Ethnographies Of Mcclusky And Bourgois

Matthew Peterson

Dr. Michael Zukosky

Cultural Anthropology 101

6/6/2016

Comparison of Critical Views in the Ethnographies of McClusky and Bourgois In the traditional sense, an ethnography was just merely an explanation of culture; how the interact, survive, and continue as a culture. However, in the contemporary sense, ethnographies are not only used to explain how cultures work, but to expose a problem within it and propose a solution for the problem that would work within the context of the culture. This sense of contextual problem solving is prevalent in the last two ethnographies we read as a class: Here Our Culture is Hard, by Laura McClusky, and The Righteous Dopefiend, by Philippe Bourgois. McClusky's study is on the issue of domestic

To Start developing a solution to the problem she must first seek to understand it, and what she finds is that in Mopan culture there is a hierarchy of duties between a man and his wife. The husband's duties is to the fields to produce materials for the family, they are also the family patriarchs. While A woman's role is to reproduce and also work in the home to care for the children as well as other family members and household chores like washing and cooking. And if a woman is to not complete her duties she can seen as lazy or even adulterous. Now there are some cases of sanctioned domestic violence, such as if a woman does not complete the aforementioned duties, but the issue is within the cases of unsanctioned abuse and the complexities of life as a Mopan woman. Not only are the women seeking to end the unsanctioned violence, but to also seek out new opportunities outside of the home. What McClusky suggests is that the women should not go about acting in opposition to the already established hierarchy, but to complete their duties with diligence in order to strengthen their argument if they should ever be in a position to go outside the cultural norms and attempt a divorce or try and get a job in the city. This is how most applied anthropological solutions work, they do not fight the problem head on but instead they almost circumvent

but instead aims to shed light on the situation of the characters they followed with an insider perspective rather than the usual outsider perspective. Often times, society tends to label the unknown and the strange as the “other.” To break this convention, Bourgois gives opportunities to voices normally unheard. Even though he does not propose a solution to the problem, much like McClusky, he still uses a critical viewpoint to gain insight into the lives of these people and hopefully change the stigma that surrounds them and how they live, or more accurately, survive. The general public views drug addiction as a disease of choice that requires criminal justice as well as healthcare. To the extent that many homeless refuse to seek medical attention until absolutely necessary due to the stigma and fear of rejection. This structures our society that disallows the homeless drug users to climb out of their current social state. This is the exact stigma that Bourgois is attempted to do away with through use of a critical viewpoint which would allow us, the general populous, to see the lives of these people for what it truly