Visiting Speakers
Wednesday, November 2
7:00 pm, Power Center Ballroom
Law and Order in the Underground Economy
Sudhir Venkatesh is the William B. Ransford Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, New York. He is a researcher and writer on urban neighborhoods in the United States. His most recent book is Gang Leader for a Day (Penguin Press). Gang Leader received a Best Book award from The Economist, and is currently being translated into Chinese, Korean, Japanese, German, Italian, Polish, French and Portuguese.
His previous work, Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor (Harvard University Press, 2006) about illegal economies in Chicago, received a Best Book Award from Slate.com (2006) as well as the C. Wright Mills Award (2007). His first book, American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto (2000) explored life in Chicago public housing
(via http://www.sudhirvenkatesh.org/biography)
Gang Leader for a Day
Venkatesh's Gang Leader For A Day tells the story of his time as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, living with and writing on street gangs in Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes housing project. The book, intended for a general audience, is not only a fascinating story and an eye-opening perspective on the daily lives of the urban poor, but also a meditation on Venkatesh's experience learning how to survive, and communicate, in two very different worlds (the academic groves and the urban streets).
His next book, under contract with Penguin Press, will focus on the role of black market economies—from sex work and drug trafficking to day care and entertainment—in the revitalization of New York since 1999. Venkatesh is also completing an ethnographic study of policing in the Department of Justice, where he is currently a Senior Research Advisor
(via http://www.sudhirvenkatesh.org/biography)
