The righteous dopefiend. Righteous Dopefiend by Philippe Bourgois 2019-01-18
The righteous dopefiend Rating:
9,7/10
427
reviews
Righteous Dopefiend: A community of heroin addicts : Radio Times : WHYY
It was interesting to read about addiction and homelessness through the lens of anthropology. The themes that stand out in this book include race, sexuality, suffering, trauma and inequality in the society. Responsibility: Philippe Bourgois, Jeff Schonberg. To be able to communicate effectively, we must first understand what it is. Partial findings lead to theoretical, but more importantly, practical conclusions in the closing part of the book. Their turbulent relationship is tempered by the impediments that surround them: possible eviction, pan-handling, hospitalization, methadone treatment, and death.
If it doesn't, well there's no hope for you. He has also held various positions in Yale University in the past before his association with Tufts University. Definition: how the political-economic organization of society wreaks havoc on vulnerable categories of people or Violence that results from the way that political and economic forces structure risk for various forms of suffering within a population. Hidden from the world yet so visible the study opens our eyes to a world most chose to ignore, but yet thrives despite the daily hardships faced merely to exist. There is no sugarcoating here.
While I think that the focus on structure is a little dramatic, it does provoke readers to see. The authors spent twelve years talking with a group of homeless heroin addicts who live under the freeway in San Francisco. The maze of on-ramps and off-ramps surrounding the shooting gallery nicknamed the hole is part of the commuter backbone servicing the dot-com and biotech economies of Silicon Valley and downtown San Francisco. They enact this by doing things like having patients prove readiness by calling at 9am for three weeks. The book gives us better insight to the homeless culture and it does not hold back in showing the hardships of addiction. Righteous Dopefiend interweaves stunning black-and-white photographs with vivid dialogue, detailed field notes, and critical theoretical analysis.
The field notes and photographs were quite effective in illustrating the struggles of their subjects. These shacks are off the street and they comfortably rest on their beddings, and take drugs. Definition: Intimate Apartheid is a term the authors use to explore how embodied emotions, attitudes, and ways of acting reinforce distinctions, and in turn become misrecognized as racial attributes. Subsequently he conducted a several year long intensive field research. For the faint of heart, there will be stiff reading moments about people vomiting and defecating, jamming needles into oozing abscesses and selling sex for dope hits.
Example: Tina's habitus came from her upbrining where her mother was getting resources via sex. Vernon even claimed to be a pimp in his younger years. In Righteous Dopefiend, Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg provide a powerful and poignant account of the culture and challenges faced by homeless heroin addicts in San Francisco. One couple, Tina and Carter, develop a surprisingly domestic and committed relationship despite personal histories of abuse, homelessness, and addiction. Through examining the many societal and political factors that have a hand in the continuation of this outcast population, Bourgois and Schonberg present a personal, academic, and engaging look into the lives of homeless addicts.
Righteous Dopefiend is a must-read. The author writes about the love stories, family trauma and embodied suffering in most situations to highlight the plight of these individuals. Even though Tina and Carter felt for Bugs' desperation they felt obligated to beat him up as punishment to assert their power. The monograph, in a masterly way combining classical ethnographical style and a modern concept of social structuration, won him legitimately positive reviews and many awards, including Margaret Mead Award and C. The correlation between social forces and their role in producing addicts is described in the life of the homeless. With regards to the length of the survey the authors were also able to tie the text together using a linear plot taking place in the background following the trajectories of the key informants with occasional retarding and retrospective diversions over the course of more than a decade. All these stories come by voice; and they influence the way each and every person expects from or brings to stories.
An interesting facet of these messy lives was the nature of the relationships - people could be close friends at one moment and then steal from one another the next. Example 4: Al abusing women and thinking nothing of it. Towards the end of the chapter, it displays how the medical system affects the homeless. The two anthropologists assimilate themselves in the homeless community and observe the hardships that come from living on the streets and drug addiction. As anticipated, many of them finish in a tragic way. Some of the analysis was a bit too deeply rooted in social philosophy for me to understand, as I've never studied Foucault or any of the other theorists they referenced. People should get the death penalty because if there is a bigger consequence for their actions there wouldn't be as many people in jail.
It was well written and edited to bring out themes effectively, which helped me understand anew issues about which I've long been curious and never understood well. Pathogenic Law Enforcement On Edgewater Boulevard, fear of arrest and conviction was a chronic condition. It's also important to note that because they are addicts, the government and health care systems systematically ostracize and victimize them. Most of his killing activities were happened between 1978 and 1991. How do racial and social class tensions exacerbate homeless struggles with law enforcement? The process definition sees communication as a central aspect of all human existence.
