A Tale of Two Cities
Chicago
Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, author of Off the Books shed light on the “underground economy”, a survival system that still puzzles the greater public today. Through an extensive ethnography of Maquis Park, a poor black neighborhood on Chicago’s southside, Venkatesh offers some interesting second thoughts about the underground economy, that will transform people’s misconception about it.
The underground economy can be defined as the licit and illicit activities that are unrecorded and untaxed by the government (9). The underground economy can be defined from an emic perspective as an inevitable response to the city’s neglect of the “ghetto”. Activities that are considered licit for example, is a woman who runs a hair salon in her basement and does not have a license. Activities that are consider is illicit is the selling of unlawful items such as marijuana.
A finding that Venkatesh found was that everyone in Maquis Park participated in the underground economy to some extent, partially because the “formal” economy alone cannot pay for their livelihood (23). This finding can be supported through the livelihood of the young black men who's been incarcerated for the possession of crack; a substance that unfairly
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target the black poor for long sentences. These young men are unable to find well paying jobs or jobs at all because their permanent record is flawed, which forces them to resort back to the underground economy. The underground economy is the answer for poor urban people; however, it can be a curse top. Poor people sharing with poor people has it limits; the underground is a trap, a crippling system to some degree in the long run. Philadelphia Elijah Anderson, author of The Cosmopolitan Canopy, also completed an intensive ethnography of Philadelphia, redefining common misconceptions about city cultural hubs that attracted diverse people. He defined certain places in Philadelphia as a “canopy”, space in the city where diverse people interact on neutral ground, allowing for reconstruction of individual’s views on certain members of a social group. The canopies of cities have the power to break barriers; however, the ones in Philadelphia were not present across the city, rather unevenly distributed. A prominent example of the canopy is the Reading Terminal, a diverse setting with high density of all kinds of people that come to eat, shop, and stroll (31). “On any given day one might see a white business man enjoying collard greens and fried chicken” (33). “The canopy is a place where anyone could expect civility,” because it a friendly, inviting atmosphere (33). Enemies of the Two Cities Both authors offer clarification of common misconceptions about certain places in the cities: the urban poor and cultural thriving hubs. Both the authors would argue that in these particular places exist a hidden world that is necessary, but often threatened by internal and external forces. Anderson argues how eating, shopping, and watching people under the canopy can ease racial tensions, but also how the spaces in and between canopies can reinforce social boundaries. Latent and more overt forms of discrimination threaten the civility of the canopy. A latent threat to the canopy that Anderson observed several times are when Blacks go to the canopy, they sometimes had to “bend over backwards” to avoid a racialized interpretation of bad service or judgmental looks (205). The workplaces are also canopies themselves, “having people of diverse ethnic neighborhood hailing together under one roof to work together” (162). In the workplace affinity groups are formed and they define and underscore differences, encouraging people of common background to connect with one another (163). Venkatesh argues that internal forces can offset the balance of the underground economy. “No matter how philanthropic the gang leaders may be or how accommodating their ranks, gang's activities only diminishes public safety and exacerbates the problems of an already poor and struggling community (362).The gangs disrupt the harmony of the underground economy by terrorizing others to succeed themselves. The Gift of the City Both authors are trying to explain that at first glance a place or person can appear as one thing, but a second look can reveal it to be a completely new thing. Both authors agree that cities are tools that can disable stereotypes and racial barrier by face-to-face interaction in the canopy or by understanding the lives of poor urban Blacks. Venkatesh helped to change the public perceptions of urban poverty and the people who inhabit neglected neighborhoods.
His finding clarifies common misperceptions of what it means to be poor, unemployed, and unable to contribute to society. Homeless people, he points out, often serve as police informants, an inexpensive security force, or regulators of the underground economy (112). Another finding from this ethnography was that the urban poor were entrepreneurs “operating in different public sphere, exempt from the yellow pages listings and business cards: they can be found in homes, on designated alleyways and street corners” (93). The awareness of the underground economy in the urban areas dismantles stereotypes of the urban
poor. The canopy lets people learn new ways to interact with people of different backgrounds and may lead to people to question and modify their presupposition about others (282). The canopy also shows that people find pleasure in diverse setting (282). The city has given us the gift to appreciate and understand the diverse cultures (economically/socially) of the United States.
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.
Nickel And Dimed: Occupations Barbara Ehrenreich provides evidence in “Nickel and Dimed” that she’s an outstanding author with this book. Its engaging and compelling, no question about that. But it’s hard to get from side to side at times because of the authors attitudes. Her key summit is to carry concentration to the scrape of the working poor, but she manages to be both abusive and divisive. Occupation on attacking our industrialist system, she fails to become aware that the endurance of upper classes seems to be what motivates the poor, rather than what dispirits them.
One of the most critical observations about the state of our sociological health is observed by MacGillis of the Atlantic’s article entitled “The Original Underclass”. That is that the social breakdown of low-income whites began to reflect trends that African American’s were primary subjects of decades ago such as unemployment, and drug addiction.
