The review of Wacquant was very true when he said if Bourdieu,Orwell and Walker Evans had met in a homeless encampment in San Francisco Highway,they could not have produced a more penetrating portrait of America's urban outcast than 'Righteous Dopefiend'. This book is a very important contribution from Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg theoretically,methodologically and the use of applied public anthropology.
Methodologically,the use of collaborative photo-ethnography is a strategic choice by the authors to expose the distress of the socially vulnerable who remain invisible to the larger society.As the authors argue that photo-ethnography has the potential to effectively portray unacceptable social phenomena because it draws aesthetics ,emotion and documentation into the social science analysis and theory and tries to link intellect with politics but at the same time it is important to remain critically reflexive because as post modern theory inform us that social truth is an artifact of power and our categorization and conception of reality are historical constructs and therefore, as representational practices both photography and ethnography are torn between representing and humanizing and thus there can not be any transcendental solution or reality.But as far as this photo-ethnography is concerned ,they were successful in portraying the immediate environment of the homeless people and at the same time humanizing the 'subjects' who almost always loses them selves in the written ethnographies. The photos,interview's text and analysis complement each other in the representation of the lives of homeless addicts.
The conventional theoretical academic binary distinction between structure and agency is more of a ideological debate which does not offer any significant insight into complex historical and contemporary outcomes.The concept of 'lumpen abuse' sets the theorization of abuse of individual experience of suffering in the context of structural forces .As the authors points out explicitly that the suffering of homeless heroine injectors is chronic and cumulative phenomena that can be best understood as a politically structured phenomena.The combination of Marx's class theory,Bourdieu's symbolic violence and Foucault's concept of power have contributed to the building of the concept of 'lumpen abuse'.Lumpen abuse highlights the way structurally imposed everyday suffering generates violent and destructive subjectivities.The corporate neoliberalism as a dominant mode of production is producing growing numbers of lumpenized populations.The biopower governamentality have been internalized by the citizens but the violent coercion increasingly characterize neoliberal forms of governmentality and therefore,the term lumpen' can best be understood as adjective rather than as a bounded class category.
The linkage of theory and practice is an imperative for anthropologist who studies people in extreme distress to operate at policy level and specific local level intervention.But applied work is never political rather policy debates become the part of the problem by shifting political issues into a technocratic register.The authors emphasize the need for humility and self-reflection when building theory to inform urgent public debates.At the immediate policy level the authors suggest that simple prescription can lessen the suffering of the addicts.The availability of good enough treatment combined with harm reduction and strategic support after detox is an important steps in lessing the suffering of the homeless heroine injectors and reintegrating them in the community. These immediate intervention can help to certain extent but can not overturn the structural violence of the globalized Neoliberalism
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Top reviews from other countries
Salimata
Fantastic, from the intro to the end
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 25, 2014
Leda Anne
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