Audio Crack Dealers

Posted on 12.09.2019

Audio Crack Dealers Kit

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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 m...more

Published December 23rd 2002 by Cambridge University Press (first published 1995)

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Good Ethnography

115 books — 67 voters

Sociology Published in Decade: 1990s

59 books — 1 voter

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Rating details

Jan 20, 2011Sarah rated it it was amazing

An incredible ethnography about life in the Puerto Rican slums in New York. Bourgois has done something very brave in observing and interviewing these people who struggle against prejudice, ignorance, inequality, crime and drug addictions over the period of 4 years, living amoungst them and learning more than perhapes any outsider had before.
Nothing has been held back, and we experience through these people how drugs have ruined lives and the harsh realities of the barrio, including rape and as...more

Jan 24, 2016Judah rated it it was amazing

Shelves: social-justice, nonfiction, anthropology, favorites, especially-appreciated, sociology, latin-american-studies

A very important book because it successfully demonstrates how the crack-cocaine-heroine epidemic of the late 80's/early 90's was brought on in part by the collapse of the urban job market. In other words, the factory jobs that Puerto Rican immigrants relied on for maintaining traditional family structures and reinforcing patriarchal cultural norms were shipped overseas, thus catalyzing the rise of an underground street economy that not only paid its workers better than entry level minimum wage...more

This work is an impressive ethnographic account of the East Harlem community in the 80s. Bourgois embeds himself (he brings his wife and kid with him to live in the middle of El Barrio for 3+ years) into the crack selling culture in El Barrio.
Bourgois's central argument is that cycles of poverty in the United States exist and persist because of huge structural inequities. He very clearly portrays real life examples of how incentives for criminal activities and disincentives to join the legal ec...more

Dec 12, 2016Kert Tandog rated it it was amazing

Shelves: award-winning, social-science, favorites, anthropology, violence, non-fiction, theory, politics, social-theory

Bourgois writes a powerful ethnography about people entwined with substance abuse in East Harlem. He writes an empathetic, at the same time critical, view of self-destructiveness and violence normalised in the daily lives of Puerto Ricans in New York. It provides a detailed account of the different forces enmeshed with and directed real lives of real people - giving a human face behind those considered a pathological, exoticised 'statistic'. Apart from having a highly nuanced theorising, this is...more

Nov 08, 2016Lashaan Balasingam (Bookidote) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Philippe Bourgois' ethnography in the heart of El Barrio (East Harlem) brings some of the most shocking and revealing facts about culture shock. Befriending crack and heroin using Puerto Ricans that roam the streets and live by the underground economy that pulses in El Barrio, Philippe Bourgois shows that there's so much more than what the eye can see. By deciding to bring his wife and kid to live in a sector where you cannot take a step forward without cracking vials that once carried a substan...more

Mar 31, 2010Pete rated it it was ok

The problem with this kind of book, which at once seeks to portray the lives of totally irresponsible and bizarrely childlike predators and elicit sympathy for said rapist/ child abuser/ immoral jerk-offs, is that these people do not deserve sympathy. I read a Roger Ebert film review once that noted how difficult it is to create a truly antiwar film, because war is so inherently dramatic that, without the actual danger, it inevitably appears adventurous. Likewise, it is extremely difficult for a...more

In Search of Respect describes the social structure of the drug business. Throughout the book, Phillip Bourgois interviews drug dealers in East Harlem. They mention the struggles they go to in order to survive. I learned that prejudice and racism played an important role in the characters' lives in that it was almost like a predetermining factor. Because the main characters, Caesar and Primo, were Spanish it was difficult for them to find jobs so they turned to the drug business. Bourgois mentio...more

'This book's argument is that people like Primo and Caesar have not passively accepted their structural victimhood. On the contrary, by embroiling themselves in the underground economy and proudly embracing street culture, they are seeking an alternative to their social marginalization. In the process, on a daily level, they become the actual agents administering their own destruction and they community's suffering.'
This was a courageous and thoughtful attempt to gain insight into the question o...more

