Use Of Drugs In Philippe Bourgois's In Search Of Respect?

The book being reviewed in this papers is Code of the Suburb: Inside the World of Young Middle-Class Drug Dealers by Scott Jacques and Richard Wright. This book is written on the context of 30 different individuals from a small location referenced as “Peachville” in Atlanta Georgia (Jacques & Wright 1). Each of these known individuals during their time in high school were selling drugs. Marijuana was the particular substance to be sold, but few dove into other illicit drugs including ecstasy, cocaine etc. (3). Generally speaking, the first questions that appears is what pushed these students to dive into the prospects of peddling and using drugs? Better yet, why continue to use them? The 7 chapters included in this book contain various stories of popularity and financial gains and losses along with the destruction of relationships.

Situated predominantly in urban areas, gangs are becoming a major problem in today's society. The youth and adults are turning into gang members often times to leave behind the current situation they are living now. Many people who aren't familiar or affiliated with gang members are known to be curious as to why it is that the youth and adults join a gang. Some answers might be the current situation, obtaining social status, sense of protection, amongst other personal reasons. Everyone who joins a gang has different situations about why they decide to associate with gang members. In the novel, G-Dog and the Homeboys by Celeste Fremon, focuses on the gang members about East Los Angeles. This book draws the attention on the youth residing within the East Los Angeles territory and a look at the East Los Angeles gang members and how they play a major role in the book as one of the Latino gangs in East Los Angeles.

In Randol Contreras’s The Stickup Kids, Contreras explores the South Bronx through the lens of a sociologist. He describes the lives of the stickup kids such as Gus, Pablo, and other teenagers living in the South Bronx. Contreras uses the research method of ethnography to provide a sociological analysis of the drug trade and business in the South Bronx. His research shows how social factors impact the lives of these stickup kids to become active in the drug trade. Through his field notes and interviews with the stickup kids, Contreras examines in depth of how social factors such as, socialization, social class, the thrill of crime, deviance, and culture affect the individual.

Prior to being assigned the reading of the memoir “Always Running”, by Luis Rodriguez, I had never given much thought on juveniles involved in gang life. Rodriguez achieved success as an award-winning poet; sure the streets would no longer haunt him - until his own son joined a gang. Rodriguez fought for his child by telling his own story in the vivid memoir, “Always Running.” “Always Running” is the compilation of events Luis experienced during his youth in San Gabriel. The theme of the book is to always strive for the best things in life and to always take a stand for what you believe. Lured by the seemingly invincible gang culture of East L.A., he witnessed countless shootings and beatings, as well as senseless acts of street crime against his friends and family members. As a Latino in a poor neighborhood, Luis struggled through criticism, stereotypes, and mistreatment. With the help of his mentor, Chente, Luis saw a way out through education and the power of word to successfully break free from years of violence and desperation.

Phillipe Bourgois explores the struggle Puerto Rican residents of inner city Harlem face in surviving both economically and socially as they use selling crack as a vessel to find meaning and value in their lives. His ethnographic approach to understanding the culture and economy of the inner city in Spanish Harlem reveals the deeply entrenched values and ideologies in dealing drugs. Bourgois found that rather than simply an economic means of survival, selling crack had an impact upon dealers’ lives and identities. Far from simply a job, the crack trade was a way to gain respect and take a stand against the menial entry level jobs the residents of the inner city found offered to them – often with no opportunities to advance their careers, with racism rampant and employers found to be abusive and discriminatory. Compared to these conditions, partaking in the drug trade was seen to be an effective way to build a career and pursue the American Dream.

Determined to help his audience - people who stereotype against and do not understand gang life - find commonalities with gang members, Fr. Boyle shares his experiences with gangs in Los Angeles. At the beginning of the novel, Fr. Boyle articulates his thesis and expresses his purpose for sharing his experiences when he states, “Though this book does not concern itself with solving the gang problem, it does aspire to broaden the parameters of our kinship. It hopes not only to put a human face on the gang member, but to recognize our own wounds in the broken

The Puerto Ricans in New York were being submerged in racist repression and a severe economic exploitation. There Puerto Ricans faced filthy and dangerous tenement housing and a school system that denigrated their language and culture and offered little opportunity for higher education. The Latino population could not get ahead because of the daily repression to which they are subjected. In the streets they faced an occupying army, the New York City Police Department, which was openly racist and used violence liberally. “Puerto Ricans were good enough to die in the jungle of Vietnam, but were treated like the Viet Cong on the streets of New York,” according to to “palante brief history of the Young Lords”what the young lord tried to do oster seeing all the events that were helping to denigrated the latino community they began to clean the streets. Gave

In the 1960s, drug culture was popularized through music and mass media, in our current society we still find this relevant. Although we are more knowledgeable about drugs and alcohol, “an estimated 208 million people internationally consume illegal drugs.” The question is why do we conform to a society that is dependent on such substances? Perhaps drug culture is still present due to the references we witness on a daily basis. Witnessing this has resulted in drugs being a constant norm in society, the recently published novel, The Other Wes Moore; addresses drug culture.

