The ethnography “In search of Respect; Selling Crack in El Barrio” By Philippe Bourgois is a gritty uncensored look at a geographic location, East Harlem, and the people who reside there that work primarily within Americas multi-billion dollar underground economy. Within the contents of this essay I plan to outline the strengths and weaknesses of Bourgois’ fieldwork carried out for this ethnography. The fieldwork being the primary resource for the book.
In his introduction Bourgois presents statistical information, predominantly from the census, to paint a picture of East Harlem however this information is not reliable in that if taken at face value it indicates that just over a third of residents lived below the federal poverty line and …show more content…
In order to understand the participants in this economy Bourgois undertook fieldwork by residing within a geographic centre of this economy and observing those within it. In order to undertake the fieldwork Bourgois immersed himself in this culture for over three years and then continued to revisit on a regular basis.
A statement from Bourgois in the introduction of the book being that he did not want to “give the poor a bad name” but opts to give a completely uncensored look at the harsh realities of East Harlem and its population of roughly 100000 could be seen to be contradictory in that he appears to have already made a determination and therefore it cannot be relied upon to be truly uncensored. I see this being an issue that arises with fieldwork that requires you become part of culture rather than solely an observer as you build relationships with those that you are observing and therefore being impartial becomes more …show more content…
This double standard combined with a dangerous lack of safe sex information being given to the second and third generation descendants of immigrants leads to severe overcrowding in an infamously difficult to escape “hood”. The overpopulation of such a relatively small neighbourhood is a contributing factor in the scarcity of resources as is the lack of understanding of the challenges faced by the
In his introduction Bourgois presents statistical information, predominantly from the census, to paint a picture of East Harlem however this information is not reliable in that if taken at face value it indicates that just over a third of residents lived below the federal poverty line and …show more content…
In order to understand the participants in this economy Bourgois undertook fieldwork by residing within a geographic centre of this economy and observing those within it. In order to undertake the fieldwork Bourgois immersed himself in this culture for over three years and then continued to revisit on a regular basis.
A statement from Bourgois in the introduction of the book being that he did not want to “give the poor a bad name” but opts to give a completely uncensored look at the harsh realities of East Harlem and its population of roughly 100000 could be seen to be contradictory in that he appears to have already made a determination and therefore it cannot be relied upon to be truly uncensored. I see this being an issue that arises with fieldwork that requires you become part of culture rather than solely an observer as you build relationships with those that you are observing and therefore being impartial becomes more …show more content…
This double standard combined with a dangerous lack of safe sex information being given to the second and third generation descendants of immigrants leads to severe overcrowding in an infamously difficult to escape “hood”. The overpopulation of such a relatively small neighbourhood is a contributing factor in the scarcity of resources as is the lack of understanding of the challenges faced by the