Growing up on the Upper East Side of New York, Bourgois saw first-hand the racial inner-city segregation. In an interview Bourgois (World101x, 2014) mentions that his father, a French-born immigrant, was confused and …show more content…
Bourgois also calls upon the earlier works and theories of Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu as he develops the idea of “lumpen abuse under neoliberalism” in his ethnography (Summary, 2009). Bourgois’ thorough analysis of unequal powers and the complex interactions within the group reflects Wolf’s political-economy anthropological style. Wolf’s influence on anthropology is clearly seen in Bourgois’ ethnographies as they are also “empirically realistic, analytically penetrating” and offer “socially critical depictions of the people studied and represented” (Heyman,