This was a really good ethnography. I adored it, it was not filled with an excessive amount of jargon, making it inaccessible for the average person. I also think that it was an extremely interesting topic, and I think that it was incredibly well done of Bourgois giving voice to people who had often not had one. This was done mostly through his application of postmodernism, supplying the reader with transcripts from the interview, allowing us to form our own opinions on the subject and not havin...more

This book chronicles Bourgois' public infiltration of the crack dealer social scene in East Harlem, New York City. As a white, middle-class, college-educated man, Bourgois faces many obstacles to finding 'the real story' to share with people who read such books. While at times I had to put the book down because my stomach and my mind couldn't be complicit in this seeming misuse of privilege, who am I to determine if someone can or can not consent to such a detailed published account of their liv...more

May 10, 2012William Lopez rated it it was amazing

This book was a heart-wrenching, enlightening ethnographic account of the Bourgois' time in the East Harlem inner-city. With incredible attention to the myriad structural factors that shape the lives of East Harlem residents, Bourgois shows the devastating effects of poverty and disenfranchisement on the lives of men and their families. Bourgois's perspective is always structural to the nth degree, and here he weaves together how Puerto Rican 'culture' shapes the interactions of immigrants even...more

Jun 07, 2009treva rated it really liked it · review of another edition

My favorite passage: 'The vigor of the crack-cocaine economy during the late 1980s and early 1990s was largely the result of an aggressive federal drug policy prioritizing the criminal repression of smuggling. Sometime in the early to mid-1980s, marijuana importers working the Latin American supply routes adapted to the escalating levels of search-and-seizure they were facing at U.S. borders by switching from transporting marijuana to trafficking in cocaine. Cocaine is much easier to transport c...more

Sep 09, 2010rhea rated it liked it

I'd say this was almost a 4, it was very interesting. It dragged a little in some parts, but I find with my anthropology reads that happens. All in all though the books for this class seem to be more interesting than in other levels.

This was a required read for my Cultural Anthropology class. The author was very raw in expressing his findings and provides his audience with a new understanding of social inequality in the U.S. There was a TON of language and some rough parts about real events taking place in the slums. Overall, I admired the writer and his themes, however, due to the language and content, I will not be re-reading this.

Philippe Bourgois enters the study of inner-city street culture through the lives of East Harlem’s men and women deeply affected by the realities of social marginalization. A modern-day Oscar Lewis, Philippe aims to enlarge the discussion around the interactions of agency and structure through an analysis of a culture of opposition embedded within a web of social, historical, and economic forces. Through his field-work, Bourgois forges close relationships with key figures in El Barrio’s undergro...more

I found this to be a frustrating read. I felt like I got to know the people he interviewed, and even if some of the things they did seemed purely evil, I had sympathy for them because I had the opportunity to hear their stories, and understand what brought them to the decisions they made. However, Bourgois's analysis of their experience and his excuse-making for their misdeeds ruined this book for me. Basically, nothing they did could be seen as immoral because it was seen as necessitated by the...more

This book needs to be read in pieces, and then re-read at least twice more. Bourgois' structural analysis of crack-dealers in Manhattan's East Harlem in the early 90s is detailed with an exuberant amount of (sometimes gut-wrenching) information and an equal amount of thoughtful interpretation. This is a priceless source for anyone working with marginalized communities and/or graduate sociology students.
Bourgois' main point in this effort is to piece together a social-economic and political-histo...more

Bourgois presents his readers with a mind-numbing ethnography on the disenfranchised Puerto Rican crack dealers of NYC's poorest areas. He collected some compelling stories and presented their words with care and class, but there was something left to be desired from my reading of In Search of Respect.
I appreciated his look at the overall societal problems that encompass the individuals in these situations, but there were times when I felt like he backed too far off of his subjects in order to t...more

