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Yun Tong
SOC010
Sidewalks Reflection
10/23/2014
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 weve 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 time 1. In Duneiers 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 others usual spot, but only on
the condition that the vendor show up on time 3. 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 in the
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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 characters6. 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 vendor 9. Although Hakims 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
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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
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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.

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Duneier, Sidewalk, 315.