Gang leader for a day : a rogue sociologist takes to the streets

by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh

Paper Book, 2008

Status

Available

Call number

364.1/0660977311

Tags

Autobiography, Contemporary

Genres

Publication

New York : Penguin Press, 2008.

Description

The story of the young sociologist who studied a Chicago crack-dealing gang from the inside captured the world's attention when it was first described in Freakonomics. This is the full story of how Venkatesh managed to gain entrée into the gang, what he learned, and how his method revolutionized the academic establishment. When first-year grad student Venkatesh walked into one of Chicago's most notorious housing projects, he was looking for people to take a survey on urban poverty. He never imagined that he would befriend a gang leader and spend the better part of a decade inside the projects under his protection. He got to know the neighborhood dealers, crackheads, squatters, prostitutes, pimps, activists, cops, organizers, and officials. From his position of unprecedented access, he observed the gang as they operated their crack-selling business and rose or fell within the ranks of the gang's complex organizational structure.--From publisher description.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member SocProf
Sudhir Venkatesh is the new sociology rock star 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
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 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.
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LibraryThing member drneutron
Gang Leader For A Day was a fascinating read for me. I read it on an airplane ride, so was able to read it in one setting and it definitely kept my attention the whole time. In telling the story of his time spent as a sociology student with the residents of one of the bigger projects in Chicago,
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 Venkatesh provides quite a lot of insight into gang life and how gangs interact with the community around them.

I first ran into this story in Freakonomics, which included a chapter on the economics of drug dealing using some of the data gathered in this research. The analysis piqued my interest, so I quickly grabbed this book up when I came across it. It's a captivating story in many ways, and I think it was worth the time spent.

So why did I give the book 2.5 stars if it's so interesting? Frankly, the whole way through, I just kept thinking that it was too good a story to be true. Naive sociology student happens to connect with gang leader and spend the next several years studying the gang and its local community. Hmm. I can not believe Venkatesh was that naive or that his motives were as pure as he makes them out to be. Now, I don't know the author and I concede that I may be wrong, but the book struck me as self-serving the whole way through. It's still a pretty good read, and the portrait of life among the poor in the US is well worth the effort. It's just that I recommend reading with a little bit of a skeptical eye.
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LibraryThing member araridan
Very compelling pop-sociology book. Sudhir, a grad student at the University of Chicago manages to befriend a gang dealer in South side Chicago during the late 1980s and early 1990s at the height of the crack epidemic. The book explores the "community" aspect of the projects, underground economy,
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 and creative ways that gang members and non-gang affliated persons in the community interact. While the book does not try to condone a lot of the gang's behavior, it does paint a sympathetic picture of the lack of options afforded to such people. Basically, this book does feel a lot like a season of "The Wire" (minus the cops for the most part), and I don't think that's a bad thing.
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LibraryThing member Voracious_Reader
I really expected more from Gang Leader for a Day. It reads more like a novel than an academic piece. Plus it's hard to believe that he was in graduate school at the time that he started working on it and that he was unaware that his activities with a gang were not protected by the First Amendment,
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 that he could be held legally liable for watching/encouraging criminal activities even if they were ultimately being studied for research purposes, nor how entirely unethical it was for him to lie in order to ingratiate himself with his research subjects and to get closer to the gang's leader. I expected a lot of the piece because I really liked Freakonomics and it's authors spoke very highly of Sudhir Venkatesh. I didn't find his conclusions to be all that interesting or new, nor did I find his final opinions/arguments to be all that irresistible. He appeared to be far to close to his research subjects, failing at many points to ask what would have been more interesting questions.
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LibraryThing member dgelman
I enjoyed this book from start to finish. The author takes us on an almost accidental step into life in the Chicago Projects. Together, we take a journey into a world where good and bad - friend and foe, are far more complicated than we'd like to think. The author does not editorialize or present
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 any feasible solutions, but rather presents a once-in-a-lifetime look into a world and lifestyle that is entirely foreign to most Americans. Should be required reading for students of sociology.
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LibraryThing member kanata
An interesting read about a socoiologist who sets out to study poverty in inner cities and learns about the ins and out of the projects. Well enough written to keep me interested and not too "I am above you all and thus have the answers".
LibraryThing member Tonestaple
I liked this book reasonably well. The gang in this book was nothing like the gang I encountered in "Piece of Cake" so the contrast was interesting. I was, however, appalled by the naivete of the author. First, the very idea of marching into a housing project like the Robert Taylor Homes and asking
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 questions about how someone felt about being poor and black (really bad, kind of bad, neutral, good, really good) was just too stupid to be believed. I think it's actually worse that Venkatesh's professors thought this would be a good idea, than Venkatesh actually trying it. Either way, D-U-M-B. I laughed out loud at that episode and several others in the book.

