Gang Leader For A Day Summary

For this online assignment, I have decided to talk about Sudhir Venkatesh’s Gang Leader for a Day, chapter 4. This chapter spoke out the most to me in this book. So far in the last three chapters, we have learned that how Sudhir is a graduate student doing a research on the daily lives of poor black lives in Chicago. In this chapter we see Sudhir interacting with the group leader of the gang Black Kings in Robert Taylor. At first JT the group leader or the boss comes off very strong on Sudhir, laughing on his face about the questioner he has prepared to ask the gang members or the people living in that building, he is suggested by JT that he should get to know people first. Not only that Sudhir is not accepted in the area first because of his

appearance, but also most of the group members think that he’s there spying on them for the Mexican gang from the other side of Chicago. In this chapter, Sudhir is seen interacting with JT face to face.

JT invites Sudhir to be part of the group and see their day-to-day lives he is asked to spend day and night with them, getting to know the rules they go by and how they solve problems. Sudhir is told by JT that no police has ever come to this side of town to take care of their problems, so therefore they have to take care of their problems themselves, making the rules and punishments. Sudhir on other hand is very respectful of JT’s rules and doesn’t get involved in their matters. One of the other things that are very surprising in this chapter is that JT asks Sudhir to be the leader for a day, where he faces problems such as encounters dealing with drug dealers, thieves, and making unforeseeable decisions. He is even presented a situation where Billy and Otis because Billy never paid Otis but Otis never gave all the money he owed Billy. Otis pocketed the rest of the money that he claimed Billy owed him. Sudhir thought it over and came to the conclusion that Billy never did pay Otis, but at the same time, Otis never denied stealing the owed money. This leads Sudhir to conclude that Otis stole the money and should be the one to be

punished. Sudhir at that moment realized that JT’s job wasn’t that easy as it looked.

If I was to put this chapter in the large context of the book, the things that’ll come out would be that the government isn’t able to provide for these 40,000 people and therefore they have to go for help to these gangs.

Whereas for these gangs they think that it’s their responsibility to provide for these people but in return they expect these people to join their gang. Therefore people and mostly teenagers join the gang. One of the other things that I’ll be putting in context is that since these gangs have leaders to answer to they must be doing something right to be running their society. It’s a big thing for people from the society going to gang leaders for help rather than the government. It also shows that these gangs are doing everything they can to provide for their people even if that gives them a bad name or puts their life in danger. They seem to the ones caring more about their people rather than the

government.

One of the major theses in this chapter was Sudhir Venkatesh’s being given the chance to be the gang leader for a day, this is important as a thesis because Venkatesh who was a non-violent, a university student with no history of leading a gang or being as abusive or hard as them was given an opportunity to see how it was running a gang, how cold hearted he needed to be towards some of his or JT’s loyal people and how smartly was he going to handle every situation. One of the examples of this is how Sudhir managed the conflict between Otis and Billy, the other example would be how he followed JT to the 20 groups of 5-6 members who sold drugs and lead with questions such as did you lose any regulars or any new hustlers hanging around. This relates to something we learned in our sociology class and that is crime and deviance, yes Sudhir wasn’t a criminal but that one-day of him being the gang leader made him a Criminal deviance in so many ways. Deviance is any behavior that violates the standards of conduct or expectations (social norms) of a group or a society. Sudhir acted as a primary deviance whereas JT is secondary, the difference between both of them is that Sudhir was acting like a leader for a day whereas JT is the leader always for him it’s the way he lives his life. Maybe not to the extent that secondary deviance because serial killers fall into that category as well. Sudhir is able to fit deviance in his research by being one so that he is able to understand how it feels to be the leader and how to be successful at being one.

For Sudhir the research method that he was planning on using at first was just a survey like questioner that he was going to ask everyone he came across that seemed like a good candidate, but when he saw that people weren’t taking his questioner seriously and he was advised to get to know the people a much better before he slams them with his question. He decides to use both methods observational and questioner, getting real close and seeing them personally. Living with them in the same building and spending all the time with them from their gang meetings to their personal family time. One of the reasons why his research was so accurate and was so personal was because he got to know them personally; he was able to know their personal problems, to their day-to-day problems that they have to face. He was able to understand them deeply as a friend.

One of the things that I found interesting was that he was making personal connections with everyone, making an effort to get to know them personally about their lives at home and within the gang. He accomplished that by observing them on their daily routine and being part of their gang to a point that he was put up as their leader for the day. This was important for him because he just couldn’t ask them to fill out the questioner because they didn’t even know him and they did not trust him that made him spend day and night with them. That turned out to be very helpful for his study because it was more of an insight towards the lives of the gang members and the problems that they face. One of the problematic things about this chapter was that he was put as the gang leader for the day and the situation that he had to solve for Billy and Otis were based on what he was told by both of them if he knew them personally maybe he would have given a different situation.