San Antonio College Library

Based on Venkatesh's interviews with New York City prostitutes and socialites, immigrants and academics, high end drug bosses and street-level dealers, "Floating City" exposes the underground as the city's true engine of social transformation and economic prosperity--revealing a wholly unprecedented vision of New York. A remarkable memoir of sociological investigation.

"Drive through just about any low-income neighborhood and you're sure to see streets lined with pawnshops, check cashers, rent-to-own stores, payday and tax refund lenders, auto title pawns, and buy-here-pay-here used car lots. We're awash in "alternative financial services" directed at the poor and those with credit problems. Howard Karger describes this world as an economic Wild West, where just about any financial scheme that's not patently illegal...

These essays examine the problems of defining, measuring and understanding the implications of "underground economies" that are surmised to have emerged in many of the world's developed nations. The conceptual problem of how to measure unreported income is examined and alternatives suggested.

For the first time, an anthropologist has managed to gain the confianza and long-term friendship of street-level drug dealers in one of the roughest ghetto neighborhoods in the United States - East Harlem. For four years, the author had completely free rein to observe, tape-record, and photograph every facet of the lives of some two dozen Puerto Rican crack dealers. By presenting their crack-house conversations in context, he conveys in their own...