Charles Katz and Vincent Webb. Charles Katz has a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice, while Vincent Webb has a Ph.D. in Sociology, making both qualified to conduct and discuss research on gangs. Research for Policing Gangs in America was gathered in four cities across the American Southwest; Inglewood, California, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Las Vegas, Nevada, and Phoenix, Arizona. This review will summarize and discuss the main points of each chapter, then cover the relationship between the literature and class discussions in Introduction to Policing and finally it will note the strengths and weaknesses of book.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Gang Leader For A Day

    2143 Words  | 5 Pages

    The story, Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh, is a ethnographic study of a Black King Gang in the Robert Taylor community. Venkatesh accidentally stumbles upon the gang lead by J.T. and decided to study them. Throughout his journey he learns from the violence and illegal activity he witnesses that “in the projects it’s more important that you take care of the problem first. Then you worry about how you took care of it”’ (Venkatesh. 2008:164). He witnesses beatings, selling of illegal drugs, and exploitation of residents; but he also gained a lot of knowledge about the community. He works with J.T. and Ms. Bailey, the community leader, closely through his study. J.T. has taken a sociology class and he allows Venkatesh to shadow the gang

    Read More

  • Is Criminal Behaviour Inherited or Learned?

    1438 Words  | 3 Pages

    Hallswort, S. And Young, T. (2004) Getting Real About Gang. Criminal Justice Matters [online]. 55. (1), pp 12-13 [Accessed 10 December 2013]

    Read More

More about Sudhir Venkatesh Gang Leader Summary

Open Document