A Place on the Corner

by Elijah Anderson

This paperback edition of A Place on the Corner marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Elijah Anderson's sociological classic, a study of street corner life at a local barroom/liquor store located in the ghetto on Chicago's South Side. Anderson returned night after night, month after month, to gain a deeper understanding of the people he met, vividly depicting how they created—and recreated—their local stratification system. In addition, Anderson introduces key sociological concepts, including "the extended primary group" and "being down." The new preface and appendix in this edition expand on Anderson's original work, telling the intriguing story of how he went about his field work among the men who frequented Jelly's corner.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Ethnography

271 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1981

About the author

Elijah Anderson holds the William K. Lanman, Jr. Professorship in Sociology at Yale University, where he teaches and directs the Urban Ethnography Project. His most prominent works include The Cosmopolitan Canopy and the award-winning books Code of the Street and Streetwise. His writings have also appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The New York Times Book Review. He lives in New Haven and Philadelphia.

Reviews

[Rafael Suleiman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic of sociological fieldwork in America.

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Granted, I'm reading this for a class. I know why she assigned it; it's an 'anthropological classic'. Not a good sign. Basically, in persuance of PhD, a grad student spends three years in field study at Jelly's, a liquor store in South Chicago. For all that time, the content is stretched pretty thin, the analysis even thinner. Perhaps things will change in the 50 pages and 36 hours before we discuss it in class, but I doubt it. For better urban anthro readings, try "In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio". The fact that author (Philippe Bourgios) is a white Frenchman totally taken into a crack dealer's inner circle continued to blow me away as I read. Just don't pronounce it 'bourgeois'.

Update: finished book. did not improve.

[Theresa Malloy Lemickson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first text I had to read for my Ethnographic Writing class. It is a book written about a black bar on a street corner in Chicago. The author is a renowned sociologist, currently teaching at Yale, but this was written in his grad school days. I enjoyed reading it, but it definitely reads more like a sociological text than a novel. It was a good book to get me interested in this field of study.

[lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a really neat ethnography—it examines a group of men on the south side of chicago in the early 1970s, but many of anderson's observations about community and the formation of identity are heavily transferable to, say, the communities we form online (i read this book as part of an information science course).

[Kimber · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting study about group behavior related to a bar/liquor store in Chicago. It is a little dry in places, but Mr. Anderson's research into the dynamics of the different groups and what they do to maintain their group status is cool to read.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful & Fascinating

[Amanda Michelle Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's eli anderson. i generally love his work and this book is no exception.