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8 opere 2,167 membri 64 recensioni 1 preferito

Sull'Autore

Sudhir Venkatesh is William B. Ransford Professor of Sociology at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is a researcher and writer on urban neighborhoods in the United States (New York, Chicago) and Paris, France. He is also a documentary film-maker. His most recent book is Gang Leader mostra altro for a Day. In 2006 he also published Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor about illegal economies in Chicago. Off the Books received a Best Book Award from Slate.Com (2006) as well as the C. Wright Mills Award (2007). His first book, American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto (2000) explored life in Chicago public housing. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago. He was a Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University from 1996-1999. He is currently Director of the Center for Urban Research and Policy, and Director of the Charles H. Revson Fellowship Program, both at Columbia University. (Bowker Author Biography) mostra meno

Opere di Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh

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A good writer, but the book itself was a little weak. Mostly about prostitutes in NYC, mixed in with some stuff about coke dealers, and a little bit about the porn business and strip clubs, and a lot about his own issues and then some more about academics and the field of sociology. All interesting topics but a little too mixed up together. Actually, if he wasn't such a good writer this would have been crap, but I'd give it 3.5 stars if that was possible.
 
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steve02476 | 9 altre recensioni | Jan 3, 2023 |
Venkatesh got quasi-famous when he was featured in the book Freakonomics. I’m a third of the way through it, and I’m not really liking it. Venkatesh is too "golly gee whiz, I’m hanging out with GANGSTAS!" I imagine the second third of the book will be him realizing shit is real, yo, and the last third will be about what lessons he’s learned. It will end with his heartfelt plea for politicians and the white majority to help people get out of the projects. Maybe I’m wrong. It would be nice to be wrong. But I think I’m right.

I applaud Venkatesh’s goals — to change how (white) academia sees the poor — but the book is a little too… I dunno. Naive, maybe. Venkatesh never mentions being afraid in dangerous situations, and it makes him seem less human. The most realistic he’s seemed in all 133 pages I’ve read so far is when he’s shocked by a beating he witnessed. But he never writes about being afraid. I appreciate the fact that he was playing curious scientist, but I’m sorry, when you see someone flash a gun for the first time, it’s scary. I’m not asking that he wet his pants or anything, but he had to have been more than just a little nervous.

I think I’m going to leave this one unfinished. I’m too annoyed to keep reading it.
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SwitchKnitter | 47 altre recensioni | Dec 19, 2021 |
Great intersting book. Been meaning to read it for a while, pretty eye opening. calls in to question a lot of tough things that i'm not really sure ahve been figured out yet, or even if there are people working to solve them. Also so undertones of how to run an organization (albeit the exmaple here is an illicit drug ring, but good lessons none the less). Kinda makes me want to branch out and do stuff in the inner city, but this definitely captures the difficuly of an outsider doing that, unless they plan on making it thier whole life (an admittedly big commitment). I'd recomend it. Now i gotta talk to Phil at some point and figure out why he recomended it to me, im sure he had some point.

In conclusion:
Good. Good. Good.
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royragsdale | 47 altre recensioni | Sep 22, 2021 |
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 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.… (altro)
 
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rynk | 47 altre recensioni | Jul 11, 2021 |

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Opere
8
Utenti
2,167
Popolarità
#11,855
Voto
3.9
Recensioni
64
ISBN
41
Lingue
5
Preferito da
1

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