BOURGOIS, P.

2003: IN
SEARCH OF RESPECT:
SELLING CRACK IN EL
BARINO, CRACKHOUSE
MANAGEMENT:
ADDICTION, DISCIPLINE
AND DIGNITY

Verkhovodova Yelyzaveta
Researching the underground economy: crackhouse management in
East Harlem
Exploring the fate of marginalized groups of Puerto Ricans undergoing through exclusion in
socio-economic sphere, and experiencing problems of poverty, racism, drug use, and
violence, thus questioning their self-worth and dignity.

CHALLENGE IN
THE ARTICLE
 Psychology of the drug dealers
"Re-Situating the Drug Dealer" by Pusher Myths ( 2006);
recasting our understanding of the drug dealer as one that has been
unreasonably demonized and de-humanized.

Position Brendan Marsh, "The Logic of Violence: An Ethnography of Dublin’s Illegal

Drug Trade" (2020); Examining the meaning of violence in drug markets as a

in the
cause of addictive disorders, socioeconomic status, and socialisation.

Burden of the marginalized communities

literature "Tell Them Who I Am: The Lives of Homeless Women" by Elliot Liebow ( 1995);
inside-look at homeless women lives and feelings.

"Going Straight: An Ex-convict/Psychologist Tells Why and How" by Paul

Karsten Fauteck (2001); provides an unprecedented look into the minds of
offenders.
METHODS OF "Bourgois and his wife
moved into a tenement

RESEARCH apartment in East

Harlem, an area referred
to as El Barrio, early in
Data collection: impossibility to gather credible 1985 and spent the next
data and conduct surveys -> qualitative three-and-a-half years
observationts. Author immersed himself into the living among the harsh
world of crack selling , and gained trust and long- realities of the ghetto
term friendship of street-level drug dealers in one streets in order to gain
entrée to a network of
of the roughest ghetto neighborhoods of New
Puerto Rican crack
York.
dealers and their friends
and relatives"
 Findings
Conclusion 2
Conclusion 1 Friends ( "hang out crew" )
"provided a stabilizing social
"Good intentions do not
atmosphere ... to
lead anywhere if the
counterbalance the anxiety
only legal jobs that he
that constantly threatens to
can compete for fail to disable a lonesome seller.
provide him with livible ...peers distracted and relaxed
wage" from the dangerous reality of
work site"
Conclusion 3
On a question of how it
is possible to tolerate
being minimum wage
crack dealer, "they
responded with self-
congratulatory,
glorifying
reminiscences of nights
of record sales"
 Conclusion
Study aims to become a mechanism through which
mainstream society can comprehend the daily challenges and
their effect on fates of the less privileged groups,
experiencing drugs as a syptom of prevailing marginalisation,
alienation, limited finacial possibilities, impossibility to
access the normal living conditions at entry level jobs, and
achieve self-respect as well as personal dignity.