In Mike Sager’s Death in Venice, Sager creates a vivid story about the gang in Venice as well as their addiction to cocaine. What I enjoyed about this article, was that it told a story in the perception of the gang members. It allowed me to see a glance through the lives of the gangs in the late twentieth century. Throughout the story, I felt multiple emotions, it ranged from disbelief to anger. It is astounding how Sager documented the lives of young males in Venice. As a Chicana, I was surprised by the actions in the article, I grew up in an environment where my daily life was not surrounded by gangs and drive-bys.
The laboring poor’s leisure activity was brief, casual, and non-commercial. Amusement was and had to be cheap. It mostly consisted of walks, visiting friends, and reading the penny press. The people of the Lower East Side entertained with sights of interest and penny pleasures such as organ grinders and buskers, acrobats performed tricks and vendors and soda dispensers competed for customers.
“My crimey here think the way to go is more drugs. But I know better. I think making money is okay, but not making it just by dealing. You gotta go legit, at least for a minute. You gotta go state fresh, all the way live, if you wanna do anything worthwhile out here. Everybody thinks they can make crazy dollars, but they confused. It aint like that. I’ve seen co-caine bust many a head – they get fucked up and be clocking out after they find out they cannot find the key to understanding that mystery skied. But you know what? But-but0but you know what? They don’t have a clue. Word.” (Williams, 1989)
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
The book asks two questions; first, why the changes that have taken place on the sidewalk over the past 40 years have occurred? Focusing on the concentration of poverty in some areas, people movement from one place to the other and how the people working/or living on Sixth Avenue come from such neighborhoods. Second, How the sidewalk life works today? By looking at the mainly poor black men, who work as book and magazine vendors, and/or live on the sidewalk of an upper-middle-class neighborhood. The book follows the lives of several men who work as book and magazine vendors in Greenwich Village during the 1990s, where mos...
To put it briefly, the Underground Man is the sole reason that he himself cannot be free despite is overwhelming desire. His obsessive behavior will not permit him to lead a normal life and he will forever be a prisoner of his own mind. The only reason that any other people have a hand in this imprisonment is because the Underground Man allows them to. Even when writing his “Notes” the Underground Man cannot help but to become consumed with scribbling down every little bit that he can, to the point that his “notes” must be cut short by an outside source.
The public and the police, whom also see them as deviants, label them. They don’t live like we do in clean houses that have electricity and running water. They live a different standard that makes most uncomfortable. Toth explains how New York also has a high rate of substance abusers and mentally ill in the underground population (41). This proves that there is a broader problem here that reflects on how the structure of the U.S society. Based off of conflict theory, the reason the “mole people” are like this is because we secluded them from our society, with alienating them. They end up turning to drug use for an escape or some of them became this way because they were addicts and mentally ill and we didn’t supply the help needed to fix them. Our society is set for the individual and what we can do to improve ourselves that we often forget to help the less fortunate. In a capitalist system, the definition of alienation is defined as being unconnected to one’s work, product, fellow workers, and human nature. Reading the numerous accounts of people Toth has interviewed, we learn about the homeless that ended up there due to a poor upbringing or some who used to be somebody that sadly ended up homeless and seeking refuge in these tunnels. Some choose this life others are destined here because of the fault in the U.S
Tally’s Corner is the sociological interpretation of the culture of Negro streetcorner men. Elliot Liebow sets out to show the hypocrisies that lead black men to this circumstance. The study is carried out in Washington D.C. The key argument posed by Liebow is that black males are incapable of attaining jobs because they lack education. He also argues that this is a cycle that inevitably results in a trans-generational marginalization of the black race. On top of this, he argues that the white middle class are unrelenting with their methods of depriving black advancement in American society. Knowledge of this incites many blacks to take dead-end jobs, or to settle for mediocrity in the face of adversity. A large number of black males
Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, written by Paul Schrader, both tell the same story about a man who is lonely and blames the world around him for his loneliness. The characters of Underground Man and Travis Bickle mirror each other; they both live in the underground, narrating their respective stories, experiencing aches and maladies which they leave unchecked, seeing the city they live in as a modern-day hell filled with the fake and corrupt. However, time and again both Travis and the Underground Man contradict themselves. While the underground character preaches his contempt for civilization—the ‘aboveground’—and the people within it, he constantly displays a deep-seeded longing to be a part of it. Both characters believe in a strong ideal that challenges that of the city’s, an ideal that is personified by the character of the prostitute.
The underground man is the product of the social determinism due to all the personal experiences that he had throughout his life with the society. He is a person who always wanted act in a different way but he stops himself and act as how the society wants him
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.
The Sociological Imagination, by C. Wright Mills, is the ability to connect personal trouble with public issues. The sociological imagination, as Wright describes, is “a quality of mind that will help [journalists and scholars, artist and publics, scientist and editors] to use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and what may be happening” (Mills). This is exactly what Philippe Bourgois applies in his study of street-level drug dealers in his work entitled “In Search Of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio”.