Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor

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.

This is a great book.I think the name does it a disservice; potential readers might think its going to be a catalogue of under the counter ways of making money and probably boring.What the book does is show how people manage to live amidst poverty, lack of job opportunities, discrimination, neglect, and abuse. It shows how people in "shady" ways of making a living exist along side the more law abiding. Indeed, the author does a great job of demonstrating how there is a blurring of lines, that there is a lot of overlap.Far from being boring, reading this book made me feel immersed in life with real people making the best life they could. There are a lot of good people in these pages; inventive, creative, people who can care about others even as they struggle against hard circumstances.This book left me with a lot of understanding about a world usually pitied and/or slandered by the media Also left me with questions; e.g. do you have to be poor to be humane?

I'll try not to repeat what the other reviewers have already said andjust express my opinion on the book.It is sad but all too true that the poor seldom speak forthemselves. And even though they may live a few blocks away, itrequires a prolonged ethnographic study like Venkatesh's to getthe picture of their daily lives and economic relations.And the picture he paints is indeed fascinating. Sterile academicwords like "gang activity" or "narcotics" that Venkatesh uses contrastwith the stark reality and the daily struggle that the urbandowntrodden have to lead. This is probably the single most importantreason to read this book. The book provides a comprehensive survey tothe twisted economic and social life of the "shady world": there is achapter on "soccer moms", on business people, on street hustlers, thepreachers and on the street gangs. However, the main feel that I gotfor Marquis Park is that of a place of crushing poverty anddespair. The anecdotes and live situations are bizarre yet possesstheir own underlying logic: a gang leader as a person to turn to tomediate conflicts; a garage owner paying his mechanics with used radioequipment instead of cash; a church leader "placing" his parishionersinto the homes of the affluent, getting a cut of their wages and then"rotating" them to make sure they do not lose their dependence on him;the small business owners fostering relationships with each otherthrough small loans to secure against tough economic circumstance; thesame business owners are afraid to operate outside the ghetto becausethe operating environment is so insecure and the relationships insidethe community provide the meager support in case of hard times. It isbreathtaking how the residents of Marquis Park completely gave up onthe safety net of the modern state and, as in primitive societies,rely on their children to provide care and support in their old age.The author's sympathy towards his subjects shows often in the book andmake it a far more pleasurable read. However, this comes with a lotof effort on the reader's part. Venkatesh writing style is circularand repetitive. The book starts from the death of the gang leader andends with it. This would be a nice narrative device if it were not formind-numbing continuous retreading over the same thoughts, ideas andfacts. And it is not that Venkatesh repeats himself word-for-word buthe just goes over the same territory and re-references or re-stressesor reiterates ad nauseam. At some point I started treating the booksas a primary source --- a witness account rather than a syntheticscholarly work. Another major complaint is the scatterbrained treatmentof the material. With all the repetition, some of the importanteconomic background and the history of the formation of the ghetto istucked in somewhere in the middle of the book. For example, the ghettogot so poor because most of the blue color jobs that the ghettoresidents used to be able to get were shipped overseas. This fact ismentioned offhandedly in the introduction of one of the middlechapters.Another major annoyance is the lack of numbers and statistics in thebook. How difficult was it to state what the number of people inMarquis Park was? How many of them actually migrate out of it? Itseems that there is a constant outflow of people. What is theiraverage income? How does it compare to the other American innercities? What are the economic dynamics of it? They have become poorerin the last twenty years, but by how much? The author claims there isno adequate policing. How many policemen are there per resident? Howdoes it compare to other parts of the city? The author claims there isovercrowding. How many square feet are there per resident? and so on.At last it would not have hurt this book to provide some sort of anidea of what is required to better the lot of the residents of MarquisPark.

Entertaining and educational. But sadly falls short of perfection due to the writer's bias for certain solutions.

This book offers a good insight into the so called shadow economy. I enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to any one interested in Urban Economics.