The Global Sociology Blog

Sudhir Venkatesh is the new sociology rockstar for Gang Leader for A Day, his story of the years spent doing research in a high-rise project in Chicago, guided and mentored by a gang leader. I mean, come on, when you make it to the Colbert Report, it’s the ultimate mark of celebrity, right? Can the discipline ride his coattails?

There has already been a lot of discussions regarding his book, Gang Leader for a Day at other sociology blogs. Mostly, he has been swiftly criticized on the “what was he thinking?” mode. Or “how could the great William Julius Wilson let him do this?” And all these criticisms are valid. There are really moments in the book where I could not help but be irritated with Venkatesh. I think most of my students would have more street smarts than he does. His naivete is annoying or self-serving or both. And of course, there is the fact that he seems quite careless. It seems pretty obvious right from the start than gang life or even project life requires careful attention to minute interactive details. That’s one lesson he does not learn, or learns too late, after a few people endure extortion or beatings because of his eagerness to please his mentors: J.T. the gang leader, and Ms Bailey, the tenant leader. And when it is over, he receives academic acclaims, a prestigious fellowship, a position at a renowned university, and now, general public visibility. His subjects, on the other hand, are simply left behind with the same poverty and social marginality. Those that are still alive that is. The end of the book left me really uncomfortable and with the feeling that these people had been used for the professional advancement of one person. As Venkatesh himself acknowledges, in the project, he was a hustler among hustlers except that the substance of his hustling was not drug or money. To his credit, he does not shy away from it, but it is still hard to swallow.

Ok, that’s for the negative side. On the positive side, the book is a page-turner. I read within a few days and could not put it down. The accounts of life in the project are fairly detailed and the analysis of the gang life is quite fascinating. It is mistaken to just dismiss life in the projects as chaos or the jungle (as one of my colleagues put it a few days ago). On the contrary, surviving in extreme poverty requires organization, ingenuity, social skills and a pretty good understanding of the surrounding social structure of the projects and the society beyond. For sociologists of urban conditions, it will not be a big surprise to read about the social structure and hierarchy of the projects and the primitive capitalist accumulation that takes place across the board, not just in the gangs but also in the tenants.

Venkatesh does a great job at describing the economics of the projects both for the gangs and the tenants. For the gangs, everything revolves around selling drugs and extorting protection money. But the gang leader also sees his organization as a community group that supports the whole project social structure by providing services that the City of Chicago and other social agencies are not providing. But of course, no service comes free to the tenants of the projects: tenants are “taxed” for everything and anything they receive from the gangs or the tenant leaders. The tenants are captive clients: no one will provide them services but the gangs and the tenant leaders. They have no choice, they’re stuck. This is life on the margins of society. People have to figure out how to survive on their own and at the mercy of gangs. And the strategies they adopt in order to do just that, incomprehensible from a white middle-class perspective, are used to blame them for their conditions, as in the culture of poverty type of studies.

There is definitely ethics at work in the gangs and among the tenants. Certainly, the gang leaders have learned the lessons of capitalism, and a pretty unbridled version of capitalism at that. And as with capitalism, there is very limited trickling down. The foot soldiers of the gang make very little money and some of them might work part-time at fast-food joints to supplement their income. What they get in the gang is the prestige of the brand and the franchise and a chance at social promotion that is absent in the larger social structure. The major trait of living in the project is that constant feeling of being stuck: there is very little social mobility and everyone is very much aware of it. This is an economy of scarcity and a social structure based on deprivation.

Now bigger sociology wigs than I am can nitpick. But I have to confess that I am considering adopting this book for my community college students in my introduction to sociology section. I can deal with the methodological and ethical issues but I think it would show them the relevance of sociology, the difficulties of the research process (especially with illegal organizations and dubious social practices), and more generally what sociology is for. Yes, this book brings sociology alive and makes it interesting. And it does have a humanizing effect when it comes to the poor, minorities, the marginalized of society. The book exposes well what Jeffrey Sachs, in the global context, described as the poverty trap. I wish there were a bit more social theory involved but I can deal with that as well in class.

Overall, all the issues that obviously present in the book should not distract from the fact that it is a great read. It is an imperfect book about an imperfect study but certainly reminiscent of the great tradition of American urban sociology and I think my students should be exposed to it, warts and all.