Analysis Of Gang Leader For A Day

The story, Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh, is a ethnographic study of a Black King Gang in the Robert Taylor community. Venkatesh accidentally stumbles upon the gang lead by J.T. and decided to study them. Throughout his journey he learns from the violence and illegal activity he witnesses that “in the projects it’s more important that you take care of the problem first. Then you worry about how you took care of it”’ (Venkatesh. 2008:164). He witnesses beatings, selling of illegal drugs, and exploitation of residents; but he also gained a lot of knowledge about the community. He works with J.T. and Ms. Bailey, the community leader, closely through his study. J.T. has taken a sociology class and he allows Venkatesh to shadow the gang

Avoiding harm means that “social research should never injure the people being studied” (Babbie. 1992: 465). Harm is not only physical, but very often psychological also. The avoiding all harm ethical standard is very hard to fulfil in practice because “there is no way for the researcher to ensure against all these possible injuries” and there can always be small problems that no one can predict (Babbie. 1992: 466). That being said, research have an ethical obligation to prevent all harm that they can. If Venkatesh applied this ethical standard in his study, he would have learned how to avoid bringing harm to gang members. It is very important to understand that he must immediately report to police as soon as he learns if someone’s life is put in danger. Tacitly accepting gang’s rules puts everyone he met on the streets at risk. J.T. explains that “you [gang leaders] have to realize that if you [they] do that, then you [they] lose respect. They need to see that you [the gang leader] are the boss, which means that you hand out the beatings” (Venkatesh. 2008: 130). The participants need to know the risk that Venkatesh because he can put them in trouble with the law. If Venkatesh does not disclose this information to the people before they choose to be a part of his study he is putting them in unethical

So he will keep all of the information he gains confidence. To conduct an ethical study in terms of confidentiality, “the research is able to identify a given person’s response is able to identify a given person’s response but essentially promises not to do so publicly” (Babbie. 1992: 468). When Venkatesh starts interview the residents to see how much they make, he writes it all the information down. After asking everyone, Ms. Bailey office and told to tell all the information. When Venkatesh tells them all the persona information, he breaches confidentiality when he reads his notes of incomes have. The act “I [Venkatesh] went through my notebooks and told them what I’d [he] learned about dozens of hustlers, male and female” to powerful people like J.T. and Ms. Bailey is unethical (Venkatesh. 2008: 200). Venkatesh knows that both hold a lot of power over the community, as they control the crime and resources that come in and out, and are not always honest in how they get their money. It is understandable that Venkatesh wanted to know if the numbers he was coming up with were correct, but he could have gone at it in a different way, like asking Ms. Bailey separately without disclosing any information. This breach in confidentiality causes ‘“he’s [J.T.] taxing every one of them now”’ because of the new information Venkatesh gave