An effort to understand and explain violence and related problems in the inner city are demonstrated within Elijah Anderson’s Code of the Street. Elijah exhibits the different lifestyles of the citizens in Germantown, Philadelphia by thoroughly explaining the code through different themes that make up the inner city lifestyle such as, family, violence, drugs, relationships or poverty through his point of view and people within the city as well.

Throughout the article “The Code of the Streets,” Elijah Anderson explains the differences between “decent” and “street” people that can be applied to the approaches of social control, labeling, and social conflict theories when talking about the violence among inner cities due to cultural adaptations.

This film shows us how easy it is to get caught up in gang life when living in the barrio, especially for women socially and emotionally. This film also shows us how gangs went from being all male to now having female gangs as well. This film shows us what exactly these home girls have to do to survive daily in Echo Park, and not just their survival, but the survival of their children as well. This film shows how these women are pushed to make ends meet, without any outside help, without the help of boyfriends, baby daddies and even their families. After Ernesto’s death, Sad girl and Mousie become each other’s support system, once they realize how to work together through their differences. The film shows gang life from a women’s point of view, and how these women not only prove their gang loyalty, but identity as well. In this film you see the women break gender roles and barriers, at first you have them playing the gender role of a female being dependent of a man, but towards the end you see them realize that gender roles and rules don’t have to be followed, which is when the female gang themselves begin to deal

“The Republic of East L.A. Stories” captures the heartbreaking experiences Mexican-American’s were forced to endure. Escaping poverty, alcohol abuse, drug use, and gang violence was an everyday struggle for many families during this time. African American and Latino gangs were initially created as a response to white racism. They were restricted as to what areas they could live in and where constantly harassed. As their populations increased, so did white gangs, in order to take control of their “territory”. African Americans and Latinos had no choice but to protect their families by fighting back. As time went on, the violence only continued. The Civil Rights Movement led many gang members to join organizations like the Black Panther Party, but the government quickly responded by breaking them up and soon enough, street gangs quickly returned. The violence escalated, alcohol,

In order to curb his cravings for alcohol, the French doctor used a muscle relaxant named baclofen to “flip a switch” and get rid of his cravings for alcohol. He initially tried lower doses which did not seem to have an effect, but higher doses of the drug allowed the doctor to rid himself of the cravings for alcohol, and eventually he was indifferent to alcohol after the drug. Later it was found that there were more cases where this finding was supported.

Phillipe Bourgois’s study of social marginalisation in inner city America in his ethnography ‘In Search of Respect – Selling Crack in El Barrio’, won critical acclaim when first published in 1995. For the first time, an anthropologist had managed to gain the trust and long-term friendship of street-level drug dealers in one of the nation’s roughest ghetto neighbourhoods – East Harlem (Bourgois, 2003). He had originally come to study poverty and ethnic segregation, the political economy of inner-city street culture, ' but found himself mired in a world conditioned by drugs, a world on which the literature is surprisingly sparse (Clatts, 1997). The people who inhabit it--men and women with names like Benzie, Little Pete, Gigi, Candy, Primo,

In search of respect analyzes the social marginalization of Puerto Ricans living in East Harlem, New York City, USA. The friendship made with Philippe and the drug dealers were fundamental to the book’s nature; the very personal things that the subjects reveal to Bourgois make it extremely honest and give you a full picture for what exactly is happening and their reasoning behind their actions. Bourgois sets out his themes ,Gender inequalities, Kinship, through transcripts, backgrounds, life stories, and black and white images while explaining his own emotions and thoughts. His honesty and the transcripts especially, which include background noises such as gun shots are important to the books achievement as he leaves nothing out and lets you fully saturate yourself into the situations he is in. He says: “I refuse to ignore or minimize the social misery I witnessed, because that would make me complicitous with oppression” (p. 12)