Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor (Hardcover)

by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh (Author) "Marlene Matteson was the person least likely to mourn the death of Johnnie "Big Cat" Williams, leader of the Maquis Park Kings, the local neighborhood..." (more)
Key Phrases: storefront clergy, shady economy, underground traders, Big Cat, Maquis Park, Pastor Wilkins (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In this revealing study of a Southside Chicago neighborhood, sociologist Venkatesh opens a window on how the poor live. Focusing on domestics, entrepreneurs, hustlers, preachers and gangs linked in an underground economy that "manages to touch all households," the book reveals how residents struggle between "their desires to live a just life and their needs to make ends meet as best they can." In this milieu, African-American mechanics, painters, hairdressers, musicians and informal security guards are linked to prostitutes, drug dealers, gun dealers and car thieves in illegal enterprises that even police and politicians are involved in, though not all are criminals in the usual sense. Storefront clergy, often dependent "on the underground for their own livelihood," serve as mediators and brokers between individuals and gang members, who have "insinuated themselves—and their drug money—into the deepest reaches of the community." Although the book's academic tenor is occasionally wearying, Venkatesh keeps his work vital and poignant by using the words of his subjects, who are as dependent on this intricate web as they are fearful of its dangers. (Oct.)
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Review
No scholar in America understands the underground economy like Sudhir Venkatesh. The book is both beautifully written and incredibly insightful. I can't remember the last time I learned so much from reading a book.
--Steven D. Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics (20061208)

Sudhir Venkatesh has uncovered a social world that will surprise even the most sophisticated observers of human behavior. This extraordinary study could become a classic urban ethnography, and will certainly change the way we think about life and work in the underground.
--William Julius Wilson, author of When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (20061207)

Off the Books is an outstanding contribution to our understanding urban economic, social and political processes. This engrossing ethnography has led me to change how I theoretically think about fundamental concepts such as social capital, social isolation, and the state of civil society in the US.
--Michael C. Dawson, author of Black Visions (20061201)

An original portrait of the blurred boundaries between so-called legitimate and illegitimate economic relations in the U.S. ghetto …A most comprehensive look at the informal economic life of the urban poor.
--Mitchell Duneier, author of Sidewalk (20061126)

An unsentimental but powerfully human analysis of the webs of underground activity that sustain poor neighborhoods and their residents. Venkatesh gives the lie to the denigrating tropes of shiftlessness, mental dullness, government dependence, and disorganization that have been used to indict families in poverty.
--Mary Pattillo, author of Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City (20070110)

In this revealing study of a Southside Chicago neighborhood, sociologist Venkatesh opens a window on how the poor live...Venkatesh keeps his work vital and poignant by using the words of his subjects. (Publishers Weekly 20070622)

[Venkatesh] spent years in a 10-square-block neighborhood on Chicago's South Side observing the clandestine work of gangbangers and mechanics, prostitutes and pastors. The result, Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor, suggests that in some American neighborhoods, the underground economy is a source not just of sustenance but of order, and that while shady transactions may be illegal, they adhere to a distinctive and sophisticated set of laws.
--Patrick Radden Keefe (Slate.com )

Remember the Chicago grad student in Freakonomics who figured out why drug dealers live with their mothers? His name is Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, and his new book, Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor, is the riveting drug-dealer back story--and a lot more. Venkatesh, who is now a professor of sociology and African-American studies at Columbia, spent 1995 to 2003 following the money in 10 square blocks of the Chicago ghetto. He finds an intricate underground web. In it are dealers and prostitutes--and also pastors who take their money, nannies who don't report income, unlicensed cab drivers, off-the-books car mechanics, purveyors of home-cooked soul food, and homeless men paid to sleep outside stores. Venkatesh's insight is that the neighborhood doesn't divide between 'decent' and 'street'--almost everyone has a foot in both worlds. 'Don't matter in some ways if it's the gang or the church,' says one woman as she describes the network that gives her some sense of security. The Wire meets academia, Off the Books is a great and an instructive read.
--Emily Bazelon (Slate.com )

