Gang Leader for a Day / Sudhir Venkatesh. 4 stars

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Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets / Sudhir Venkatesh.
4 stars

Sudhir was a sociology student at University of Chicago in 1989 when he decided he wanted to study urban poverty. One of the poorest areas in the city was the Robert Taylor Homes, the “projects”, which was pretty much run by the Black Kings gang. Sudhir wandered over one day and somehow managed to get into the good graces of the local BK leader, J.T. They started up a kind of “friendship” - at least Sudhir seemed mostly welcome to come and often “shadow” J.T. to find out how things worked there, how the people felt about living there, etc. Although the project (at least initially) seemed more like studying gang structure than the poor people who lived there. Either way, over a number of years, Sudhir got an inside view of the BK gang – a rare opportunity for an outsider.

This was interesting, and somewhat scary at times, with the violence, drugs and crime that (occasionally) happened - well, more often than most of us are used to. The crime and drugs were a daily occurrence, but the BK really tried to keep the violence at bay (it scared potential drug customers away, so from a business standpoint, a lack of violence was much more amenable). Overall, very interesting...