Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor Review
Here in its fullest glory, we get to see both the geography and the calculus of living in the American ghetto: the everyday tradeoffs being made hourly to survive, between "whoring and pimping" or "flipping burgers and cleaning toilets:" hustling pure and simple, from hawking ghettoware to fixing cars, to selling crack cocaine. No matter how it is parsed; no matter how elegant and academically it is dressed up, no matter how detailed it is analyzed, the American ghetto, whether Marquis Park, Robert Taylor, Altgeld Gardens, or Pruitt Igo, is the part of the American environment created so that only chaos can reign: and it is not merely la vie quotidienne Americaine (or slice of American life). It is survival of the "least prepared" in the very lap of 21st Century affluence.
One of the problems with classical sociological analysis is that the Heisenberg effect (of the researcher getting in the way of, or inadvertently becoming a part of, his own analysis) begins to creep into play so early on, and so subtly, that the researcher can remain totally unaware of its creeping effects. Before he knows it, the "human" subjects he is studying will have become but "so many bugs at the end of a microscope in a Petrie dish," and then, very much after the fact, all of the collating and sorting just become routine -- not only seeming normal, but also appropriate. Psychological distance from the subject is then seen not only necessary, but the sine qua non of clinical objectivity.
While this "psychological distancing" of the researcher is somewhat subtler than that which occurs in the "normal societal distancing process," it is "distancing" nonetheless. It kind of goes without saying that America's race sensitive culture is keen on "social distancing" and on invoking black and white dichotomies wherever it can be done. Arguably, being able to do so is the real scalpel used to carve out the basic reality of American culture.
However, these dichotomies in the human sciences, these artificial partitions, this "distancing," this compartmentalization, and splitting-off, of which there seems to be little else and no end to, in American culture, are artifacts of reality; they are not "reality per se" no matter how often (or subtly) they are invoked, or how much they are relied upon. Eventually the human equation must come back to earth and be resolved. Most of all, we expect Sociologist to know this, and thus we expect them to look out for this phenomenon. The point is simply this: because of artificial "distancing," unless the researcher decides to "come up for air often," frequently reviewing, and constantly re-centering and realigning his analysis vis a vis his own psychological involvement and societal perspective, always doing so in its larger context, he can never be sure that what he is studying is grounded in the same humanity of which he is a part.
It seems that Professor Venkatesh, whose work I admire very much (After reading and reviewing his first book I have already purchased the other two), forgot to come up for air, and as a result also forgot that Marquis Park is also still very much "America proper" (not America improper). Marquis Park is not a foreign country, or a specimen in a Petrie dish; or even a parallel social universe as the author alludes to repeatedly: but flesh and blood America, bound to the larger polity not only through neglect, guilt and shame, but also by a common substrate and thread of history, ideas and culture. Ghetto people think like Americans, even though they act, and are treated, otherwise.
Marquis Park is to America, what the "crazy cousin" that Blacks used to hide in the back room was to the black family. Everyone knew the cousin was back there even though he was always kept out of sight; it just was very much "un-politic" to acknowledge his existence. But even under those circumstances, unlike the Marquis Parks of the American family, the cousin was well fed and clothed, and taken out to the park periodically to get fresh air. That is to say, even he was provided the minimum subsistence that was provided every other family member, even though it was improper to acknowledge his existence.
And just like the "Marquis Parks of America" are, the crazy cousin's existence too was "assumed to be a part of another parallel universe." It was a case of families remaining in denial about their own members. And one supposes that if a sociologist were to study the "crazy cousin phenomenon" in the Black family in the same way that the Black ghetto is studied, America, the family in question would share no responsibility for the crazy cousin's well being. The two would simply continue to exist in two separate parallel universes; a virtual sociological and psychological dichotomy, crazy cousin in the back room, and well-adjusted, guilty but still very much dignified family, on the other side of the partition, in the front room.
The very act of severing a malignant limb from the societal body is itself a profoundly cultural act, but also a clever sociological trick: a form of collective denial wrapped in academic clothing, a denial of the reality of the existential connection between the limb and the larger body proper: In this case American society. There is in fact no separate reality that corresponds to this severing of the limb from the body. It is a psychological and cultural trick, an illusion. It is the "act of partitioning" itself that brings this false reality into being: without it, there is only one America, from sea-to-shining-sea, with Marquis Park in the front, not in the back room. Without this artificial psychological partition, there is no separate Marquis Park; there is only one room: the American family. To speak of it otherwise, as if there are indeed two parallel universes, actually defines and punctuates those two non-existent universes and brings their respective realities into being.
The point is that the compartmentalization, the dissociation, the fractionation, the splitting-off, the dissembling, wherever and however it occurs is artificial. It is collective denial, a mere rationalization for avoiding a larger problem in the larger psychological and sociological frame: American culture, writ large. In a real sense, the Marquis Parks, Altgeld, Robert Taylors, and Pruitt Igos are just the crazy cousins that America keeps hidden in its ghettoes out of sight in the back rooms. In my humble view, that is what has happened here too with this analysis. The very act of studying Marquis Park as if it is a specimen in a bottle is itself a profound act of psychological compartmentalization, and thus makes the analysis itself very much a part of the same dehumanization process that America makes the black ghetto: a process that in all its essential elements, denies that Marquis Park is a proper part of the larger American cultural family.
What we expect sociology to do is just the opposite: to "Tear down that artificial wall between the front and the back rooms." But instead what we have here is in effect, an examination of the crazy cousin's ear wax (modalities of ghetto survival) on the laboratory table, and a very much learned analysis of the importance of studying the ear wax of crazy cousins - all the better to keep attention away from the culpability of those in the front room. But being in the maze running around the track with the rat is not exactly the same thing as objective sociological analysis. It is always a matter of interactive psychological perspectives, not just a matter of location in space and time.
Being a student of William Julius Wilson could not have helped in avoiding the narrowness of Dr. Vankatesh's focus. However, I was happy to see that in addition to the obligatory mention of Wilson's own "The truly Disadvantaged," Professor Venkatesh also cited Elijah Anderson's groundbreaking work, "Codes of the Street," which in my view avoids the Heisenberg effect about as much as it can be avoided in sociological work.
In Anderson's work, which is a healthy mixture of social critiques, psychological and sociological insights, and occasional "hit-or-miss" analyses, the author never escapes completely into an entirely "clinical sociological orbit," but remains attached by a humanitarian umbilical cord to the soul of his subjects. This means in effect that along with seeing them as laboratory rats, he also dips into the psychological analysis of their circumstances, examining how indeed the rat is attached to the larger American environment (which just happens to include himself), that is, how it is connected to the front room. He also comes up for air frequently, always keeping his analysis in front of him: situated in and tightly moored to its larger frame. As interesting as "whoring and selling crack" and other forms of hustling are, they still are quintessentially American, not just ghetto, problems.
Although I have now used up by review space to make this one larger point, I cannot hesitate to say, if only in passing, that Professor Venkatest's work remains at the cutting edge, if not the best example of contemporary sociology dealing with real American problems. His books get my vote for the sociological award of the year for innovative research. He is the "designated trail blazer" in a field that desperately needs them. Despite my heavy-handed criticism, my hat goes off to Professor Venkatesh and his creative and very effective work. Fifty stars.
Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor Overview
Listen to a short interview with Sudhir Venkatesh
Host: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane
In this revelatory book, Sudhir Venkatesh takes us into Maquis Park, a poor black neighborhood on Chicago's 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 Venkatesh's 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 ghetto's appalling isolation from the rest of the country.
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