Bourgois And Schonberg: A Summary

In their work Righteous Dopefiend, Bourgois and Schonberg attempt to assemble a photo-ethnography of the homeless heroin addicts living around Edgewater Boulevard, cataloguing their day-to-day lives over the course of twelve years. In this process, the authors are brought face to face with the local forces and “intimate violence” of intra-personal relationships contributing to what they denominate as “lumpen abuse” (Bourgois and Schonberg, 16-17). The term lumpen abuse is used to describe the extreme levels of suffering experienced by those marginalized in society to such a degree that they fall under the label of a residual class, equivalent, according to Marx, to the “scum, offal, refuse of all classes” (Bourgois and Schonberg 17). In addition …show more content…
Neoliberalism created a “revolving door” in politics such that “the interests of US based corporations and the US government became substantially identical” (Waitzkin 2011, 67). The effects from the War on Drugs serve both industries well, as drug users are blamed for the urban decay and suffering that occurs, especially in inner-city areas (Singer 2004, 295-297). With an immediate, easily accessible target, people do not look beyond to see how corporate policies have shaped American life. Many families had employment centered around the Hunters Point navy shipyard which closed down in 1974, leaving many of the current Edgewater homeless, in their late teens or early twenties at the time, without many prospective jobs. The area, additionally, was experiencing housing problems where the price of rent increased along with the levels of income inequality while the number of vacancies decreased (Bourgois and Schonberg 2009, 148-153). The implementation of neoliberalism meant that at the same time people lost income and jobs, the government also withdrew or drastically decreased support for social programs designed to help families in similar