In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences)
By:
Philippe Bourgois
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Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Description:
Philippe Bourgois's ethnographic study of social marginalization in inner-city America, won critical acclaim when it was 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 roughest ghetto neighborhoods--East Harlem. This new edition adds a prologue describing the major dynamics that have altered life on the streets of East Harlem in the seven years since the first edition. In a new epilogue Bourgois brings up to date the stories of the people--Primo, Caesat, Luis, Tony, Candy--who readers come to know in this remarkable window onto the world of the inner city drug trade. Philippe Bourgois is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He has conducted fieldwork in Central America on ethnicity and social unrest and is the author of Ethnicity at Work: Divided Labor on a Central American Banana Plantation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). He is writing a book on homeless heroin addicts in San Francisco. 1/e hb ISBN (1996) 0-521-43518-8 1/e pb ISBN (1996) 0-521-57460-9
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Entertaining, interesting, and educational - I really enjoyed reading this book. I was looking for a break from the norm, something non-fiction, and this more than filled the bill.
In the chapter entitled 'Conclusion' the author states that his "most immediate goal in this book is to humanize the public enemies of the United States without sanitizing or glamorizing them."
Given this goal, Philippe Bourgois hit the nail on the head, and went above and beyond every expectation that I had initially.
I particularly enjoyed the transcripts of the tape recorded conversations that were present in the book. Not only did these transcripts offer an insight into the thought processes of the characters, but it also offered great insight into how people live their lives in East Harlem.
The most interesting part of this book was the analysis of how social and economic factors shaped the underground drug trafficking community.
This is a great book that will keep you interested the entire way through. I would recommend this book to almost anyone without hesitation.
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Life Among Crack Dealers in the 80's - This is a great book on inner city life...From an academic point of view it shines as well...The author is a great writer and a keen observer...I like the way he started it out as an ECONOMIC "study" and it melded into an urban anthropology study....This guy was there!! INSIDE!!..I would recommend reading this book along with Monster by Monster Kody....Between those 2 books you really get a feel what life was like in urban 1980's
Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Good and Enlightening Read - This is a great book. Definitely disturbing but well worth the read. Bourgois does an excellent job of honestly portraying the lives of these people while still letting the reader know that he is human and sometimes has a difficult time being unbiased. Highly recommend this book.
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Well Written Account of Urban Life. - I read this book as a junior Sociology major at Berkeley. This book makes me want to quit my day job and go back to school to explore academia again. Highly inspirational anthropological account of growing up impoverished in NY and selling crack to make ends meet. Like many people, I do not support drugs in any way as it contributes to the decline of families and communities, but I love how this book guides you through the intricacies of street (drug) life with a nice layer of dignity and integrity.
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
The ugly truth - This book is well written, throughly researched and extremely enlightening. It is the best ethnography i have read. Unlike some "liberals" who write about the poor (e.g. Kozol), Bourgois lived among the people he writes about, and he is not afraid to show the less flattering aspects of their personalities. Thus, there are passages that will make some people cringe, others that are frankly disturbing, but it is all part of the ugly reality of life in the ghetto. Bourgois lets the residents speak in their own voices and provides useful commentary rather than "cultural marxist" analysis as some reviewer suggested. In Search of Respect shows that simplistic explanations for the persistance of poverty ("bad choices") are unsatisfactory, but does not ignore the fact that some poor people commit stupid and also brutal acts. This is a great book for use in upper level undergraduate courses in social problems, deviance, criminology, ethnography, qualitative methods, juvenile delinquency.
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