Floating City: A Rogue Sociologist Lost and Found in New York's Underground Economy

by Sudhir Venkatesh Narrated by Sudhir Venkatesh

Overview

The acclaimed Columbia University sociologist and author of Gang Leader for a Day*returns to the streets to connect the dots of New York's divergent economic worlds and crack the code of the city's underground economy. Based on Venkatesh's interviews with 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.
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A memoir of sociological investigation, Floating City draws from Venkatesh's decade of research within the affluent communities of Upper East Side socialites and Midtown businessmen, the drug gangs of Harlem and the sex workers of Brooklyn, the artists of Tribeca and the escort services of Hell's Kitchen. Venkatesh arrived in the city after his groundbreaking research in Chicago, where crime remained stubbornly local: Gangs stuck to their housing projects and criminals stayed on their corners. But in Floating City, Venkatesh discovers that New York's underground economy unites instead of divides inhabitants: a vast network of “off the books” transactions linking the high and low worlds of the city. Venkatesh shows how dealing in drugs and sex and undocumented labor bridges the conventional divides between rich and poor, unmasking a city knit together by the invisible threads of the underground economy.
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Floating City: A Rogue Sociologist Lost and Found in New York's Underground Economy chronicles Venkatesh's decade of discovery and loss in the shifting terrain of New York, where research subjects might disappear suddenly and new allies emerge by chance, where close friends might reveal themselves to be criminals of the lowest order. Propelled by Venkatesh's numerous interviews and firsthand research, Floating City at its heart is a story of one man struggling to understand a complex global city constantly in the throes of becoming.

Editorial Reviews

NOVEMBER 2013 - AudioFile

The author first rose to prominence with his study of Chicago gangs, for which he gained access to their daily activities. Now he’s back with an examination of the underground economy of New York City. Narrating his own work, Venkatesh takes listeners with him as he struggles to make inroads into the illicit activities that take place in the big city. Initially finding it difficult to find his footing, Venkatesh eventually makes some helpful connections, ultimately uncovering bridges between rich and poor through his interviews with sex workers, immigrants, and drug dealers. The author's narration of his own work is especially instructive and illustrative because of his familiarity with his subjects. S.E.G. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

The New York Times Book Review - Daniel Brook

…in offering vivid portraits of sources with so much to lose, [Floating City] is journalism of a very high order.

Publishers Weekly

Crime and vice are the ties that bind an unlikely community of New Yorkers in this fascinating X-ray of the city. Columbia University sociologist Venkatesh (Gang Leader for a Day) profiles and befriends shady strivers, from immigrant porn-shop clerks working a kaleidoscope of illicit businesses to a Harlem drug dealer who supplies well-heeled white artists and hipsters. But Venkatesh focuses on the sex trade: ghetto streetwalkers; Ivy League grads moonlighting as call girls; smug Wall Street johns who insist their dalliances strengthen their marriages; and an heiress who sets herself up as a madam. Venkatesh’s engrossing narrative dissects the intricacies of illegal commerce and the subtle ways it both divides and entwines different classes and races, while painting rich, novelistic portraits of its participants and their dreams of self-reinvention. Meanwhile, he weathers his own identity crisis as he vacillates between voyeuristic journalism and scientific sociology. The latter is the book’s weakest element—sketchy pensées about globalization, entropy, and “the talent to use and lose improvised social ties”—and nothing that Fitzgerald or Tom Wolfe couldn’t tell you about. Fortunately, Venkatesh’s vivid prose, shrewd eye, and empathy make him a worthy successor to them as a chronicler of a city on the make. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME. (Sept.)

From the Publisher

New York Magazine:
“If you live in the New York of Shake Shack burgers and business meetings at the W Hotel, you should read Sudhir Venkatesh’s Floating City…. If it’s criminal or iniquitous and happens here, it’s probably to be found in this book.”

The Guardian:
“Compelling…. Like the acclaimed writer Katherine Boo, Venkatesh is interested in deep research, in spending years with subjects and piecing together a detailed portrait. Unlike Boo, Venkatesh is present in his books. He has crossed the line and entered the scene.”

New York Daily News:
“Entire human ecosystems exist undocumented and hidden from view. That Venkatesh can bring them to the surface—if only for brief flashes of their existence—illuminates the worldview of future sociologists, policy-makers, students and citizens.”

Publishers Weekly (starred):
"[A] fascinating X-ray of the city...Venkatesh's engrossing narrative dissects the intricacies of illegal commerce and the subtle ways it both divides and entwines different classes and races, while painting rich, novelistic portraits of its participants and their dreams of self-reinvention."

