Ho & Ng have been observing Cucumber Lane with an eye to the transition out of socialism. 'Public amnesia' is the target - attempts to quash Maoist enthusiasms and 'angry national feelings' (minzu qingxu) and replace them with consumption and mellow patriotism. Broadly speaking it's working - the past has been jettisoned, and the direction (if not the destination) of change is unquestioned. However, individual milage varies.
Rosen & Venkatesh place Chicago sex work in the context of a broader local, low-wage informal economy. Given a thin job market, the (often casual - week here, month there) sex work becomes a reasonable coping strategy (despite it being of a risky and low-paying sort). The work offers just enough money, flexibility and autonomy, and is often seen as preferable to mainstream service work.
We're talking inter-racial antagonism around Howard Street. Britton observes that segregation and hostility was more marked outside on the street than inside the local soup kitchen - blame more fleeting interactions, differing organizational cues, and territoriality exacerbated by perceived racial judgments on the part of police.
Harris closes things up with a look at the ways Californian courts sort juveniles between the youth or adult justice systems. There's some alarming wiggle-room in these calls which rely on various rules-of-thumb, stereotyped and locally defined notions of 'typical kids', and selective and attribution-heavy readings of legal histories.
