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Author Venkatesh, Sudhir Alladi.

Title Off the books : the underground economy of the urban poor / Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh.

Imprint Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2006.

Copies

Location Call No. OPAC Message Status
 Axe 3rd Floor Stacks  330 V559o 2006    ---  Available
Description xix, 426 p. ; 22 cm.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (p. 389-410) and index.
Summary Sudhir Venkatesh takes us into Maquis Park, a poor black neighborhood on Chicago's Southside, to explore the desperate, dangerous, and remarkable ways in which a community survives. We find there an entire world of unregulated, unreported, and untaxed work, a system of living off the books that is daily life in the ghetto. From women who clean houses and prepare lunches for the local hospital to small-scale entrepreneurs like the mechanic who works in an alley; from the preacher who provides mediation services to the beauty parlor owner who rents her store out for gambling parties; and from street vendors hawking socks and incense to the drug dealing and extortion of the local gang, we come to see how these activities form the backbone of the ghetto economy.--From publisher description.
Contents Living underground -- Home at work -- The entrepreneur -- The street hustler -- The preacher -- Our gang -- As the shady world turns.
Subject Informal sector (Economics) -- Illinois -- Chicago.
Poor -- Illinois -- Chicago.
ISBN 0674023552 (alk. paper)
9780674023550 (alk. paper)
Standard No. YDXCP 2420345
IG# 0674023552
NZ1 10844044

 
    
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