Aug
26
Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh
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Gang Leader for a Day: a rogue sociologist crosses the line by Sudhir Venkatesh recommended itself to me becuase Mr Venkatesh is the man behind the “why do drug dealers live with their Moms?” of Freakonomics fame.
To cut a long story short, Venkatesh was studying at university in Chicago and wandered into one of the tower block estates in the city in order to find out what it was like to live there. 10 years later, having befriended many in the local community (and fallen out with many others) he knew.
Ultimately, I found the book deeply frustrating. In terms of my knowledge of life in the projects, I learnt little more from his 10 years than from my few hours of watching The Wire. Although it does confirm quite how good The Wire really is. There were fewer characters than in The Wire, it depicted a smaller community and there were few characters quite as lively as Bubbs et al.
However, the one element of life in the projects that it did include – which The Wire didn’t – was the strengthen, vitality and endemic weaknesses of the alternative public services. The tenant leaders are powerful figures in Gang Leader and you gain a much clearer understanding of the operations of the community.
Those broad criticisms notwithstanding, I did take the following things from the book:
- The culture of suspicion and rumour which plagued his work (not helped by his own naivety) but which presents profound problems for intervention by public bodies
- The exchange between him and the tenant leader, Ms Bailey (p. 147) which revealed so much about the dependency culture
“If I give you a piece of bread and ask why you are starving, what (should) you say?”
“Because you’re not feeding me”
The Stay Together Gang who operated against the movement to rehouse people when the tower blocks came down
The lengths the community (which in so many ways was so fractured) went to in order to hide children from social services and bring them up in that community
Where I did find the book useful in a public policy sense, was that Venkatesh casually throws in that when the tower blocks came down, so did crack use. It was thrown in casually, amongst a stinging critique of the failure of local, state and federal government, but was interesting when thinking about the extent to which these cultures and challenges are prevalent in the UK.
I hope the book was just a popular ‘easy read’. I would like to have seen a deeper, more thoughtful analysis.
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