Sidewalk Mitchell Duneier Pdf: Exploring the Dynamics of Social Interaction and Survival on the Pave

Have we ever thought about those, who lives at the sidewalks of city?How do they live in streets? What about their interpersonal relations? How is their social organization? How does they contribute to the society?

Sidewalk written by Mitchell Duneier, an urban sociologist, portrays the lives of people at the sidewalks of cities, including street vendors, magazine scavengers and panhandlers. The ethnographic study conducted at sixth avenue in Greenwich village makes an in-depth understanding of lives of sidewalk people, which is largely constituted by poor black men. Despite being an upper middle class white sociologist, the author carries out participant observation method to be one among them and to carry out a detailed study of his subjects. The work can be considered as a classic in sociology as it combines different subfields of sociology like sociology of culture and urban sociology. The whole study is revolved around the day to day lives and experiences of most disadvantaged and marginalized section in American society, the black men. Unlike the conventional social research studies that starts with a research question, this study begins without any prior assumptions of author, but the entire study is born out from the curiosity of the author to understand the daily affairs of the people around.

Sidewalk Mitchell Duneier Pdf

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THE GISTThe entire book carries out vivid description of a sidewalk at sixth avenue of Greenwich village, which is occupied by vendors, magazine scavengers and panhandlers.It begins with the meeting up of author with a street vendor Hakim and it is through him, the author finds out more details of lives other people and their role in informal economy of a big city.When the author finds out the reasons for people occupying sidewalks of the city, he finds out that, there are many socio-political reasons that pushed men to move to peripheries of cities. Acutepoverty and social problems in neighborhoods are the major reasons that made men to migrate to the cities. Like the author says,

1: It helps them to get an understanding about themselves and their existence2: It helps them to have discussions with strangers, thus makes them to sustain in the city.Thus sidewalk can be considered not only as an ethnographical work that contributes to the domain of sociology, but also it instills sociological imagination in us, thereby makes us to think about the multidimensional issues of marginalized section in society. Race- Class inequalities, poverty and migration are a few among many, that are mentioned in the book. In every society, ghettoization has become common, in which poor people live together due to several socio-economic constraints. The living conditions of these people are quite problematic as others consider them as a threat to others. However, in this work, the author goes against the commonsensical understanding of the role of street people and through this work, the author adds much to our existing understanding of lives of marginalized in society,thus giving a chance for their voices to be heard out.

An exceptional ethnography marked by clarity and candor, Sidewalk takes us into the socio-cultural environment of those who, though often seen as threatening or unseemly, work day after day on "the blocks" of one of New York's most diverse neighborhoods. Sociologist Duneier, author of Slim's Table, offers an accessible and compelling group portrait of several poor black men who make their livelihoods on the sidewalks of Greenwich Village selling secondhand goods, panhandling, and scavenging books and magazines. Duneier spent five years with these individuals, and in Sidewalk he argues that, contrary to the opinion of various city officials, they actually contribute significantly to the order and well-being of the Village. An important study of the heart and mind of the street, Sidewalk also features an insightful afterword by longtime book vendor Hakim Hasan. This fascinating study reveals today's urban life in all its complexity: its vitality, its conflicts about class and race, and its surprising opportunities for empathy among strangers. 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.RACE AND ETHNIC RELATIONS: Untangles race, class, and gender as they work together on the street.URBAN STUDIES: Asks how public space is used and contested by men and women, blacks and whites, rich and poor, and how street life and political economy interact.DEVIANCE: Looks at labeling processes in treatment of the homeless; interrogates the "broken windows" theory of policing.LAW AND SOCIETY: Closely examines the connections between formal and informal systems of social control.METHODS: Shows how ethnography works; includes a detailed methodological appendix and an afterword by research subject Hakim Hasan.CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: Sidewalk engages the rich terrain of recent developments regarding representation, writing, and authority; in the tradition of Elliot Liebow and Ulf Hannerz, it deals with age old problems of the social and cultural experience of inequality; this is a telling study of culture on the margins of American society.CULTURAL STUDIES: Breaking down disciplinary boundaries, Sidewalk shows how books and magazines are received and interpreted in discussions among working-class people on the sidewalk; it shows how cultural knowledge is deployed by vendors and scavengers to generate subsistence in public space.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. 2ff7e9595c