You can download The Better Angels of our Nature here:
ENGLISH (USA): http://amzn.to/1KXyla6
Feel free to discuss it in the comments here, but please keep all conversation relevant to this book.
Reviews:
As a Chicagoan I found this book to be fascinating but also depressing. It's clear the gang leaders have no reason to stop their behavior and we'll never put an end to the violence here.
Is it possibe to (also) have a Q&A with J.T.? I noticed that most of the questions I have about this book would be directed at him (since we already get such a good insight into what's going on in Sudhir's head). Would be very nice!
Extremely interesting narrative of gang life in Chicago. It is amazing the level of interaction that takes place in order to mitigate the horrible circumstances of life in the low income housing projects. It is more than just the gang members, but also the housing authority, welfare agencies and police involvement in daily life. It is so very complex and Sudhir was indeed fortunate to be allowed the freedom to interact with all of them for so long. I was disappointed that he did not offer ideas for ways that the people could be helped better than the corrupt officials and the equally corrupt community leaders were doing in his narrative. The book ended by just tailing off into nothingness. I thought the author might have had something more substantial in the way of suggestions or policy ideas. But all in all a very interesting read.
I wasn't finished reading the first chapter and I recommended it to family. I have family that lived in both Robert Taylor and Lake Park many years ago. So, it will be interesting to read another perspective of what life was like there.
The idea from the previous book The Better Angels of Our Nature that one reason why violence declines is that we have a "leviathan", a state who ensures security and enforces laws is brilliantly illustrated in Gang Leader For A Day. In the Robert Taylor ghetto, "police won't go and the ambulance won't come". So the people there need to look out for themselves. In the absence of official law enforcement, violence peaks and to have a bit more security and stability, people turn to the drug gang to take that role. Even the protection from JT's violent gang is better than no "leviathan" who would hold the monopoly of power. One lesson I take from having read both books is that I realise once more how important it is that basic security and stability is provided. It helps decrease violence and make for a better life especially in difficult circumstances such as the ghetto or in failed or corrupt states. If we want to decrease violence and help provide a safer world and empower people in difficult circumstances to prosper, we need to provide security and stability first.
Wondering how internalized oppression perpetuates the existence and importance of gangs. Also, how can we redirect this inherent need to belong as well as assumption of an identity accepted by peers into something more constructive and positive? Enjoying the book very much so far
I haven't read this book, but my eyes were opened to another world when I started working for the local welfare/social services and saw soldiers in line getting their food stamps in the early 1990's...in our country this happens!
This is a great book and a classic urban ethnography. If you like this, some other sociologists that are a good read are: Elliot Liebow, Elijah Anderson, and (I hear) Alice Goffman.
This book is a New York Times Bestseller with a foreword by Stephen J. Dubner, coauthor of Freakonomics. Gang Leader for a Day also tells the story of the complicated friendship that develops between Venkatesh and JT--two young and ambitious men a universe apart.
This book is definitely an interesting read, particularly if you are not from the wrong side of the tracks. For most middle and upper class readers, I believe this is an insightful and voyueristic view of the lives that are so often forgotten about in this country.
Having grown up on the wrong side of the tracks and having lived in the projects for a time, I found myself deeply conflicted by the author's portrayal of others and himself. In the end he is only somewhat honest with himself about being the biggest hustler of all in the book. How exactly do you eat people's food and sit on their couches and follow them around for six years and in the end say you weren't even friends? Is this simply artificial distance inserted to make himself seem more scholarly, or does he really feel this way about the people who greatly contributed to his career? He tries to distinguish himself from the very people he interacted with and at times participated in morally questionable behavior with by describing himself as dressing appropriately for an Ivy League professor while returning to visit the ghetto. This description of himself at the end of the book brought home sharply to me the reality that most people will take a look at this world, like the author, and then put it down and walk away from the very real needs that real Americans have and it left me frustrated and angry. For every person who makes it out, there are hundreds left behind and most people are unwilling or unable to do anything except close a book and forget. I highly question that anything will be done as a result of this work to significantly improve impoverished Americans' situations, a view that the author confirms
Thus Reggie, a Chicago gang member, warned the author of this book. Thank goodness, Venkatesh wasn't frightened away, and the consequence is this narrative about a Chicago crack-dealing gang.
I first learned something about life in a Chicago housing project when I read David Isay's heartbreaking Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago (1999), and something about the street drug trade in David Simons and Edward Burns' grueling The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (1998). Both have become classics. Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader for a Day is, I believe, destined to join them as an on-the-spot narrative of gang culture of Chicago. Some of the people whose lives he tracks--J.T., Clarisse, Mama and Pops Patton, Reggie, Millie, T-Bone--grow on you until you feel as if you actually know them.
While a graduate student at the University of Chicago, weary of cold statistical analysis, Venkatesh began hanging out with the Black Kings, a crack-selling gang who headquartered in the Robert Taylor Homes projects. He wanted to get in touch with the gang subculture through direct observation. He entered into the project pretty naive and just a bit too full of himself. Seven years later, after following the Black Kings and establishing a relationship with their leader, one J.T., the things he'd seen and heard made him a lot more streetwise and a little less cocky.
During his seven-year study, "Mr. Professor," as J.T.'s mother initially called Venkatesh, learned that Chicago gangs, or at least J.T.'s outfit, lived in a culture of violence and machismo, but also functioned in an unexpected way as police in their own territory. From the perspective of society, they were lawbreakers
I first learned something about life in a Chicago housing project when I read David Isay's heartbreaking Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago (1999), and something about the street drug trade in David Simons and Edward Burns' grueling The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (1998). Both have become classics. Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader for a Day is, I believe, destined to join them as an on-the-spot narrative of gang culture of Chicago. Some of the people whose lives he tracks--J.T., Clarisse, Mama and Pops Patton, Reggie, Millie, T-Bone--grow on you until you feel as if you actually know them.
While a graduate student at the University of Chicago, weary of cold statistical analysis, Venkatesh began hanging out with the Black Kings, a crack-selling gang who headquartered in the Robert Taylor Homes projects. He wanted to get in touch with the gang subculture through direct observation. He entered into the project pretty naive and just a bit too full of himself. Seven years later, after following the Black Kings and establishing a relationship with their leader, one J.T., the things he'd seen and heard made him a lot more streetwise and a little less cocky.
During his seven-year study, "Mr. Professor," as J.T.'s mother initially called Venkatesh, learned that Chicago gangs, or at least J.T.'s outfit, lived in a culture of violence and machismo, but also functioned in an unexpected way as police in their own territory. From the perspective of society, they were lawbreakers
