Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor

Off the books is an engaging account of life in and around the underground economy in an American ghetto. The author, Sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh , spent a large amount of time in the Chicago Southside neighborhood of Marquis Park, establishing relationships with residents and observing their daily life. This provided him with the ability to write a fly on the wall account of the web of exchange in the neighborhood that is occurring outside of the formal economy.The ghetto presents a range of opportunities for off the books work. Drug dealing and prostitution are obvious underworld activities, but the book details the surprising breadth of ways people hustle to make a dollar or two. One man has a niche doing minor car repairs in alleyways while another shines shoes and helps squatters find a place to stay for a fee. A Homeless man might be payed a few dollars to watch a store a night, while for a fee the local preacher may mediate your dispute. The neighborhood is severely lacking in opportunities for traditional employment so the underground economy is an tied to residents doing what they can to just get by.The books consist of chapters focusing on differing aspects on the underground economy: the household, entrepreneurship, street hustlers, preachers, the local gang.These chapters are anchored by a cast of recurring residents like James Arleander the homeless mechanic who does car repairs in alleyways and Marlene Matteson, the president of the local block club.While the books is very local in the focus, Marquis park is tied back to larger scale economic and political trends. One example of this is a very interesting discussion on how the entrenched poverty of neighborhoods like marquis park was in part an unintended consequence of the successes of civil rights movement. Similarly there the chapter on the local preachers provided a short political history of Chicago and the role preachers played in the movement leading to the election of the city's first black mayor Harold Washington.I picked up this book wanting get a better understanding of the kind of urban poverty fictionalized in television shows like The Wire. Marquis Park is a real place, populated by real people, who have to struggle in numerous ways just to get by. The book is in Chicago rather than a fictionalized Baltimore,but it is a very recognizable neighborhood. In terms of increasing your understanding this goes further than something like [b:The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighbourhood 1234171 The Corner A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood David Simon https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328047452s/1234171.jpg 20297]as into the larges scale forces that helped to create and sustain the ghetto. For any prospective readers I recommend that you go into this book with realistic expectations of what you are about to read. This was written by a Columbia University Academic and published by the Harvard University Press. This book is not a page turner. While the material covered is quite interesting, there are a number of quite slow moving sections. Similarly the author has a habit of repeating some passages almost verbatim which would most likely have been cleaned up if the book was written with a popular audience in mind. The author does write clearly and there is no academic jargon so this book should be accessible provided you have a little bit of perseverance.