Sudhir Venkatesh
Affiliations
- Faculty Fellow, Department of Sociology
- Organizer, Center for Urban Research and Policy Seminar Series
Research
Sudhir Venkatesh's research is rooted in ethnographic investigation of urban neighborhoods in the United States (New York, Chicago) and Paris, France. His most recent book is Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor (Harvard University Press, 2006), an ethnographic study of illegal economies in Chicago. Off the Books received the C. Wright Mills Award (2007) and a Best Book Award from Slate.Com (2006). His first book, American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto (2000), explored the social organization, moral universe, and history of a Chicago housing development, The Robert Taylor Homes. His forthcoming book, Gang Leader for a Day, is a reported memoir (Penguin Press, 2008). He is also the co-editor of Youth, Globalization and the Law (Stanford University Press 2006) and Director of the Youth and Globalization Collaborative Research Network at the Social Science Research Council. He is currently completing a long-term project on sex work in New York and Chicago with the economist Steven Levitt.
Other ongoing research projects include a study of immigration and settlement in the suburbs of Paris, an in-depth study of re-entry among the formerly incarcerated in New York, and a ten-year documentation of transformation of public housing in Chicago. His documentary film "Dislocation," follows families as they relocate from condemned public housing developments. The documentary aired on PBS in 2005, and more information can be found at www.dislocationfilm.com.
Venkatesh received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago. He was a Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University from 1996-1999. He is currently Director of the Center for Urban Research and Policy, and Director of the Charles H. Revson Fellowship Program.
Selected Work
- Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor, Harvard University Press, 2006
- "Vice Careers: The changing contours of sex work in New York City," Alexandra K. Murphy, Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh. Forthcoming in Qualitative Sociology, June 2006
- "The Gang: History and the Corporate Turn" Commissioned paper by Annual Review of Sociology, 2002
- "Theory in Contemporary Street Gang Research" In Alternate Perspectives on Gangs and Communities, Ed(s). L. Kontos, D. Brotherton, and L. Barrios. Columbia Univ, forthcoming
- "The Social Organization of Public Policy in Contexts of Urban Poverty" In Sociological Studies of Children, Volume 8. Edited by David Kinney. Stanford, CT: JAI Press, Autumn, 2001
- "Chicago's Pragmatic Planners: American Sociology and the Myth of Community" Social Science History, Summer 2001
- "Growing Up in the Projects: The Economic Lives of a Cohort of Men who Came of Age in Chicago Public Housing" With Steven D. Levitt. American Economic Review, May 2001
See Also
- Research grants undertaken by Sudhir Venkatesh
- Featured publications by Sudhir Venkatesh
- Newsletter article: Bringing Down the House: Documenting the Transformation of Public Housing
- Press release: A Tale of Two Cities: Urban Sustainability in New York and Mexico
- Press release: First Screening of DisLocation, Sudhir Venkatesh
