Chicago?s Robert
Taylor homes during the 1990s, Sudhir Venkatesh?s memoir is a fi ne
example of the
ethnographic confessional. The book does not underwrite on the research in
detail and it
does not contextualize it in the various traditions and debates that
make ethnography
such a problematic except ultimately rewarding intellectual and practical
strategy. Instead,
it concentrates on expression a narrative approximately the relationships
between Venkatesh-theethnographer
and the various characters inhabiting the ornament of his urban
adventures. It reads like a collection of extracts from a travelogue
without the travel
or a diary without the dates; an exposition of the soft city that lies
at a lower place the hard
myths of America?s urban gangs. It really is a notable piece of
work and thoroughly
enjoyable for anyone with voyeuristic inclinations ? it presents a
authorized portrait
gallery of drug-users and drug-dealers, prostitutes, women-abusers,
truants, fraudsters,
cheats as well as slightly bendy (if not actually bent) community
leaders. Not only does
it fl aunt Venkatesh?
s estimable skill as author and narrator, it also
reveals his keen
ability to discuss any number of problematic, sometimes illegal and
often unsound social
situations. The information he extracts from his respondents is
extraordinarily rich ? we
learn about everything from distinctions between respectable and
disreputable ?hos? to
the organization of crack-dealing sales teams. What is equally
terrible is that they
deliver up all this information with more than articulacy and a better
grasp of grammar than
half of the undergraduate students I contract taught. Perhaps the
expansion of higher
education has been targeting the wrong markets and we should focus
more attention
on attracting gun-toting, drug-running, racketeering, pimping
quasi-mobsters to our
classrooms.
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