Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh is Professor of Sociology and Director of Research at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University.

OTHER HARVARD BOOKS BY SUDHIR ALLADI VENKATESH
American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto

How did you get to know the people living and working underground?

I was researching material for my dissertation on public housing and wandered through the wider African-african community surrounding it. "Bronzeville," as it is known, is the historic area of settlement for black Chicagoans, and it is a vibrant diverse place despite having entrenched pockets of poverty. Because I was spending so much time in public, I naturally met many people using the outdoors for their economic pursuit-car mechanics, drug dealers, gypsy cab drivers, and the like. I was drawn to their world, not only because I was interested in how people live amid poverty, but also because I wondered what happened when the government was not available to regulate economic exchange. I spoke with them about the challenges of running an illegal enterprise, and I observed how residents coped with the ubiquitous presence of an underground economy. That is, I watched the creative ways in which the solved problems, resolved disputes, set prices, and otherwise made sure that their shady dealings did not get out of hand.

Why do you think they trusted you?

Trust is always a temporary state of affairs. As an ethnographer, you are constantly meddling in people's lives-even when you are just observing them, and so you have to rebuild trust every day. One method I used was simply to return the following day when I witnessed an incident or heard something unpleasant. It may sound small, but they saw me coming back and listening to their stories. They saw that I was not going to shy away from their world simply because my only life was organized differently, or that I may have disagreed with some of their practices. Also, an ethnographer becomes a professional stranger to their research subjects. They could talk to me in a way that they couldn't talk to their own family and friends; I wasn't their friend, but someone who would simply sit and listen, taking them seriously in a world that fitted them with one or another displeasing stereotype.

How did your collaboration with Freakonomics author, Steven J. Levitt, influence your work?

I met Steve at Harvard's Society of Fellows, a place dedicated to fostering interdisciplinary dialogue. In our case, the truth was in the packaging. Steve helped me to see the forest for the trees in my work-he allowed me to step outside of the community I was working in and ask broader questions about inequality, human motivation, and the incentives and costs for certain kinds of action. Up to that point was largely interested in understanding everyday behavior in highly local places-a housing development, a streetcorner, a gang meeting. Steven helped me to ask bigger questions.

Your work brings to light a new world within the city-what are most people missing when they look at the ghetto?

We often fail to acknowledge that people who live in marginality have come to that place from somewhere else-from a life of struggle, success and failure. Americans tend to look at the poor in highly moral, unambiguous terms. We don't see complex individuals struggling to make decisions and live a just life-which is what people in the ghetto are doing, even if it doesn't look the same as most citizens. But, then again, their circumstances aren't the same as most citizens. Second, we tend to think that the government acts the same for everyone, that is, that it is a neutral actor. Alas, for the mass of poor people, the government is not a resource, arbiter, guarantor of person and property, or even a reliable set of agencies who fix streets and pick up garbage. Those living underground fend for themselves because, unlike middle and upper class (and white) residents, government does not work for them.

Who was the most surprising member of the underground to you?

The clergy humbled me-and they still do when I watch them. The ghetto preachers who do not have wealthly congregants and large cathedrals not only make do with little-turning an apartment into a place of worship, fixing their storefronts themselves-but they are at the front lines of providing salvation and maintaining social order in the ghetto. Its not easy trying to create stability when people are desperate and struggling. Times get tough, and people act irresponsibly and the preachers are often the ones to keep the peace, console, and make the community move forward. And, they get caught up in the same shady web that captures their congregants, so it's a real feat that they can persist and erect a moral foundation for themselves and others.

Were you at all surprised by the role of police officers in the underground economy?

No, because it is a well established fact in histories of American cities that the policing is always a mixture of stealth, compromise, and heavy handed behavior. Police-the good ones anyway-understand well the forms of criminality and delinquent behavior that cannot be fully eradicated.. People live underground in large part because they are poor: police know that they can't solve poverty, so they have to face widespread hustling. Whether it's the immigrant Italian and Jewish immigrant communities of the early twentieth century or the modern black ghetto, police know that sometimes you can only work to solve problems before they escalate, but that you cannot always prevent the problems from occurring.

What is your take on the "Stop Snitchin'" t-shirt controversy?

No comment.

You write about being an arbiter, settling disputes and stabilizing things underground. In your absence, what keeps things under control?

My role as arbiter was only for a few activities, and only for a short period of time. I was like other brokers in that I sometimes tried to settle a dispute, but my field of engagement was relatively limited, and I was dealing with relatively simple issues like a pricing dispute. There were more complicated situations arising from gang wars, sniping between stores, and infringements of informal laborers into each other's turf that needed the expertise of savvy diplomats. And, the ghetto is full of them.

##