Thought Patterns
by Emanuel
I listened to an interesting interview on NPR that dealt with the economics of crack cocaine.
For seven years, sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh led a double life.
For days, Venkatesh stayed inside one of Chicago’s worst housing projects living with poor families and hanging out with gang members. Then he would return to the tony neighborhood of Hyde Park, where he was a graduate student at the University of Chicago.
After nearly three years of hanging out with J.T., I began talking to several of my professors about my dissertation topic. As it turned out, they weren’t as enthusiastic as I was about an in-depth study of the Black Kings crack gang and their compelling leader. They were more interested in the standard sociological issues in the community: entrenched poverty, domestic violence, the prevalence of guns, residents’ charged relations with the government — and, to a lesser extent, how the community dealt with the gang.
You can also read more about the author in the Chicago Sun-Times or, even better, watch Freakonomics author Steven Levitt’s talk about the author. The talk is from TED.com, possibly the best web site out there, as I’ve previously posted.
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