Jan 23, 2012Possum Paderau rated it really liked it

I have so many complicated feelings about this book that are rooted in the complicated feelings I have about the subject matter, moreso than the way Bourgois presents it. When does personal responsibility end and structural responsibility begin? Or, conversely, when do structural explanations end and personal accountability need to be invoked? Does assuming one necessarily mean that the other cannot be taken into account? Is talking about structural reasons for people's behaviors even useful whe...more

May 22, 2018Jonas Carlsson rated it really liked it

In Search of Respect is a really great etnography on Puerto Rican drug dealers in East Harlem during the 1990s. Bourgois claims that the self-destructive behavour the residents of East Harlem exhibits like drug use, crime, and physical abuse cannot be reduced to individualistic or cultural explanations. Instead, one has to take the history of Puerto Rican immigrants and the broader structural features of US society into account. Bourgois aims to humanise the residents and drug dealers, not wanti...more

Feb 28, 2009Lauren added it

READ IT. This is the gold standard, the study by which all other works on poverty must be compared. Bourgois spends five years living among El Barrio's Puerto Rican crack dealers and, importantly, becomes their friend: gaining an insight to their lives that no social worker will ever have. The behavior of the poor (drug use, violence, rape, misogyny) is the result of structural weaknesses and flaws created by America's class- and ethnic-apartheid. Yes, the gang rape is appalling. Imagine how Bou...more

Aug 18, 2010Rachel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Really interesting account from the author's five years of imbeding himself in the street culture El Barrio a.k.a East Harlem which is mostly all Nuyorican. This is mostly transcribed taperecorded sessions of a few crack dealers life experiences and how they explain where they are. These were mostly very entertaining as they captured a performance feel from the spoken language. Sometimes they dragged on a little (probably because they were so entertaining and didn't have more new to say - this i...more

Sep 24, 2008Nicola rated it really liked it

Bourgois moved to a poor, primarily Puerto Rican part of New York in order to write a book about poverty. What he encountered was a drug culture that permeated every part of 'street life' and, accordingly, this altered the focus of his book. In fact, probably the best thing about Bourgois as an author is that when his research brings him to a new topic (whether it's the crack industry or the normalized nature of gang rape among Puerto Rican males), he doesn't shy away from properly analyzing the...more

It is the ethnography’s goal of conveying the information about a certain culture that can make it a very difficult task for its writer to bring across the data collected in an interesting fashion. Bourgois, however, did an excellent job at doing just that. Having gone into an area of the US many people might evade and having lived there with his partner and child, befriending those whom others might steer clear of and gaining their trust so much as to be allowed to record their most personal co...more

Jul 07, 2015Dragos rated it really liked it

Bourgois' most famous book is an insightful if all over the place ethnography that details the lives of several crack dealers in East Harlem at the height of the Crack epidemic. While it attempts an In depth Bourdieuean cultural capital breakdown of the crack trade and an oppositional situation to the bustling legal market In Search of Respect is best read as a deep slice of the structural problems that lead to the failure of an entire generation of a certain ethnic background. Nonetheless, Bour...more

I read this book as part of my anthropology course and found it really interesting! It was really useful in putting into perspective the challenges of ethnography, ethical, practical, intellectual and so on, and it was a really good example of what the complete, clear, humane, and enlightening kind of ethnography new anthropologist should aspire to write.
All in all, in search of respect also provided me with a touching story of life in the poorest pockets of New York and how hard it is for ethn...more

Philippe Bourgois' drug ethnography work has been incredibly influential - both globally and in my own work as well. He has shown the ways in which marginalisation within urban 'ghettos' fuels drug use and the drug trade. He takes the reader into the inner and hidden world of drug-dealing and drug-use presenting the human-side of a phenomenon that is for the most part demonised. The work is refreshing as it is deeply personal whilst at the same time highlighting the challenges facing policymaker...more

Oct 17, 2007Manuel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: ethnographer-types,'ricans and upper east siders alike

Now I can no longer walk through my people in the jungle and not think about the statistics. Dude does his darnest to show the contradictions and incompleteness of numbers, but story after story, individual upon individual it gets uglier. The truth behind the crack and the suffering in the beast, nobody deals it or does it because they want to but the consequences are horrific and we all live amongst the results. The author is a fascinating individual. I'm sure many affluent upper east side chil...more

