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Sudhir Venkatesh, Gang Leader for a Day: In the late 1980s, Venkatesh wrote his dissertation on the people of the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago. He followed around a youngish gang leader (a man) and an older building politician (a woman), lost perspective, often failed to understand their worlds, often allowed himself the privilege of not understanding, screwed up, got overinvolved, and in general produced a compelling narrative of how to get seduced by your informants while also learning something. His stint as gang leader for a day was essentially for show; he didn’t make any important decisions, which says something both about how close he got to his informants and how far he stayed from them—by awkwardly mutual agreement. It was easier in a variety of ways for his informants to look down on him as a soft naif, good for humorous interludes and not much else, and likewise easier for him to remember, but only occasionally, that he—unlike everyone else in the projects—could get out just by taking a bus. I’d love to read a critical analysis of his narrative in this book.
Anyway, his account of the men’s lives is more engaging; I didn’t feel that he got/was allowed as close a look at the women’s lives, though his discussion of how people scrape by economically on $100 a month was fascinating, and I’m semi-inclined to seek out his Off the Books, a more academic treatment of that same topic. (His work on the economic rewards of selling drugs is featured in Freakonomics. His articles on sex work are also quite interesting—and freely available at that link. He and his coauthors discuss reasons why people choose sex work, usually from limited options, and the differences between performing sex work and seeing oneself as a person with a career in sex work.) Ethically, the behavior recounted in the book was a bit of a nightmare, especially one thing that he does late on—but that doesn’t mean the research shouldn’t have been done.
David M. Oshinsky, Polio: A series of mini-biographies of people involved in the
twentieth-century American fight against polio, this book is also (and perhaps predominantly) a story about how modern nonprofit fundraising and medical research became organized and institutionalized. Engaging enough history, but the thing that really stood out was that infighting and the entanglement between personal feelings and policy positions are endemic to any human endeavor.
Betsy Brown Braun, Just Tell Me What to Say: Sensible Tips and Scripts for Perplexed Parents: I got this free as a LibraryThing reviewer. It’s very clearly written, though *crosses fingers* our kids aren’t yet old enough to display the behavior problems on which she’s focused. The title is quite descriptive: each section really has tips and scripts, including sample sentences you can use, which seems to me like an excellent way to give yourself permission to have and maintain rules. I’ve already seen the value of a catchphrase when my son comes to me to ask for something his dad denied him—he doesn’t quite get “I’m standing right here” yet, so it’s usually something I just heard him ask for. Anyway, “You don’t get a different answer from me” is working okay so far. My husband laughed at me when I told him Braun advises never laughing at your kids; we do a lot of laughing at our house—but I think the generalizable message is really to treat your kids like (a) not adults (b) but still people, and not to laugh at them when you wouldn’t be willing to laugh at yourself. I doubt I’d reread the entire book, but I can see refreshing myself with particular scripts on certain issues.
Anyway, his account of the men’s lives is more engaging; I didn’t feel that he got/was allowed as close a look at the women’s lives, though his discussion of how people scrape by economically on $100 a month was fascinating, and I’m semi-inclined to seek out his Off the Books, a more academic treatment of that same topic. (His work on the economic rewards of selling drugs is featured in Freakonomics. His articles on sex work are also quite interesting—and freely available at that link. He and his coauthors discuss reasons why people choose sex work, usually from limited options, and the differences between performing sex work and seeing oneself as a person with a career in sex work.) Ethically, the behavior recounted in the book was a bit of a nightmare, especially one thing that he does late on—but that doesn’t mean the research shouldn’t have been done.
David M. Oshinsky, Polio: A series of mini-biographies of people involved in the
twentieth-century American fight against polio, this book is also (and perhaps predominantly) a story about how modern nonprofit fundraising and medical research became organized and institutionalized. Engaging enough history, but the thing that really stood out was that infighting and the entanglement between personal feelings and policy positions are endemic to any human endeavor.
Betsy Brown Braun, Just Tell Me What to Say: Sensible Tips and Scripts for Perplexed Parents: I got this free as a LibraryThing reviewer. It’s very clearly written, though *crosses fingers* our kids aren’t yet old enough to display the behavior problems on which she’s focused. The title is quite descriptive: each section really has tips and scripts, including sample sentences you can use, which seems to me like an excellent way to give yourself permission to have and maintain rules. I’ve already seen the value of a catchphrase when my son comes to me to ask for something his dad denied him—he doesn’t quite get “I’m standing right here” yet, so it’s usually something I just heard him ask for. Anyway, “You don’t get a different answer from me” is working okay so far. My husband laughed at me when I told him Braun advises never laughing at your kids; we do a lot of laughing at our house—but I think the generalizable message is really to treat your kids like (a) not adults (b) but still people, and not to laugh at them when you wouldn’t be willing to laugh at yourself. I doubt I’d reread the entire book, but I can see refreshing myself with particular scripts on certain issues.
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Have you read Mitchell Dunier's Sidewalk? It talks about the life of street vendors and panhandlers in Guiliani's New York. I think it avoids the problems that you mention. The people Dunier meets seem more like co-researchers rather than subjects.
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