Sidewalk by Mitchell Duneier a Summary
The phenomenon of the 'New Poor' is an issue that many industrialized countries are now facing. The new world economy, driven by advanced technology and a global flow of finance and information, has had a drastic impact on social order (Goode and Maskovsky 4). There is an increasing economic gap between the lower and upper classes of society, and groups of people are finding that there is no place for them in the mainstream economy. One of these groups is the people who work on Sixth Avenue in New York City. In his ethnography, Sidewalk, sociologist Mitchell Duneier provides a detailed and descriptive account of life on the street and shows how the people - mainly unhoused, black men - living and working on the sidewalk have created an informal social structure to serve their emotional and financial needs. Duneier argues that this social structure also benefits society as a whole. However, local politics and legislation also play a significant role in shaping the environment in which these people live and work, and "their attempts to maintain self-respect through 'honest labour'" (Gowan 76) are not always supported by Duneier's ethnography and message are attractive for a number of reasons: it well w
By using the cup in a political act against Giuliani, Mudrick could no longer be arrested for urinating on the street. Mudrick exploits, to a certain extent, his status as a male when he "hassles" women on the street. Duneier's MethodologyDuneier applies sound ethnographic methodology to carry out his research, beginning with initial conversations and observations in 1992, and then moving into extensive participant-observation and interviewing (both unstructured and semi-structured) through to 1999, when his research came to an end. As Duneier explains, "Informal mentoring and controls simply cannot contain all acts that go against common notions of decency, nor could we expect government to establish a policy that would do any better. He empowers his subjects as actors and gives them a voice in their own account of their lives - they are the experts. The station supported over two hundred thousand commuters daily, and offered numerous amenities desirable to an unhoused person: air conditioning in the summer, heat in the winter, numerous restaurants that donated leftovers at the end of the day, and large lavatories suitable for washing oneself. This prompted a lawsuit in the early 1990s between Streetwatch, an association that monitored police treatment of unhoused people (128), and the National Railroad Passenger Corporation. Two miles uptown from Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street is Pennsylvania Railroad Station, where, in the early 1980s, as many as 400 homeless slept. I came in to use the bathroom and they locked the door. However, he finds that some men still engage in acts, however small they may seem, considered indecent by the general public. He provides them with guidance and encouragement, and in certain cases, financial support. Duneier's journalistic style adds to the book's appeal, as the places and people are very real to the reader. The afterward of the book is actually written by one of Duneier's key informants, Hakim Hasan, a book vendor on Sixth Avenue.
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