Jun 06, 2015Carolynne rated it really liked it

Shelves: textbooks, nonfiction, social-commentary

Anthropologist Philippe Bourgois lived in East Harlem for three years studying the individuals who made their living by selling crack. His work was strongly influenced by conviction that criminalization of drugs is at the root of crime and poverty, and serves to keep minorities trapped in cycles of poverty and disenfranchisement.
Unless urban minority youth are given equal access to education and environments conducive to learning and social development, they are left with few alternatives and mu...more

Feb 13, 2009Ellyn rated it really liked it

I read this book for a class at MSASS. The author is an anthropologist who spent five years in the late 1980s and early 1990s living and working among drug dealers and crack addicts in New York City's Spanish Harlem. This book uses their voices to explore poverty, the drug trade, and street culture. The author makes it clear that there are no easy answers to the problems faced by his main characters, whom he protrays as both victims and perpetrators. Some of the chapters were very emotional and...more

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Sex

It's not like I said to myself, “I'm going to date crack dealers now!” But when you meet one, you meet a lot of others. And then you start dating.

Illustration by Rob Ondzik

The source of this story, who lives in Canada, wished to remain anonymous for fairly obvious reasons.

Just last week, I was at a trap house with my ex in Cloverdale, British Columbia. The front door was covered in what looked a lot like bullet holes, but I'm not sure. There were a lot of unexplainable holes in the wall. Some of the holes were so big I could almost fit through them. The whole place smelled faintly like ammonia and dirty laundry. I was hanging out in the living room while they were all in the kitchen. On one burner they were cooking crack and on the burner next to it, they were cooking dinner. I think that's kind of funny, but I also couldn't help but wonder why I was there? I mean, it's not like I seek this shit out, or anything. I think I just attract it.

Crack dealers tend to approach me. I'm not chasing them down. It's not like I ever said to myself, “I'm going to date crack dealers now!” But when you meet one, you meet a lot of others. And then you just start dating.

I’ve met some of them through friends, some I’ve met randomly at the club, or at a bar, or on the street. I don't smoke crack. I'm not about that. I've never tried it, probably never will. I guess I date them because I like their personalities. Maybe it’s because I thought it would be exciting—but it’s actually kind of boring. They always want to chill at home. They're always so tired. They don't want to do anything. They barely have time to sleep, let alone have fun.

The first time I was approached by a crack dealer, I was 19 and at a party somewhere in East Vancouver. He was a friend of a friend. I thought he was really tough. He had muscles and he was wearing a shirt with no sleeves. I liked that. We dated for a couple of years. He was actually my last serious boyfriend. No one's held me down like that since.

He was a full-time dealer and worked on the streets, mostly around the Downtown Eastside, but it was nothing huge. Dealers can't make that much money here in Vancouver. If you want to make real money, you have to leave. You have to go to Saskatchewan. That's where the money is. I hear it's tough work. A lot of it is on foot, and you don't sleep for days. But you come back with tons and tons and tons of money. Like, you can make $10,000 or $20,000 a week, something crazy like that. The people out there have nothing to do. After work they just want to hit the pipe. I guess there’s less competition out there too, because Vancouver is a bigger place. Plus it's a port city. All the drugs come here, so there are a lot of dealers.

Illustration by Lindsay Pomerantz

I used hang with a guy who would go to Saskatchewan and sell drugs all the time. He was ballin'. He made tons of money. On our first date, he spent well over a G. He was just throwing it out like it was nothing. He was buying me anything I wanted. We rode around in a limo… It was crazy. We would go out to all these fancy-ass restaurants and all the white people would stare at us like, “Who let these hood rats in?” That was fun. He's never really in town though, so I only get to see him a few times a year. I think if I ever decide to just settle down and be a housewife, I'll marry him.

