Gang Leader for a Day: A case study

While reading the assigned texts for this week, I was also reading a book I’ve been interested in checking out for quite some time now: Gang Leader for a Day A rogue sociologist takes to the streets by Sudahir Venkatesh. While I was hesitant to read a trade paperback (New York Times Bestseller) with such a wildly dramatic title, the contents basically detail Venkatesh’s methods for doing research, as well as offer an interesting version of Adele Clarke’s (Situational Analysis) project memoing. Basically, the book details Venkatesh’s fieldwork in the Robert Taylor Homes on Chicago’s Southside. He started out wishing to do a simple survey on urban poverty and ended up hanging out with the Black Kings doing research on the underground economy of the urban poor. The book discusses his misconceptions, his mess-ups, and his relationships with the community. It seems to me that it might have been more accurately titled, “A naïve sociologist takes to the streets.”

Interestingly, the readings intersected with the readings we did for class this week. In fact, Gang Leader for a Day (GLFAD) almost seemed an example of what NOT to do when working with communities. Venkatesh worked with a prominent African American sociologist in an attempt to help find solutions to urban poverty. But rather than just accept the status quo, he wanted to understand the people and the situations he studied; he saw and experienced life on the streets and decided that sociology’s attempts to understand the people it studies were far from real. Certainly, Venkatesh’s motives seemed altruistic, but, as he admits in the book, his presence caused great harm to many of his subjects. For example, after granting him interviews, some community members end up on the outs with those in power—even suffering physical violence—because Venkatesh leaked information.

The valuable intersections I recognized while doing these readings in tandem were especially connected to “For Communities to Work” and to “Community Building Practice.” When looking at GLFAD, one can see at play multiple points from the readings. For example, Venkatesh is sometimes invited to sit in on Ms. Bailey’s (building president of the Local Advisory Council) tenant meetings. It is interesting to see that during these meetings, it is apparent that a “public” is definitely at work in the Robert Taylor Homes. In fact, some of them are even “engaged.” They show up at meetings and make suggestions for helping the community. However, where things begin to break down is evident on page 2 of “For Communities to Work:” “the amount of political will available in a community seems to depend on the extent to which people claim responsibility for what happens to them. They have to own their problems rather than blaming them on others.”

In many ways, this quote makes perfect sense: People have to take responsibility for the problems in their community and work to change them. In addition, they must take on the role of agent rather than of victim if they are to work toward changing their communities. But, this smacks suspiciously of what Victor Villanueva refers to as a bootstrap mentality. I wonder how this could work in a community that is so oppressed that it feels it can only embrace its victim status because to do otherwise would seem nonsensical. Ms. Bailey, the LAC president illustrates this point beautifully when reprimanding Venkatesh for asking the wrong questions and focusing on the wrong things in his study. She adeptly uses the Socratic method to show him the error of his thinking. This short excerpt from page 147 of GLFAD illustrates the point:

“You planning on talking with white people in your study?” she snapped, waving her hand at me as if she’d heard my spiel a hundred times already.
I was confused. “This is a study of the Robert Taylor Homes, and I suppose that most of the people I’ll be talking to are black. Unless there are whites who live here that I’m not aware of.”
“If I gave you only one piece of bread to eat each day and asked why you’re starving, what would you say?”
I was thrown off by this seeming non sequitur. I thought for a minute. “I guess I would say I’m starving because I’m not eating enough,” I answered.
“You got a lot to learn, Mr. Professor,” she said. “Again, if I gave you one piece of bread to eat each day and asked why you’re starving, what would you say?”
I was getting even more confused. I took a chance. “Because you’re not feeding me?”
“Yes! Very good!”

So, what is basically going on here is that Ms. Bailey, a force to be reckoned with in the community, wants the researcher to understand that the community is at the mercy of those outside it. I wonder what the Kettering Foundation would do with that.