Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor
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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Additional Product Information
- ISBN: 9780674023550
- Manufacturer:N/A
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| From: Amazon Posted: May 08, 2008 Type: User Review |
The Geography and Calculus of survival ghetto Style is not mere La Vie Quotidienne Americaine
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...
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 5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 29, 2007 Type: User Review |
I don't think so...
Sorry...but you did not quite get the lives of these people right. The author simply glazed the surface of the reality of some of these people and made it extremely simplistic. But can you blame him when he has no vested interest in this...
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 1.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 25, 2007 Type: User Review |
a muddled account of a fascinating subject
I'll try not to repeat what the other reviewers have already said and
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 4.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Aug 16, 2007 Type: User Review |
Sociology for the masses
Off The Books is a fine, readable description of one neighborhood in the south side if Chicago. The concentration is on the economic life of the adults, but of course ends up covering social, political, and legal aspects of the residents....
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 3.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Jul 09, 2007 Type: User Review |
Interesting
This book is an easy read and very informative. A lot of things you know already if you even grew up close to a city with an urban center, and you can relate this to a lot of cities other than Chicago. The author is a little long winded, but...
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4.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Jul 07, 2007 Type: User Review |
A tedious 382 pages
Mr. Venkatesh obviously immersed himself in the daily life of the urban poor, and certainly has an interesting five page journal article here, unfortunately he also has an addional382 pages of tedious, repetitive anecdotes from his time...
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 2.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: May 29, 2007 Type: User Review |
The Author Needs to Prioritize
Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh has the potencial for a really good book here, but he mucks it up by switching back and forth between being an objective social scientist reporting his findings and a sympathetic visitor to the urban American slum. His...
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3.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: May 04, 2007 Type: User Review |
Fantastic
I thought Off the Books was fascinating and well written. I've recommended it to many people.
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5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Apr 19, 2007 Type: User Review |
Fascinating, with problems
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4.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Mar 16, 2007 Type: User Review |
well written, but author DOES NOT care about working poor
In this book, Venkatesh uses his academic position to exploit the working poor's income mechanisms, supposedly to explain how these types of underground economies work and affect the urban economy. Even though it is well written, this piece just...
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2.00/5 |
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