I was also appalled at Venkatesh's slowness to learn that his gang mentor and the building manager at the project had their own special agendas that had nothing to do with Venkatesh's or with the tenants, that the gang mentor and building managers interests were at complete odds with the tenants. I saw that coming a mile away.

So it was a very interesting window into a world that I will most likely (please, God) never have to experience directly, but I was left wondering about the quality of thinking and intuition of people who research and study sociology.
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LibraryThing member CapeCodMichelle
I read this for my Gangs class for my undergrad. It was a great book about how the gang was run by this guy who could be so cold hearted one minute then the next be a community leader. It gave me a better understanding of the hierarchy of gangs.
LibraryThing member jcbrunner
Venkatesh became famous as one of the meaty parts in the shallow Freakonomics book. A researcher who in the classic mold of Marie Jahoda or, closer, the old Chicago school of sociology leaves the ivory tower and its object-subject abstraction to observe in situ and participate in the social life of
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 his subjects. Venkatesh spent many years exploring the strange world of a gang and the social net of a Chicago housing project. In this popular account he takes the readers along on a journey through a poor housing project, a world of pimps and prostitutes, hustlers and handymen, shop owners and landlords.

What is both surprising and, on reflection, isn't. is how the absence of governmental control is filled by overlapping sets of private rulers. This both traps the oppressed, mostly women, and offers them limited protection. For a certain cut, the pimps reduce the risk of beatings of their prostitutes from a monthly to a bi-annual event. Humans are able to adapt and survive even in the most unkind surroundings. A fact the higher-ups exploit to the maximum. It is puzzling how much the black world of the ghettos resembles the white corporate world with fat cat CEOs and subsistence minimum wage workers. At the top, both world's tend to blend, as Venkatesh and the viewers of The Wire discovered.

Another shocking element is the widespread culture of corruption. While Venkatesh's account sounds too naive, the unchecked misuse of public funds is glaring and frustrating. Overall, a highly enjoyable and informative read. If you haven't seen it, run and watch The Wire or read the mother of all social observation studies, Marienthal: the sociography of an unemployed community.
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LibraryThing member Harlan879
Venkatesh studied the economics of the urban poor for his dissertation. In the course of his research, he spent an extraordinary amount of time among the residents of a Chicago housing project tower, befriending many. One of the people he got to know best was J.T., the leader of a local drug gang.
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 For years, J.T. had convinced himself that Venkatesh was writing about him instead of about the underground economy. He wasn't, but 10 years later, Venkatesh wrote that biography, transforming his extensive notes of conversations with J.T. and others into a readable and interesting, if somewhat simple, documentary of his 5 years or so of research.
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LibraryThing member DevourerOfBooks
Sudhir Venkatesh was a grad student in Sociology at the University of Chicago when he got involved in a gang. Okay, that’s a little dramatic. What actually happened is that he went into the poor neighborhoods surrounding the U of C and began asking people what it felt to be poor and black
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 (seriously). Turns out that’s maybe not such a good idea, as he was basically held hostage by a gang who thought he was Mexican and a spy for a rival gang planning a drive-by. Strange as it may seem, the kidnapping doesn’t end up being all bad. Through it, Sudhir meets the charismatic gang leader J.T. with whom he will spend an inordinate amount of time over the next few years and through whom he will get access to the Robert Taylor projects for his thesis on the economy of poverty.

This book was really interesting and I’m glad I read it, especially living in Chicago and having taught very close to where the events of this book took place. That said, it did disappoint me in some ways. Sudhir’s story was very interesting, but I expected him to grow as a person or learn something during his sojourn in the projects with the gang. Either that, or I expected that he would write his experiences with a story arc. Either way that would have made the book more memoir-ish, since it seemed too subjective for a real sociology book.

Definitely an interesting peek int the real life of gangs and projects in Chicago. There is some absolutely heartbreaking stuff in here, and it helps you understand how people do reprehensible things to survive. Pick it up as an interesting study, but don’t expect really stellar writing or much of a story arc.
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LibraryThing member puttzy
What an amazing book. The general "story" is told in a easy to read flowing manner. It never lags or gets bogged down in the details.

The author find himself in some tough situations. From his initial meeting the Black Kings gang in a stairwell, to the inner turmoil of how much he can ethically
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 observe a gangs operations and not get involved. The conflict is not action packed but it resonates throughout the enire book.

