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jwsg's review
3.0
I'd first heard about Anderson's Streetwise in a sociology class, when we were discussing how urban dwellers learn to navigate life in the city, learning the steps to perform what Jane Jacobs termed the "intricate sidewalk ballet". I found the notions of what Anderson termed "street etiquette" and "street wisdom" intriguing, where "street etiquette" refers to the set of informal rules that govern our behaviour in public - rules like not staring at strangers, subtly adjusting the trajectory of one's path to accommodate oncoming pedestrians on the sidewalk, etc. "Street wisdom", by contrast, requires a more sophisticated understanding of the street and allows the individual to read or "see through" situations and respond accordingly. It entails being able to decipher the various codes, behaviours and symbols of the street and in turn, send the appropriate signals as the situation requires.
All that was a very lengthy introduction to give context as to why I'd picked up Streetwise in the first place and why I was excited to read it. As it turns out, Streetwise, contrary to what its title suggests (although the subtitle notes that the book is about "Race, Class and Change in an Urban Community"), is really an ethnographic study of two communities in the so-called Eastern City (probably Philadelphia) that Anderson code-names the Village and Northton. Northton is a ghetto while the Village is a more prosperous, racially mixed community. Streetwise explores the different facets of life in Village-Northton - the changing demographics of the two neighbourhoods, the impact of drugs in the Northton ghetto, sex, family and public safety, etc; one chapter of the book is devoted to the topic of street etiquette and street wisdom.
Much of the focus of Streetwise is actually on Northton, with the Village making the odd cameo in the book after its appearance in Chapter 1 of the book titled "The Village Setting" and Chapter 5 "In the Shadow of the Ghetto". The issues that Streetwise delve into are interesting - I found the discussion on the impact of crack on the community, the addictiveness of crack and how rapidly it can wreak havoc on an individual and the community particularly vivid and affecting. But I felt that the book could have been structured more tightly. Each chapter in the book seemed to stand on its own when tighter links could have been drawn between the chapters; after all, the issues they deal with - drugs, sex codes and family life, security concerns, etc - are interlinked. Still, Anderson's writing is extremely accessible and he paints a vivid portrait of life in Northton.
All that was a very lengthy introduction to give context as to why I'd picked up Streetwise in the first place and why I was excited to read it. As it turns out, Streetwise, contrary to what its title suggests (although the subtitle notes that the book is about "Race, Class and Change in an Urban Community"), is really an ethnographic study of two communities in the so-called Eastern City (probably Philadelphia) that Anderson code-names the Village and Northton. Northton is a ghetto while the Village is a more prosperous, racially mixed community. Streetwise explores the different facets of life in Village-Northton - the changing demographics of the two neighbourhoods, the impact of drugs in the Northton ghetto, sex, family and public safety, etc; one chapter of the book is devoted to the topic of street etiquette and street wisdom.
Much of the focus of Streetwise is actually on Northton, with the Village making the odd cameo in the book after its appearance in Chapter 1 of the book titled "The Village Setting" and Chapter 5 "In the Shadow of the Ghetto". The issues that Streetwise delve into are interesting - I found the discussion on the impact of crack on the community, the addictiveness of crack and how rapidly it can wreak havoc on an individual and the community particularly vivid and affecting. But I felt that the book could have been structured more tightly. Each chapter in the book seemed to stand on its own when tighter links could have been drawn between the chapters; after all, the issues they deal with - drugs, sex codes and family life, security concerns, etc - are interlinked. Still, Anderson's writing is extremely accessible and he paints a vivid portrait of life in Northton.
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