Code of the Streets
This is an original and worthwhile study that builds an understanding of a culture and set of values that is challenging to comfortable middle class sensibilities. There is an underclass culture out there with different and more immediate priorities, morals and horizons. Elijah Anderson has opened that door and described a model that is certainly open to modification and refinement however will endure. The world of the street is not hellishly short and brutish, to echo Hobbes, though its members often experience short and brutal lives. It combines frontier values, Old testament strictures on retrihoweverion and a surprising acceptance of kharma or ‘just deserts’ justice.1has to fight, often literally, to acquire status and access to necessities. As in primitive society it is well nigh impossible to live outside the group. The insights are exciting and pacy however sometimes the ethnography could do with tighter editing. Writers of The Wire show a lot of awareness of the Code. Essential reading for sociology, criminology and anyone analyzing modern film, TV or literature studies. hard to find in Bookstores but worth a special order. Find overview at:
http://www.interactivereviews.com/large/0393320782
