Gang Leader for a Day ? Fellow traveller for ten years

Sudhir Venkatesh is probably very clever.  His insight into the ‘hidden’ economies and social structures of poor urban neighbourhoods may even be very important.  Unfortunately, none of this is reflected in the lightweight froth of Gang Leader for a Day, a populist counterpoint to his Ph.D. and subsequent research.

 This is a book that proves that sociological research and gonzo journalism are twins separated at birth. Ingenue Sudhir, all pony-tail and tie-dye shirts, takes a six-pack of beers to the Projects, charms gang-leader J.T. with the false promise of writing his biography and ends up spending ten-or-so years with him “researching” (which appears to include something bordering on active participation in) the drug trade and its attendant niceties such as prostitution and punishment beatings.

The conclusions he reaches are wholly predictable: life is harsh; 911 is a joke; the Projects are a state-within-a-state, an economy-within-an-economy, etc.  Public Enemy, NWA and friends told us all this twenty years ago, I reckon.

These revelations don’t seem worth the effort of reading this highly repetitive and vaguely self-glorifying waste of woodpulp. For the reader, that is. Venkatesh himself made Professor at Columbia on the back of the underpinning research.  However, it’s his (or his publisher’s ?) decision to share almost none of that with the reader of this book.  And this is a fatal error, turning the story into one that reads like Venkatesh the Glory Hunter, sycophantically cosying up to the bad guys for no reason he’s prepared to share with us. The sum of the impression is one of patronising condescension toward the ‘general’ reader.  Are we too stupid to handle just a little bit of data and deeper analysis.  Can we really only deal with a repetitive this-happened-so-then-that-happened narrative ?

The danger is that this book and others like it (are there others like it ?  I’m assuming this isn’t a stand out), sold as “sociology”, demean the subject area.  The blame may not lie with Venkatesh himself – he has a story to tell, after all - but with his publishers, who insist on sub-titling the book  with a phrase like “a rogue sociologist…”.

This is not a sociology book.  It’s a ‘ripping yarn’.  Unfortunately, not a very good one.  But that’s better than the alternative, which would ensure that no reader would ever be able to take a sociologist seriously again.