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Sto caricando le informazioni... Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poordi Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh
   Nessuno Sto caricando le informazioni...
 Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro.  multiplexer | Jun 20, 2021 |   Entrepreneurs, and there are many, have to confront not just the risks we associate with that term, but also the threat of extortion from various parties (official and un-), the need to seek credit from loan sharks, and the complications of dealing with loiterers who may also be customers when they come across some money. “Imagine not only facing the burden of keeping a business solvent, but also inventing the means by which to obtain redress should something go wrong. The added taks of having to mete out the law when, for example, a customer steals or does not pay, is no small endeavor ….” When a gang leader tried to take over new areas, the lack of rules created huge uncertainties for everyone: “there was no single system in place that the gang could identify, challenge, and usurp. It was not as if Big Cat was forcibly taking over an established criminal justice institution, with courts, procedures of punishment and redress, facilities for incarceration, and so on.” Venkatesh suggests that the flexibility that develops as a result is both a survival tool and a constraint: people can’t build credit histories or resumes if they’re always doing different jobs in the underground economy. Even those with enormous reserves of energy often use it up on survival, or mediating conflicts that don’t even get recognized outside the community. This happens with community organizations, not just individuals, and is a huge constraint on the development of human capital. Ultimately, he suggests, nothing will change unless society at large is prepared to invest more resources in these desperately resource-poor communities. (  ) rivkat | Sep 25, 2012 |  ) rameau | Aug 3, 2011 | ) addict | Nov 6, 2006 |  goneal | Feb 24, 2007 | nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
Premi e riconoscimenti
In this revelatory book, Sudhir Venkatesh takes us into Maquis Park, a poor black neighborhood on Chicagos Southside, to explore the desperate, dangerous, and remarkable ways in which a community survives. We find there an entire world of unregulated, unreported, and untaxed work, a system of living off the books that is daily life in the ghetto. From women who clean houses and prepare lunches for the local hospital to small-scale entrepreneurs like the mechanic who works in an alley; from the preacher who provides mediation services to the salon owner who rents her store out for gambling parties; and from street vendors hawking socks and incense to the drug dealing and extortion of the local gang, we come to see how these activities form the backbone of the ghetto economy. What emerges are the innumerable ways that these men and women, immersed in their shadowy economic pursuits, are connected to and reliant upon one another. The underground economy, as Venkateshs subtle storytelling reveals, functions as an intricate web, and in the strength of its strands lie the fates of many Maquis Park residents. The result is a dramatic narrative of individuals at work, and a rich portrait of a community. But while excavating the efforts of men and women to generate a basic livelihood for themselves and their families, Off the Books offers a devastating critique of the entrenched poverty that we so often ignore in America, and reveals how the underground economy is an inevitable response to the ghettos appalling isolation from the rest of the country. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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On the good side, it is peppered throughout with very specific examples and excerpts of interviews and conversations with local residents. This makes the book an extremely interesting read for the large bulk of it, since it is much easier to identify with the ghetto ecosystem from the point of view of people instead of numbers and tables. On the bad side, the book does occasionally veer into the gutter of academic talk where it rambles for a while. Some of these sections are skimmable but some are not so occasionally the book bogs down.
All in all, a very good, interesting read. Not a particularly fast read, but a very interesting read nonetheless. (