[Venkatesh] examines the underground economy of a poor Chicago neighborhood and discovers a thriving system of licit and illicit exchange. Although the resourcefulness of certain drug dealers, back-alley mechanics, and fly-by-night day-care providers is remarkable, Venkatesh argues that under-the-table transactions work to further separate their participants from the economic mainstream.
--Benjamin Healy (The Atlantic )

In Off the Books, Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh defines the underground economy as 'a web in which many different people, from the criminal to the pious, from the down-and-out to the bourgeois, are inextricably intertwined'...The story Venkatesh tells in Off the Books is specific to Maquis Park, but the underground economy he found there almost certainly has its counterpart in the black ghettos of large cities. Indeed, its reach extends beyond the ghetto to the kitchens of restaurants, the homes of the well-off and the myriad service jobs that employ workers off the books. Yet it remains in the shadows, barely touched by researchers, a vast world usually ignored, misunderstood, or dismissed with stereotypes. Venkatesh's riveting account describes the underground economy through vividly realized characters...[His] dissection of Maquis Park's underground economy overturns one stereotype and common assumption about the urban poor after another...Venkatesh finds the underground economy's origins in the racism, economic devastation, and political abandonment that have decimated many big American cities...What can be done? Venkatesh offers no concrete remedies. But that is not his point. Off the Books is not about policy. Wonderfully written, brilliantly researched, it illuminates, as no other book has done, the ubiquitous world of shady activities that structure everyday life for the residents of the nation's Maquis Parks in ways few Americans observe or understand.
--Michael B. Katz (Chicago Tribune )

Venkatesh paints a detailed picture that reflects his close acquaintance with the neighborhood, moving from businesses that are legal but off the books to those that are entirely outside the law and talking to home-based food preparers and preachers, street hustlers and gang members...This is a Chicago you don't know, told in readable prose that puts most other sociologists to shame.
--Harold Henderson (Chicago Reader )

In Sudhir Venkatesh's newly published Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor, readers are introduced to a cast-royale of rogues, some loveable, others little short of detestable, who inhabit a super-isolated ghetto neighborhood in Southside Chicago...For four hundred pages, Venkatesh describes in intimate detail the often bizarre world of economic relationships in this urban edge zone, largely outside the web of economic, political, legal, and law-enforcement structures that dominate mainstream American life. The result is a compelling, deeply disturbing ground-level view of today's underclass...His approach--offering a pastiche of images of the ghetto economy rather than bombarding readers with statistics on income levels, life expectancy, and so forth--firmly situates Venkatesh in a long tradition of writers preoccupied with anecdotally chronicling America's underside and crafting verbal portraits of the colorful, often entertaining misfits on the margins...Overall, this is a fascinating look at a place and community that would otherwise remain entirely under the radar. If our economy and society throws up such spectacular inequalities, at the very least we owe it to the poorest of the poor to try to understand their lives, their struggles, their pain. Venkatesh takes us into this world; it's an often-ugly place, but, as Off the Books shows, it is also one that is strangely compelling.
--Sasha Abramsky (American Prospect Online )

[A] remarkable book.
--Paul Seabright (Times Literary Supplement )

[Venkatesh] immersed himself in Maquis Park, a poor black neighborhood on Chicago’s Southside…He discovered and analyzed the diverse forms of unregulated, unreported, and untaxed work of small business owners. This “off the books” world thrives due to residents’ lack of human capital, high entry costs, poverty, and social isolation. Venkatesh’s analysis weaves hair salons, auto repairs, pimps, drug dealers, block club leaders, ministers, and gang leaders into an intricate web of exchange networks. Varied individuals are also called upon to mediate conflicts in the neighborhood. Venkatesh concludes that without significant changes in inner cities, the underground will flourish. Reminiscent of works by Elijah Anderson.
--J A. Fiola (Choice )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (October 16, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674023552
• ISBN-13: 978-0674023550
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #90,971 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

70 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Way More Than Informative..., October 1, 2006

By	Robert Daniels (fairfield, ia USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Some books are informative. And some books are eye-opening. This book is eye-opening. Read it and you will learn many fascinating things you never dreamed were going on....

...unless you already live in a highly urbanized/disadvantaged neighborhood.