But even with him, it wasn’t all limos and fancy dinners. He was really violent. He would tell me stories about how, when he was in jail, he was talking to some guy who was a rapist or a child molester or something really horrible like that. He says he almost killed the dude. According to his story, he slit the guy’s throat with a knife. He was crazy. And he was fucking huge.

I dated another crack dealer who I liked to call “Art School Boy.” He was a sensitive thug. He wasn’t cut out for the crack dealing game. You have to have a certain personality to succeed and make a lot of money. Like, at one point he tried to break out of it and was hired to work a regular job, then he got into school, but eventually he got pulled back into dealing. I guess when you’re surrounded by other crack dealers it's hard to get out. It takes over your whole life, all your friends are doing it, and your whole lifestyle is centered around crack. If you don't know anything else, what are you going to do?

You want to get a regular job but you can't, because you have a criminal record. No one's going to hire you. So, what do you do? You go back to crack dealing. It's a cycle and it sucks. Plus, these guys are addicted to the fast money. You can’t get that same sort of satisfaction from a regular job.

Everyone always asks me about the crazy shit I must witness, but none of the really crazy shit goes on when I'm around. I've seen a lot of fights, and I also saw one guy package heroin… I suppose that was pretty crazy. He would cut up lottery tickets and fold the heroin into the makeshift envelopes. I helped him do it, actually.

Illustration by Lindsay Pomerantz

For a while, I was a driver. I would drive my man and his friends around in my mom's Toyota while they made deliveries. That was when I didn't have a lot of work. You'd be surprised who smokes crack! Most people might assume that a crackhead is generally the type to live under a bridge, but we would deliver to totally normal people who lived in really nice places. I remember one time I had nothing to do, so I helped deliver all night, and we went back to this one guy’s house like three or four times. He seemed pretty normal. He was so polite. You'd be surprised. Regular people like crack, too.

Of course, I was worried about the cops pulling us over while we were delivering, but it never happened. If they did, I knew I wouldn't be the one getting in trouble. I never had anything on me. I've never had to hold anything before. Sometimes, when the cops came around, I was passed a cellphone to put in my purse. But I don't think they would ever put me in danger by giving me drugs to hold or anything. They wouldn't do me like that.

Ultimately, none of these relationships worked out. They don’t fail simply because of the crack dealing—since that's what they were doing when I met them—but some of the other stuff that comes along with the drug trade does become an issue. Like, finding out that the guy has violent tendencies. I don't want to be with someone who is violent.

A lot of these guys don't have much time for me either, which is fine because I like my own space, but sometimes it bothers me. And I hate to say it, but if one of them went to jail I just don't think I could wait for them. I've never had to wait for someone. We break up before they get locked up.

There is this girl I used to know, her boyfriend went to jail for a year and half, and she waited for him. She was a real ride or die kind of girl. She was so devoted to him, visiting him every day. When he got out, she realized she was trapped. She was living off of him and wanted to do all these things, but he wouldn't let her. He didn't treat her very well, even though she waited for him. I heard she's an escort now. I wouldn't let that happen to myself.

I'm trying to get out of the game. I'm in school again, and I'm dating this totally normal dude right now. He's a customer service rep who listens to Drake. We're just hanging out, it's nothing serious; but it feels weird to date a normie. It's hard not to text back the old guys when they text me, and it really annoys me when dudes can't afford to take me out to nice places and buy me dinner. I guess I'm addicted to that fast cash too.

Audio Crack Dealers Kit

Dating a crack dealer isn't glamorous, but it used to feel that way. I used to feel like one of those girls in a rap video, a down chick, standing by my man who buys me clothes and takes me out and pays for everything. I was the kind of girl a rapper would write a song about. But I don't think it's glamorous anymore. It's dirty. I feel like I'm stuck in a myth I don't believe in anymore. The only appealing part about it all is the money. I'll never forget seeing all that money. Some guys keep their money in a sock drawer. Some guys keep their money hidden in the back of a closet. But sometimes when I saw the cash, seeing stacks of money like that, thousands of dollars, it's just like… whoa. Just being in the same room as all that money made me feel important. It made me feel like I was doing something right.

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