Sidewalk is a book written by sociologist Mitchell Duneier that explores the lives of street vendors in New York City, specifically those who work on the sidewalk selling books and other goods. Through his observations and interviews with these vendors, Duneier aims to shed light on the often overlooked and marginalized community of street vendors and to challenge the negative stereotypes often associated with them.
One of the main themes of the book is the importance of work and the ways in which work can shape one's identity. Duneier argues that street vendors, despite facing numerous challenges and setbacks, are hardworking individuals who are committed to their livelihoods. By selling goods on the sidewalk, they are able to provide for themselves and their families, and they take pride in their ability to do so.
Another theme of the book is the role of community in the lives of street vendors. Duneier shows how the vendors form strong bonds with one another, and how they rely on each other for support and guidance. These relationships are especially important given the precarious and often isolating nature of their work.
In addition to exploring the lives of street vendors, Sidewalk also delves into the broader issues surrounding the regulation of street vending in New York City. Duneier highlights the ways in which the city's regulations disproportionately impact street vendors, who are often subject to fines and other penalties for minor infractions.
Overall, Sidewalk is a thought-provoking and poignant look at the lives of street vendors in New York City. Through his research and interviews, Duneier gives voice to a group of people who are often overlooked and misunderstood, and he challenges readers to reconsider their own assumptions about this marginalized community.
Sidewalk Chapter Summary
The drug use, criminal behavior and lack of family relations among the blacks on the sidewalk surely coincided with a plethora of social facts that Durkheim would find destructive to social cohesion and moral control. He doesn't discount any of the complexities on either side. What do you expect someone to do when he needs to go to the bathroom but there are no public bathrooms nearby and establishments refuse to let you use their facilities? I agree - it angered me too. . Of course the biggest change shortly after this was published was 911. More specifically, finding out lifespan, yearly income and eventual outcomes of the people interviewed would be helpful in determining if the results were isolated incidents or characteristic traits of the lifestyle.
Sidewalk is an excellent supplementary text for a range of courses: INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY: Shows how to make important links between micro and macro; how a research project works; how sociology can transform common sense. The summons requires a vendor to appear before the Environmental Control Board, a civil tribunal. I encounter homeless people or at least people I suspect to be homeless in my work at the library all the time and while I may have more open opinions about them then the majority of Americans it was still good to read a book on the subject. Wacquant's sniping and his criticism - disingenuous at times - undermines his arguments but that is another story altogether but he does make a valid point: Duneier does overreach himself at points, romanticising the figure of the street vendor and perhaps painting these individuals who literally inhabit the sidewalk in an overly sympathetic light. Read this book and see how it challenges your perspective of homelessness. That said, Sidewalk is utterly fascinating from start to finish. They interpret the books and magazines and carries out discussions at the streets.
And although one could argue that Duneier's analysis is missing a feminist perspective, the author explains that he has chosen to focus on males because they are the predominant gender on the sidewalk. And once the "fuck it" mentality hits for whatever reason, street vending is one of the better places to end up, namely because their is a system of social support there. METHODS: Shows how ethnography works; includes a detailed methodological appendix and an afterword by research subject Hakim Hasan. The author clearly portrays how homeless people are labelled by the state. Read it to introduce yourself to a world you would otherwise have not known -- at least not on such an intimate level.
While analyzing megacities and metropolitan areas, one can easily understand the segregation patterns in the city by race, caste and class. Have we ever thought about those, who lives at the sidewalks of city? If, in fact, we found that the causes and outcomes of this lifestyle were more dynamic in terms of how it happens, it would impact which social theory is more applicable in fighting the root cause. . The men and women and 6th street lived by a very real set of rules and guidelines that helped them navigate external and internal pressures Alice and living in a less prosecuted environment would consider bizarre. I felt the research and sociological analysis was excellent, and although i was reading this book for a class i greatly enjoyed it. Also, the work can be considered as a classic in the area of sociology of culture.
. Duneier writes a classic ethnology of the sidewalk vendors in New York City. The author also could have spoken to more unhoused women. The goal to bring awareness to others on what these individuals had to face and critically challenge how lives can be changed within areas like this ZIT zone. Surely, the book vendor and the relationship he had with his patrons was a way to both benefit and engage at-risk youths to read and to make a living. One is tempted to ask what would happen if both populations were to sit down collectively and seek a more permanent solution.
RACE AND ETHNIC RELATIONS: Untangles race, class, and gender as they work together on the street. I've shared some of the content with friends and family. Thank goodness for the sidewalk" 80 seem more worthy of a Mills and Boon novel than an ethnographic study. My preferred is that last one, though of course we can always include elements of race where appropriate which is not everywhere : one thing Duneier does well on this point is to illuminate when actions taken by one group of people in the narrative e. It was, I thought, a very interesting, very balanced approach to showing the lives and difficulties of a small segment of people in NY City.
It also places serious emphasis on the power of social institutions and how they can dictate the birth, path and final outcome of someone born in similar circumstances. And this is what I've found too. He shows us that what repulses us from the homeless - the public urination, the smell of the unwashed - is oftentimes the result of the constraints imposed by society, rather than choice or what we might believe to be simply indifference to basic hygiene. Indeed, this suggests that racial tensions, albeit indirect, are still very real and active because of perceived cultural differences. However, the author brings out the positive side of this collective lives at the sidewalk. He has won awards for his contributions to the field of …show more content… The broken window was a theory proposed by James Wilson and George Kelling in 1982. How does they contribute to the society? SOCIOLOGY OF CULTURE: Sidewalk demonstrates the connections between culture and human agency and innovation; it interrogates distinctions between legitimate subcultures and deviant collectivities; it illustrates conflicts over cultural diversity in public space; and, ultimately, it shows how conflicts over meaning are central to social life.
Torres managed a convenient store located on Greenwich Ave right near Sixth Ave. This book is GREAT, especially for people living in big cities. One of these groups is the people who work on Sixth Avenue in New York City. Females lacked some fundamental confidence to engage in any way that could be called in the parlance of Sidewalk "affiliative. This text has several distinct levels of examination for readers of all walks of life; on the first level, we simply get to hear about individual and some communal experiences that are likely foreign to us, in the words of the largely men who have them; on the second, these experiences are turned into conversations and interactions with others, broadening the social context; on the third, both the experiences and interactions are framed in the perspective of law-enforcement personnel, passersby, and local business owners; on the fourth, we hear from Business Improvement Districts and those higher up in law and politics; on the fifth, everything becomes very "human-ey," and distinctions and likenesses are drawn between all members of all circles, giving a rather messy picture of life on the sidewalk. I think survival strategies assume profound importance in relation to how closely one lives hand to mouth. Mitchell Duneier is an American sociologist who earned his doctorate from the University of Chicago.