Kirkus Reviews:
“Venkatesh displays a piercing sense of empathy and ability to translate dry sociological principles into an understanding of the difficult lives of the urban poor....[He] has established a singular voice in urban sociology, and his immersive research and insights remain penetrating and unique.”

Library Journal:
“Venkatesh has a talent for transforming ethnographic observations into character-driven accounts. [Floating City] is an exciting and compelling work....Readers interested in the daily workings of the illicit economy will be fascinated by the complexities and contradictions of the underground economy that Venkatesh details.”

Booklist:
“Venkatesh brings to life the underground economy of New York, where rich and poor and various ethnicities and backgrounds meet and function while they ‘float.’ An enlightening read.

Library Journal

Venkatesh's (sociology, Columbia Univ.; Gang Leader for a Day) research has attracted both scrutiny and awe from fellow academics. Most sociology books don't make best sellers lists, but Venkatesh has a talent for transforming ethnographic observations into character-driven accounts. Similar to his earlier work, in which he immersed himself in Chicago's gang culture, this is a participant-observer account of crime combined with reflections on the prescribed world of academic sociology. In this instance Venkatesh turns his attention to New York, focusing on people who inhabit the overlapping worlds of immigrant-run porn shops, escort services, the midlevel illegal drug trade, and Chelsea art galleries. By following how these people "float" among social circles and by documenting their lives, he reveals networks running between the underground and highly visible parts of New York City. VERDICT At times Venkatesh is overly reflective on his status as a "rogue sociologist" who challenges the academy rather than focusing on the questions he is probing. Nonetheless, this is an exciting and compelling work for general readers. It relies heavily on narrative techniques and is light on theory and figures. Readers interested in the daily workings of the illicit economy will be fascinated by the complexities and contradictions of the underground economy that Venkatesh details. [See Prepub Alert, 3/18/13.]—Ahmer Qadeer, Brooklyn

NOVEMBER 2013 - AudioFile

The author first rose to prominence with his study of Chicago gangs, for which he gained access to their daily activities. Now he’s back with an examination of the underground economy of New York City. Narrating his own work, Venkatesh takes listeners with him as he struggles to make inroads into the illicit activities that take place in the big city. Initially finding it difficult to find his footing, Venkatesh eventually makes some helpful connections, ultimately uncovering bridges between rich and poor through his interviews with sex workers, immigrants, and drug dealers. The author's narration of his own work is especially instructive and illustrative because of his familiarity with his subjects. S.E.G. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2013-08-15
A well-known sociologist explores how the underground economy is dissolving racial and class barriers in an increasingly globalized New York City. Although Venkatesh (Sociology/Columbia Univ.; Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets, 2008, etc.) established his career via his penetrating studies of the Chicago underclass, he declares that in New York, a "new world of permeable borders beckoned [where] the criminal underworld interacts with the mainstream world to make the world of the future." He notes that although the book grew out of research conducted since 1997 on sex workers and the underground economy in these cities, it is not strictly academic but also contains elements of memoir. After establishing his essential thesis about New York's new permeability among ambitious residents willing to "float," he delves into more specific social narratives, beginning with the lives of Indian video store workers and aging Hispanic prostitutes against the backdrop of Manhattan's Giuliani-era gentrification. Venkatesh then moves on to a nuanced portrait of a Harlem cocaine dealer trying to decode the lucrative downtown (white) market (a section reminiscent of his previous book) and to the noirish lives of several women attempting to be successful as managers of upscale prostitutes. These women discussed the "large numbers of women [arriving] in New York with a surprising new openness to the idea of using sex work to supplement poorly paying straight jobs." The author displays a piercing sense of empathy and ability to translate dry sociological principles into an understanding of the difficult lives of the urban poor. Less effective are his reveries on his own changing personal circumstances, which include divorce and the struggles of academic careerism, and his attempts to observe the feckless social and career rituals of Manhattan's youthful upper class. Although the overall narrative is unwieldy and at times indulgent, Venkatesh has established a singular voice in urban sociology, and his immersive research and insights remain penetrating and unique. Will appeal to readers fascinated by the intersections of class, prosperity and crime.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169382457
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	09/12/2013
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

We reached a dark staircase in the back of the strip club; he pushed me up one flight, then pressed me against the wall with his massive palm while his other hand rapped on a metal door. Inside sat three extras from a John Cassavettes movie – a young woman in lingerie and two middle-aged men with gaunt faces and greased black hair combed back over their heads. One of them had a calculator in his hand, the other played with a small rubber band. Both had unbuttoned shirts and silver chains in their chest hair. Both shot me bored looks as the half-naked girl continued with what she was saying.
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Floating City"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Sudhir Venkatesh.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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