Righteous Dopefiend: Critical Analysis

In Righteous Dopefiend, Bourgois and Schonberg delve into the lives of homeless drug addicts on Edgewater Boulevard in San Francisco. They highlight the moral ambiguity of the gray zone in which these individuals exist and the institutional forces that create and perpetuate their condition. The authors liken the experience of the daily lives of the Edgewater homeless to living in an everyday “state of emergency” (2009:21). Throughout the course of their work, they expose the conditions of extreme poverty that the homeless experience, the institutional indifference towards their suffering and the consequences of their crippling addictions. Bourgois and Schonberg describe the Edgewater homeless as a ‘community of addicted bodies’ driven by a communal need to avoid the agony of heroin withdrawal symptoms and held together through a “moral economy of sharing”. (2009: 6) The “webs of mutual obligation” that form as a result of their participation in this system are key to the survival of the Edgewater homeless as they attempt to live under conditions of desperate poverty and police repression.

The moral economy functions by enveloping individuals into systems of reciprocity that operate as a key to their daily survival. Bourgois and Schonberg document how these individuals constantly seek one another

Bourgois and Schonberg cite Tina, an African-American heroin addict who survives by cultivating a network of male connections she can later benefit from (2009:51). Towards the end of Righteous Dopefiend, we see Tina’s efforts pay off when Carter is jailed and her car is towed for parking violations (2009:253). Left without shelter and unable to turn to the African-Americans within her immediate network, it is only through the workings of the moral economy that she is able to seek refuge with Hank and Petey, and later with