The story's of the people he observes, and considers friends/subjects is quite entertaining.
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LibraryThing member Meggo
What happens when a grad student goes to the projects with a survey on poverty? In this case, a harrowing first 12 hours under confinement by gang members, and then an entre into the world of the gang. Told with an honesty that underscores Venkatesh's ambivalence towards the gang leader, this was a
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 fascinating look at a world most of us would not want to get too close to. In the end, no one spends this much time with the gang without getting touched somehow, but I sense that in this case, it was worth the ride.
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LibraryThing member Jenners26
As a first-year sociology grad student at the University of Chicago, Sudhir Venkatish took his research on life in inner-city gangs to extremes when he befriended JT, the leader of a division of the Black Kings in Chicago’s notorious Robert Taylor projects. Venkatish ended up spending 7 years
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 (!!) observing the intricacies of gang life and the lives of the urban poor, and this book documents that experience. I imagine that Venkatish went far beyond what was required for his thesis, and the line between sociologist and friend often blurred. The result is a fascinating look at a world that many of us probably know nothing about. I admire Venkatish’s work, which shines a light on the contradictory life and strange interdependence of gangs and the communities they live in.
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LibraryThing member OliviainNJ
Eminently readable and engaging, this book by Sudhir Venkatesh looks beyond the easy conclusions of either sympathy or condemnation for gangs and examines the part they play in an inner-city community. His "in their world but not of it" position lends the book a downer ending as he witnesses but
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 doesn't have to experience the break-up of the community following the destruction of the Robert Taylor homes, but overall, the book is a great read.
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LibraryThing member TomSlee
Rogue? Not really, but I suspect that's the publisher talking. The author doesn't seem to have such a high opinion of himself, and that helps the book a lot. It moves, it has a great mix of the personal (his qualms about using the gang to advance his career) and the descriptive. If you've watched
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 The Wire (which you should of course) and read this, there is a consistency to the picture that adds credibility to both. And it ain't a pretty picture.
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LibraryThing member YogiABB
Very readable. For some reason a lot of what he says happens doesn't ring true.
LibraryThing member lalalibrarian
This book was awesome but also crazy. Sudhir spent over six years in the projects of Chicago with a gang and the tenants, most of whom are involved in the underground economy in one way or another. He discovered a lot of interesting data about how the underground economy functions in his time as a
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 'rogue sociologist', but he also put himself in quite a bit of danger. I don't think I'd be quite so naive as to do and say some of the things he did, but who knows. The book reads more like a mini biography of his time in the projects than an expose of life there...so while the book was _fascinating_, I think it could have been written differently/better.
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LibraryThing member Opinionated
A very interesting piece of urban sociology / anthropology (although ignore the "Rogue Sociologist" nonsense in the title) , which brings to life a hidden, closed community in the Chicago projects, largely ignored by the outside world and run on a basis of fear, petty corruption and intimidation by
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 the local gang, local police, and local power brokers. The comparison with "Gomorrah" for any who have read that, is striking.
Reading this there are a couple of points that struck me; firstly in a distorted way in the absence of any other form of authority its not surprising that the gangs fill the vacuum and act as some form of community organisation even if the principle source of income is in selling crack to its own community. Secondly how poor communities will always prey on each other. Thirdly how all of this could be solved or at least made better, by a sensible drug policy (rather than head in sand prohibition) that took away the gang's profit motive - for, as stated in the book, revenues from prostitution, extortion and other illegal activities are relatively small beer and not enough to attract many to "thug life". And fourthly, how the richest country in the world can effectively abandon some of its most vulnerable citizens to their fate
But this is highly recommended as a light on what for me anyway was a dark and hidden world
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LibraryThing member rynk
In my work files there's an earnest Venkatesh monograph dealing with the University of Chicago's 1920s map of the city's neighborhoods, the source of such census constructs as West Town and Greater Grand Crossing. But the Columbia University sociologist is better known for his research on the
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 underground economy, popularized in "Freakonomics." This memoir returns to the source of both interests, his 1990s grad-school years at the U. of C. Much of his time outside of class was spent hanging out in the Lake Park and Robert Taylor Homes housing projects. There he stumbled upon a career in ethnographic research and made unlikely friends with gang leaders, squatters, hos and resident activists who had no reason to trust him other than the naivete or guile that kept him there. Their unlikely faith in him is reflected in his most notable academic finding, the low pay of foot solders in the drug trade, which literally fell into his lap in the form of gang ledgers. Ventakesh is repaying debts with this book, fleshing out the humanity of his research subjects and giving his gangland protector J.T. a biography the author told himself he would never write.
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LibraryThing member bookwormteri
When finally picking up this book to read it, I looked at the cover and said eh....I don't think that I will read this. I thought it would be dry, I thought it would take a fascinating topic and turn it into statistics. Well, I can always start it and put it down, it would certainly not be the
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 first time that I have put a book down.

