“Behind the Gates:" By Mousumi Haider

For the book assignment, I decided to read the “Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America” by Setha Low. The Center theme of the book is that, searching for community. Another theme is of the good is, safety of children. Setha Low took long time to write this book. She was actually living in “Gate Community”, so she can be a member of gate community. To write this book, Setha Low was being ethnography. Ethnography is a qualitative research method often used in the social sciences, particularly in anthropology and in sociology. It is often employed gathering empirical data on human societies and cultures. For data collection of gate community, Setha Low participated in gate community for observation, interviews and questionnaires.
“Two electronically controlled gates block the entrance: one marked “residents” next to the guardhouse, and the other “visitors.” On the visitors side is a sign instructing drivers that the gates close automatically to allow the passage of only one car at a time.”(Page 27) This remained me a time, when I visited one of my father’s friend’s house. He lives in Long Island, NYC. When we arrived there, the security guard won’t let us go. We had to call my father’s friend and then the security guard let us go inside the gate. I thought what are these people scare off? What they have inside the gate to hide from other? It’s true that, most of the people want security in their daily lives. But does living in close gate make it secure?
My favorite part of the book is the chapter 5: “Protecting the Children and Safety for All.” Reading first couple of lines gave me a huge smile on my face. The little kid “Alexandra”, who also wanted to be interviewed. Anyhow, the main point of the chapter was that sometimes people are scare to let children out. Especially in Gate Community, the adults hardly let the children out even to play. People from Gate Community thinks outside of the gate are threats of crime, violence, kidnapping and strangers that scare the member of the community.
This book is related to our class because it talks about the community, people, environment and society. In our Urban class, we also try to figure out people and their society. At first, I didn’t want to read this book. I wanted to read “Sidewalk” but somehow I end up reading the “Behind the Gate”. Honestly, I enjoyed reading the book, it was really very interesting.