Pathos and Broken Windows

Have you ever watched a documentary where you feel yourself getting sucked into a story rather than merely absorbing facts? Such is the case with Disney documentaries like African Cats, where every lion, cheetah, and cub has a name and a story. It’s more a narrative than it is an academic film. This is the feeling that took over to me as I was reading the first pages of Sidewalk by Mitchell Duneier. Although the book was written as an academic text (as can be clearly seen in the introduction) the stories it tells are enough to make it seem like a narrative. More importantly, these stories give the book a human factor that allows the reader to sympathize with street vendors, in other words: pathos.

Surprisingly, Sidewalk has been told using mainly pathos, rather than the more academic centered logos that I had expected. Since the first page the book started on a pathos infused note by portraying a map before any text. This map shows one main street (Sixth Avenue) and to of the streets that intersect it. Along the street Duneier posted a head shot of every street vendor in his/her spot along with a sentence or two on each vendor’s story. Immediately the book becomes personal and all these “street vendors” become real people to the reader.

Hakim is a street vendor. He was born with the name Anthony E. Francis and (unlike what the stereotype of a street vendor suggests) he went through all four years of college at Rutgers University. In college “he had completed his coursework but never received a diploma” (page 23) because he owed $500 to the university by the end of his senior year. Already I sympathize with his story and I’m only thirty-six pages into the book. According to Duneier, Hakim sees himself as a public figure in the block and has enough insight and knowledge to be considered a mentor. Challenging every stereotype there is for a street vendor of any sort, Hakim has become a mentor for those who stop by his book stand regularly.

Amongst the many who consider Hakim’s insight and advice in their daily lives there is one twenty-two year old man named Jerome who works at The Vitamin Shoppe of the neighborhood. This man has a torn up family and never finished high school. Hakim’s advice? Go back and finish it. This ideal of going back to high school is accompanied by Hakim assigning Jerome books to read and discussing them with him to be sure he understood.

As the book continues more relationships like this are revealed to Duneier who in turn reveals them to me as a reader. I can’t help but be amazed at the insight of a man like Hakim. I admit to have fallen into stereotypical thinking, a realm where every street vendor is there because he has no other choice and where the street vendors who sell books don’t really know much about them.

Hakim decided to go into selling books in the street because he thought it would be an honorable job. Stereotype: shattered.

As I read the book I realized that we all fall for the “’broken windows’ theory “ (page 10).  This theory “holds that minor signs of disorder lead to serious crime (page 10). That’s how the author describes it in the introduction and despite how pathetic it sounds (it is a fallacy after all: the proof doesn’t lead to the conclusion) we all fall for it. “You shouldn’t walk through that neighborhood at night because there are street vendors on every corner.” “You should stay away from that street because it’s full of graffiti.” These are all sentences one might hear in any argument that supports the “broken windows” theory, and though they are clearly fallacious, we fall for it.

As I continue reading the book I expect more stereotypes to be broken and more stories to be told. On top of it all I will be getting constant information on the sociological approach on street life. If this didn’t make me excited for the book I don’t know what could.

Vocabulary:

 Punitive: inflicting or intended as punishment

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Panhandlers: a beggar who approaches strangers asking for money