Ghetto Capitalism

From Slate.com, a review of Sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh's new book on the mystery of the underground economy - Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor.

If you read "Freakonomics," you might remember Sudhir Venkatesh - he was a graduate student at the University of Chicago who entered poor black Chicago neighborhoods while studying urban poverty, and it was his research that provided the data for the chapter "Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live With Their Moms?"

He spent years in a 10-square-block neighborhood on Chicago's South Side observing the clandestine work of gangbangers and mechanics, prostitutes and pastors, based on that research he wrote "Off the Books:"

"Beneath the closed storefronts, burned-out buildings, potholed boulevards, and empty lots, there is an intricate, fertile web of exchange, tied together by people with tremendous human capital and craftsmanship," he writes. In this view, even gang leader Big Cat is a "stakeholder" in the neighborhood, with an interest in seeing norms adhered to and order preserved. "It's not a crack house," as an old Onion headline had it. "It's a crack home."