Yun TongSOC010Sidewalks Reflection10/23/2014

Duneier provides rich accounts of the lives of men on the street in Greenwich Village. What structural aspects (like institutions) to you see behind the day-to-day lives on the street? What aspects of history – how we’ve come to be where we are – play into the story Duneier tells? How can sociology help us to understand the relations between the structures, the history, and the individual lives Duneier takes account of?

Social institutions are a complex group of interdependent positions that perform a social role

and reproduce themselves over time1. In Duneier’s story, they appear in the form of the group of book

vendors on Sixth Avenue in New York City. The group of vendors acts as an institution: they are

participants in informal economy that they sell recycled books and magazines for cheaper price. Many

of them are homeless, and sell these books in an attempt to make a living. They do their “business” on

the sidewalk during the day, and sleep on the street corner at night. Only a few of them can afford to

have an apartment and a family. Although these book vendors seem to be living “on the edge” of

existence, some have been doing so for years.

The central character Hakim, who has being working as a book vendor for seven years. He calls himself

as a “hustler,”2 as he never knows what he is going to get everyday. Although vendors participate in an

informal economy, the structure of “vendors’ society” is relatively well established. As vendors, they all

know each other; some of them support and work together, and everyone knows which spot belongs to

whom. They are all good at what they do, and know how to target potential customers. Later, when the

new limited-space-policy is established, most of them still respect each other’s usual spot, but only on

the condition that the vendor show up on time3. However, because of the “first come, first serve”4

policy, a new kind of “job” appears: the “place holder”, in which a homeless person “reserves” a place

1 Conley, You May Ask Yourself, 132 Duneier, Sidewalk, 683 Duneier, Sidewalk, 2484 Duneier, Sidewalk, 243

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in the early morning that vendors will need during the day. When a vendor arrives, the place holder will

ask the vendor to pay them for holding their spot. When conflict breaks out between the vendors, the

bottom line is that no one calls the police; they handle the situation on their own. Vendors also function

as “eyes and ears of this street”5 and “public characters”6. Because vendors make their living on the side

of the street on a daily basis, they are familiar with the surrounding environment and local people, just

as the locals are familiar with them. If there is anything unusual, it would catch the vendors’ attention.

The vendors as a whole are beneficial to the local community; they need local customers and residents,

just as the locals need them.

The majority of sidewalk vendors are black males. When Duneier talked to Hakim formally for

the first time, Hakim wondered, “Can I expect Mitch, as a white sociologist, to understand why that

experience led me to work as a book vendor on Sixth Avenue in the first place?”7 As Hakim suggests

here, race plays a major role in these vendors’ lives. As Duneier points out, “Any society with high

levels of economic inequality, racism, illiteracy, and drug dependency...will have vast numbers of

people who cannot conform to the requirements of its formal institutions.”8 Duneier reflects his idea on

the overall social phenomenon, which trace back the history of American racism and discrimination.

Hakim, an intelligent individual who completed college courses and worked as a proofreader for a law

firm office in 1988, certainly experienced discrimination at work from his co-workers, supervisors and

the director, and was ultimately fired from his job without convincing justification. After that, his life

fell into darkness and rejection, until he finally ended up a book vendor9. Although Hakim’s story is not

necessarily representative of most book vendors (most vendors are high school drop outs or have even

less education), it is clear enough that racism continues to put African Americans in difficult situations

5 Duneier, Sidewalk, 176 Duneier, Sidewalk, 437 Duneier, Sidewalk, 3218 Duneier, Sidewalk, 3179 Duneier, Sidewalk, 319-320

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where they are not treated equally. Duneier points out that “in most cases, their failure to make it in the

formal economy and their use of drugs led to some combination of their a) no longer looking for

employment; b) becoming disconnected from family and friends; and c) having some interaction with

criminal-justice system –leading to period spend in prison with eventual release to the sidewalk.”10 Most

of the vendors are African Americans, and many of them once offenders, substance abusers, and

homeless. Because of that, people tends to put negative stigma on African Americans, and see them

though a “color lens” either intentionally or unintentionally. However, Duneier argues that the reason

these people become deviants is not because they are born deviant; rather, “they behave the way they do

because they have been stigmatized and so lack access to basic resources.”11 In the other words, it is the

society circumstance, which makes people become who they are. In order to identify the root of the

problem, sociology as a social science is the way to seek answers to these troubling issues.

Sociology, as a study of human society, helps us understand the relationship between social

structures, history, and individual lives. With close observation we can, much Duneier has done, apply

certain social phenomena into a broader context. In his observation of book and magazine vendors,

Duneier discovered that the life of these vendors at Sixth Avenue is not merely what it may seem at first

glance. Deeper and more pressing problems lie beneath the surface: 1) the history such as slavery and

racism; 2) social structures, such as formal and informal economic system state policies, and 3)

individual lives, circumstances, and problems, exemplified by these vendors (i.e. how they came to be

vendors in the first place). All of these factors help to explain why and how this group of people came to

live the life they are now living. Duneier argues that the “broken windows” theory can be biased since

people may make simple assumptions of deviants without an understanding of how these people live

their lives.12 He therefore proposes a “fixed window” theory (which reverses the logic of “broken

10 Duneier, Sidewalk, 5211 Duneier, Sidewalk, 31312 Duneier, Sidewalk, 315

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windows” theory): when the government takes responsibility to help people who are in deviant

situations, and helps them find a stable job and shelter instead of making their life even more difficult by

restricting their rights and freedoms, these people will eventually find their purpose in life, and bring

positive social control.13 With the “fixed windows”, Duneier believes that people will be able to

understand and improve, and society can be a much better place.

Reference:

Duneier, Mitchell. Sidewalk. New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.

13 Duneier, Sidewalk, 315.

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