Once I started, I could not stop. Not a dry, statistical sociological word in the whole book. This man took an amazing risk (kind of by accident) and ended up studying a subculture and inner city life itself. Just amazing. Scary, enlightening, and truthful. Great book!
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LibraryThing member akreese
I decided to read this book because I was intrigued by the idea of someone seeing the inside workings of a gang; being so involved that they could become the gang leader for a day. I also wondered how that would work without the author implicating himself in illegal activities.

It takes a long time
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 for Sudhir Venkatesh to reach a level of trust with the gang though, and becoming a gang leader for a day certainly wasn't what he had in mind when he set out to do his research. What he wanted to do was study the social structure of life in the projects. What he found though, was that the only way to understand the people who were living there was by gaining access via the local gang. Only then would members of the community open up to him, and at that point he starts to learn about the business-like social and political workings of the gang and the building leaders.

The world that the author reveals to the reader was almost incomprehensible to me, and I'm sure it would be to most people who have not lived in a similar environment. Also, the author does things in the name of research that most of us would avoid at all costs. Some of these include: hanging out with crack addicts, interviewing prostitutes, and going to gang leader meetings.

This book is a fascinating read, and one that I felt was a great tool for helping middle-class America see what life is like in inner-city gangs and the projects (or at least what it was like in the 80's and 90's). The projects that the author visited were subsequently torn down, but I am sure there are many aspects of poverty and desperation that remain the same regardless of location, and this book does an excellent job of highlighting them.

Gang Leader For a Day is a quick read, and Sudhir Venkatesh relates his experiences so skillfully that it could just as easily have been a novel that I was reading. There were some tense moments between the author and the gang members, and some scenes had me on the edge of my seat. There is a lot of swearing (the author reconstructs conversations to the best of his knowledge), and much usage of the "N" word by the gang members. Although the book does cover some heavy topics, it is balanced out with stories of friendship and a bit of humor. The author does a great job of helping the reader to see the real people behind the poverty and gang statistics, and that was what I appreciated the most about this book.
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LibraryThing member reader1009
Adult nonfiction; sociology/gang culture. I liked "freakonomics" better but this was a very readable and interesting book (another friend commented that she couldn't stop reading it and finished it in 2 days/nights).
LibraryThing member LibroLindsay
This started out as a rip-roaring read for me. Venkatesh's moxy (or naivete) certainly sets out for a sensational premise, in every sense of the word. I began to falter about halfway through when I felt like it was more anecdotal than anything, and I found myself craving more synthesis on his part.
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 I also became really frustrated about just how naive he was...I suppose he couldn't have gotten himself into his position had he not been, but man, you can see him screwing with the tenants' lives from a mile away.

All in all? Looking past my qualms, it's a good read and especially eye-opening for people who aren't as familiar with the social structures of urban poverty. I'd recommend steering clear of the audiobook--I started with it, but the reader was really one-note and, consequently, incredibly condescending.
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LibraryThing member multiplexer
I learned about Dr. Sudhir Venkatesh through Freakonomics and the chapter on why gang members still live with their moms. "Gang Leader for a Day" takes that one small chapter and shows the decade of the work and research that originally went into it.

When Sudhir Venkatesh arrives at the University
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 of Chicago to work on a PhD in sociology, he decides to leave Hyde Park and "go exploring" in the Projects. He ends up pulled into studying in very close detail the lives of gang members, hustlers, prostitutes, squatters, and people just trying to get by in the Robert Taylor Projects in South Side Chicago. From there he gets a ring-side seat to the politics of gangs, police, tenant associations, Chicago Housing Authority, single mothers, and families trying to survive on welfare or less. His view is revealing -- he sees how crack cocaine makes essentially no one money except the cocaine suppliers, how people rely on each other to survive, how families will pull together in entire floors to give each other essential services so they can survive. He learns the economics of pimps and prostitutes, watches how people struggle, and makes some rather nasty interpersonal mistakes.

It all ends when Chicago decides, in 1995-1998, to tear down the Projects and replace them with very expensive upper class townhouses.

This book is utterly fantastic. While it's written in a colloquial style, it illuminates a huge swath of modern urban America. Highly recommended read.
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Subjects

African Americans Illinois Chicago
Chicago (Ill.) Social conditions
Gangs Illinois Chicago
Venkatesh, Sudhir Alladi

Awards

Audie Award (Finalist — Non-Fiction — 2009)

Language

English

Original publication date

2008

Physical description

318 p.; 25 inches

ISBN

1594201501 / 9781594201509

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