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 hisgroundbreaking 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.

About the Author

Sudhir Venkatesh is Williams B. Ransford Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and a UChicago alumnus (PhD ’97). His book Gang Leader for a Day, received a Best Book award from The Economist and his previous works have received accolades from Slate.com and Publishers Weekly. A contributor to The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, and a frequent guest on NPR, Venkatesh is de facto public intellectual.

This event is free and open to the public.

Presented by the Global Voices Lecture Series and the Seminary Co-op Bookstore

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Floating City can be purchased through the Seminary Co-op Bookstore at http://www.semcoop.com/book/9781594204166.

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