The Righteous Dopefiend purpose of the book to clarify the relationship between large scale power forces and intimate ways of being Introduction A Thoery of Abuse The Edgewater Homeless November 1994 December 2006 Philippe Bourgois Jeff Schonberg became part of the daily lives of several dozen homeless heroin injectors who sought shelter in Edgewater Boulevard not its real name in San Francisco at any given moment the core social network they befriended usually consisted of 20 individuals fewer than a half dozen were women they usually divided themselves up into 4 or 5 encampments which frequently shifted locations to escape the police all but 2 of the injectors were over 40 years old they also smoked crack and drank large quantities of alcohol The Edgewater homeless embrace the popular terminology of addiction and with ambivalent pride refer to themselves as righteous dopefiends Hustled in the Moral Economy Edgewater homeless a community of addicted bodies that is held together by a moral economy of sharing the practice of reciprocal heroin sharing among the Edgewater homeless cid 127 most homeless heroin injectors cannot survive as solo operators on the street they are constantly seeking one another out to exchange tastes of heroin sips of wine and loans of spare change the gift giving envelops them in a web of mutual obligations and also establishes the boundaries of their community homeless heroin users hustle everyone with whom they interact fooling even themselves and betraying even their own bodies and desires Cultural Relativism Confidentiality and Respect cultural relativism strategically suspends moral judgments in order to understand and appreciate the diverse logics of social and cultural practices that at first sight often evoke righteous responses and prevent analytical self reflection ethnography the scientific description of the customs of individual peoples and cultures Philippe Jeff conducted fieldwork together and wrote the book sitting side by side approach used by Philippe Jeff Collaborative Photo Ethnography Jeff my photographer Philippe my professor Theoretical Approaches to Social Suffering symbolic power concept introduced by Pierre Bourdieu the implied almost unconscious modes of cultural social domination occurring within the every day social habits maintained over conscious subjects accounts for the discipline used against another to confirm that individual s placement in a social hierarchy includes actions that have discriminatory or injurious meaning or implications such as gender dominance and racism the way that the political economic organization of society often harms vulnerable categories of people the misrecognition of inequality as the natural order of things it leads people to blame themselves for their location in the social hierarchy Structural Violence Symbolic Violence lumpen abuse Karl Marx lumpen proletariat lowest of the low as far as social classes displaced people who have been cut off from the socioeconomic class with which they would ordinarily be identified describes the multiple abusive relationships and structural violence experienced uniquely by the homeless habitus concept developed by Bourdieu Fieldwork in Gray Zone and perpetrators refers to our deepest likes dislikes and personal dispositions including those of our preconscious bodies likes dislikes and intimate ways of being formed through prolonged exposure to social structural conditions addiction under conditions of extreme poverty and concerned police repression creates a morally ambiguous space that blurs the lines between victims Chapter 1 Intimate Apartheid addresses ethnic polarization and introduces most of the core members of the social network on the street lull in law enforcement allowed a larger central camp to emerge cid 127 Max was the first to settle the spot followed by running partners Felix and Frank running partner a person with whom an individual shares work space money and drugs the relationship relies on mutual reciprocity Petey and Scotty were the next to move in the island boys spent most of their time selling heroin on the surrounding traffic islands Al and his girlfriend Rosie moved in soon after Hank was the last to establish himself as a regular inhabitant of the camp cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 cid 127 during their first year all the homeless in the central encampment were white except for Felix who was Latino whites claimed they were the victims of black violence and theft but really they weren t during their second year of fieldwork an African American heroin injector named Carter became a regular in their homeless scene within a week Carter went from being an employed housed and high status giver in the moral economy to a quarrelsome taker his permanent presence in the main encampment attracted 3 additional African Americans Stretch Sonny and Tina Ethnic Hierarchies on the Street The Arrival of African Americans Racial Disequilibrium cid 127 White Flight ethnic tensions mounted A Latino Interlude Hogan was the first to move out of the encampment to escape from the blacks Felix and Frank ended up being the only 2 remaining original members of what had been the mostly white encampment formerly Felix had been the only Latino in the scene and had been treated as an honorary white The arrival of the African Americans allowed him to establish a new ethnic space for himself and he began referring to his former companions as lame whites Felix befriended a Puerto Rican injector named Victor Victor s son Little Vic came to visit bonded with his father through crack smoking and aggression against the whites Little Vic was arrested which led his father to reduce his presence in the encampment this left Felix feeling isolated The one other Latino on the scene was Sal who lived with his girlfriend Carmen Ethnicity and Habitus intimate apartheid driven by habitus African Americans whites and Latinos shared and competed for the same limited resources public space income and drugs the homeless on Edgewater Boulevard were deeply divided along racialized lines and their hostility was exacerbated by their physical