The author is an enterprising young academic who is drawn to the firsthand study of life in such neighborhoods. Being of mixed race "gave me (the author) an indeterminate and unthreatening presence" by which he could spend months with the residents - enough time to understand life and the economy there with more thoroughness than perhaps ever before.

The underground economy in this corner of America is woven into every fabric of life. You learn first hand about enterprises running the gamut from the homeless fellow who does reliable auto repair in back alleys and side streets, to the (no surprise here) sex workers and drug sellers, to the stay at home mom that cooks meals for local residents, shopkeepers and even the police.

You learn how the local gang leader is not simply a lawless soul feared by all, but a broker of influence upon which even the most upstanding residents come to rely.

With so much disadvantage built into the neighborhood you come to understand how everyone learns to accept shady economic dealings out of the joint recognition of the need to survive. But when such dealings bring a larger than acceptable threat to the children and residents, then the gang leader is often brought in to broker a deal to return things to homeostasis.

As a white suburbanite here is what struck me the most. There is waaaaay more tolerance and acceptance among neighbors in the ghetto than there is in suburbia. There is waaaaay more neighbor involvement and mutual reliance in the ghetto than in suburbia. In fact, instead of the ongoing competition so often found in the suburbs, the ghetto is characterized by the opposite - genuine concern for and involvement with one's neighbors.

Is it a great place to live? Of course not. I mean, any world where you have to call on the gang leader to broker safety in the streets for kids must be a risky world.

But as the book will teach you, there is a richness, mutual acceptance, and mutual protection that would be envied in the safer suburbs. Not to mention a level of economic enterprise that outsiders - until now - had no idea existed.

As I said at the beginning, some books teach you additional things about something you already know. This book teaches you about something (you will admit by page 10) you almost certainly know nothing.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Author Needs to Prioritize, May 29, 2007

By	Kenneth K. Kraska "bookworm_54" (Michigan) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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 digressions into obscure and arcane points of academic theory interrupt the narrative flow and make the book a tedious read at times.

With that minor quibble stated however, Off the Books is a very enlightening survey of the seemingly intractable problems facing the population of America's ghettos. I highly recommend it to the people who promote laissez-faire economic policies as a cure-all for urban social pathologies.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Could Become a Landmark Work in the Study of Cities..., February 12, 2007

By	David Steele "Dave Steele" (Milwaukee, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

40 years ago, Jane Jacobs influenced generations of planners and urban policy makers with her "Death and Life of Great American Cities," a sensitive and sensible portrait of how great cities work as social organisms. Jacobs turned 60 years of urban policy on its head and gave birth to a new way of thinking about cities and how to solve their problems: by celebrating and encouraging their social fabric, rather than dividing it with freeways and public housing projects. Since Jacobs' work, American cities have seen a great resurgance in their central cores. But today they are more divided than ever between rich and poor. While America's central cities are seeing more investment and interest than ever before, those same central cities are also home to deepening poverty and despair.

Sudhir Venkatesh has produced a startlingly honest portrayal of how this "other half" the American urban experience really works. While Jacobs saw density as the answer to the city's problems rather than the cause of them, Venkatesh examines what happens when the density of the city meets deep generational poverty. In a world where everyone is engaged in everyday survival, the "eyes and ears" that Jacobs celebrated as the ultimate contol over social behavior become, in Venkatesh's analysis, the mechnism of regulation of a vast underground, off the books economy. The neighborhoods Venkatesh studies are places that are ignored and forgotten by the larger society, places where resources are scarce and where the very definition of "right and wrong" is colored by the need to survive, to put food on the table, to make rent.

Venkatesh provides a refreshingly non-ideological study into how the urban poor really live. He avoids glamorizing the lives of underground, criminal actors, and avoids moralizing or grandstanding. Rather, he tells us the realities and consequences of the economic decisions of those residing in America's poor central cities. This book is a must-read for anyone who cares about the state of our cities. It reveals the hidden order beneath the apparent choas of the ghetto. By defining how the ghetto works, Venkatesh may well have started a much-needed conversation on how what we can do to make sure it works differently.