"Getting Paid": Youth Crime and Work in the Inner City (Anthropology of Contemporary Issues)

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Comparative Ethnography Hits the Spot, 2003-01-24
Mercer Sullivan's text follows three youth cliques in the Brooklyn area (in neighborhoods he coins Projectville, La Barriada and Hamilton Park), and studies their involvement in, and desistance from, local youth crime. The study is largely ethnographic, and so Sullivan alternates between dialogue between his subjects and an analysis on their criminal patterns. Sullivan also discusses how the physical ecology of the neighborhood, the transiency of the residents, levels of education, economic opportunity, family values, and access to a network of human resources--a system of social capital--affects the youths' criminal careers, and whether or not these acts of criminality are for the purpose of entertainment or income-generation.pBeing published in 1989, the text is a bit outdated, but his discussion as to youth crime in neighborhoods of social isolation is still very relevant today. Well worth reading.