Alice Goffman On The Run Argument

In 1973, Clifford Geertz- an American anthropologist- authored The Interpretation of Cultures, in which he defines culture as a context that behaviors and processes can be described from. His work, particularly this one, has come to be fundamental in the anthropological field, especially for symbolic anthropology-study of the role of symbols in a society- and an understanding of “thick description”-human behavior described such that it has meaning to an outsider of the community it originated. Alice Goffman is an American sociologist and ethnographer widely-known for her work, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City (2015). In this work, she relays how for her undergraduate and doctoral research project, she immersed herself in a predominately African-American community of Philadelphia as a white, privileged woman. Goffman goes on the explain how the frequent policing and incarceration of young, black men from this neighborhood affects the entire community and even affected Goffman herself.

Book Review: On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City Jaleesa Reed University of Georgia   Book Review: On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City is a fascinating ethnography that seeks to expose and unpack the everyday lives of African American men living in Philadelphia. The author, Alice Goffman, examines the lives of these men who are “on the run” not only from the laws that seek to restrict their lives, but also from their own identities that have become synonymous with outstanding warrants, prison time, and running. Like ethnographers before her, Goffman immerses herself in the lives of her informants. Her study reveals the oppressive nature of neoliberal America and urges

In America, a teenager can be easily drawn into witnessing a family member being stabbed to death, trafficked into drug/gang cults, or receive severe damages to his/her physical body. Commonly, these kinds of circumstances call the responsible leaders in our community to action, but in the forgotten part of America, they continue uninterrupted. During the late 1980’s, the United States ranked as a developed nation with a competitive capitalist economy and better living standards for the higher social class. Their promises to defend critical human rights remained unrivaled around the globe; yet the United States still possessed areas with lower class people compressed into high rise projects and who struggled to overcome poverty, violence, and prejudice. The lower class people were often given very little to no resources or the

The “Code of the Street,” materialized in American’s major metropolitan inner city communities’ predominately homogeneous African American neighborhoods because segments of this population felt disenfranchised from mainstream American due to lack of economic opportunities as well as the distrust between citizens in these communities toward law enforcement. The common belief in among a minority of the population in these neighborhoods is that the criminal justice system is bias toward poor minority groups and every person must fend for himself or herself. Therefore, urban communities have developed a set of socially acceptable norms within these distressed communities coined the “Code of the Street.”

Minimal miracle there is a profound situated assessment inside of groups of shading that the criminal equity framework is innately fixed against them and that the foundations as far as anyone knows intended to secure them are coming up short them, or far more detestable, focusing on them. In addition, the hole in the middle of high contrast sees on law requirement, the criminal equity framework, and race relations in this nation just is by all accounts developing. This always extending inlet further entangles our endeavors to see precisely what is at issue in cases, for example, the passings of Brown and Garner, the disappointment of the stupendous juries in those cases to prosecute the officers dependable, and the chance to thoroughly consider thoughts and choices for solid answers for location the fundamental

Alice Goffman’s On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City is a sociologist’s intimate as well as immersive account of years of fieldwork in the Philadelphia ghetto. On the Run focuses majorly on, the impacts of the criminal justice system on a neighborhood whereby the majority of young men are considered dirty. The result of this is due to the legal status that they are compromised by pending court hearing.

Many of the boys pretended that negative interactions and stereotyping did not affect them, but their bravo personas only masked the fear inside. Fear made the boys feel weaker and less masculine, so they would deviate from social norms to regain respect and dignity among their peers and for themselves. Routine patterns of punishment eventually lead the boys to develop an altered view of thoughts, beliefs, and ways of behaving in order to survive the tough life set them. Chapter two concentrates on the history of Oakland, incarceration rates, youth systems of control, and the boy’s resistance to punishment and brutalization. The Oakland ghetto consists of a multiracial community, predominantly African-American and Latino, that are equally targeted and brutalized by police

her lawlessness and resistance to authority is the way of life on 6th Street. The focus of Goffman’s attention is on the cat-and-mouse game these men play with the police in an attempt to evade its authority and that authority is formidable. According to Goffman, decades of crime policies have turned high-crime urban neighborhoods into a high watch place by the police. Goffman offers the statistic that 60 percent of black men without a high school degree have been to prison by their mid-30s, with others suffering arrest and probationary sanctions. She takes as a given that the young men of 6th Street are destined to run away from the law, resist and lash out at police, and defy every effort to bring them to a stop.

The code of the street can be used to explain differences in crime rates between adjacent neighborhoods. Stewart & Simons (2010), conversed the difficulties of inner-city life for citizens in structurally deprived vicinities. He painted the physical and ethnic influences leading to violence. Anderson (1999) argued that the extraordinary rates of poverty, unemployment, violence, cultural discernment, isolation, distrust of police, and hopelessness that portray many underprivileged settings have led to a neighborhood street

In Down These Mean Streets, Piri Thomas informs the reader about the challenges his family had to overcome in Harlem, New York. Four siblings, a mother, and father all cramped up in an apartment with no proper heating, with drug addicts as neighbors, and an unsafe environment out in the streets which required constant police patrol. Thomas narrated a time during the early 1940s when he ran away from home at the age of 12. He observed a policeman ignore his situation for the sole reason as Thomas mentioned, “After all, a twelve-year-old kid walking the streets at 3 a.m. was a nothing sight in Harlem” (Thomas 6). In other words, the living environment in Harlem had to be so dangerous that seeing a kid in the streets at night was a gift for police

Annotated Bibliography Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Alexander opens up on the history of the criminal justice system, disciplinary crime policy and race in the U.S. detailing the ways in which crime policy and mass incarceration have worked together to continue the reduction and defeat of black Americans.

The United States prides itself on being a country of opportunities where the underprivileged can rise up and everyone is treated equally, but is that really the case? In reality the income of an individual gives them advantages of going above the system. The sociological explanation of the influence of the wealthy over the criminal justice system is described in the of the Pyrrhic defeat theory written in Jeffrey Reiman and Paul Leighton book The Rich Get Richer and the Poor get Prison Ideology, class and Criminal Justice. The Pyrrhic defeat theory emphasizes the failure of the criminal justice is the consequence of success for those in power, who are taking advantage of the system.

In her book, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, Alice Goffman provides a detailed account of the six years she spent living in and observing a poor, predominantly African American neighborhood in Philadelphia. This community, which she refers to as “6th Street,” directly experienced the immediate effects of mass incarceration in the United States. Thus, that reality caused 6th Street residents to shape their actions, socialization, customs and norms to avoid the police while simultaneously maintaining behaviors––that would otherwise be considered criminal––to survive in a rough and unforgiving environment. To further explore and to try to understand the conditions 6th Street inhabitants faced, Goffman conducted ethnographical research

Synthesis Research Paper Everyday growing up as a young black male we have a target on our back. Society was set out for black males not to succeed in life. I would always hear my dad talk about how police in his younger days would roam around the town looking for people to arrest or get into an altercation with. As a young boy growing up I couldn’t believe some of the things he said was happening. However as I got older I would frequently hear about someone getting killed by the police force.

The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for several reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. This literature review will discuss the ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system and how mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism has become a problem.