Jack Hillis Dr. Mahmood Intro to Cultural Anthropology May 1st, 2024. Anthropology has been pivotal in the discovery and understanding of different cultures around the world. Anthropologists help us decipher and connect with these cultures; an example of these anthropologists is two authors who wrote books about drug abuse and its culture. The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession Along the Rio Grande by Angela Garcia and In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio by Philippe Bourgois. Garcia depicts the harsh reality of a small community overrun by heroin; she works at a rehab clinic trying to help the many people hooked on drugs. Bourgois takes a different approach; he dives in headfirst and moves his family to El Barrio in the heart of a crack epidemic. His goal is to gain the trust of drug …show more content…
They will also examine the adversity these individuals must overcome, which you and I could never understand. Finally, Garcia and Bourgois will discover how, even though they examine cultures that are very different from their own, they can still find connections to their society. Garcia and Bourgois depict how anthropology contributes to studying our society. To truly understand both authors' environments when writing these books, we must first explore the social and economic status of both El Barrio and rural New Mexico. El Barrio is not the most excellent part of town; it is infected with drugs and violence that take over the community like an ancient plague. The neighborhood was known for its high levels of poverty and unemployment. Author Philippe Bourgois moved his family to El Barrio, aka East Harlem, when writing In Search of Respect. His goal was to observe and understand the residents firsthand. What he found was that due to the high levels of poverty, many people had to resort to selling drugs to make a living; even with the money from selling drugs, it was common to see many
In Sueños Americanos: Barrio Youth Negotiating Social and Cultural Identities, Julio Cammarota studies Latina/o youth who live in El Pueblo, and talks about how Proposition 187, the anti-immigrant law, is affecting Latina/o youth in California (Cammarota, 2008, p. 3). In this book review, I will write about the two main points the author is trying to get across. The two main points I will be writing about are how Proposition 187 is affecting the Latina/o community, and about how Latina/o youth are copping in the El Pueblo barrio. Afterward I write about the two main points the author is trying to get across, I will write a brief description of the author and write about the author’s strengths and weaknesses.
One can draw many parallels from Garcia’s book; at the end of Reconstruction in the United States, many African-Americans, left the South, as home rule, and Jim Crow became part of it many, left for the north, especially Chicago. Thus, making El Paso somewhat of a Chicago for the Mexicans –as many Mexicans were fleeing the many deplorable conditions of a México under the rule of Dictator Porfirio Díaz, an era that came to be known as ...
In Elvia Alvarado’s memoir Don’t Be Afraid, Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart, she expresses the struggles that people such as herself, and numerous other Honduran citizens face every day. Elvia Alvarado was a Honduran woman, who was considered a peasant. She was born into a poor family in the countryside of Honduras. The book retails stories from Alvarado’s life and the obstacles she is forced to overcome in hopes of achieving a better life for herself and the people around her. She faces oppression due to her social class, ideals, and especially her gender. At the same time though, she is able to find support through these communities. While the odds are stacked against Elvia Alvarado, she is able to continuously preserve,
Angela Garcia’s The Pastoral Clinic is a riveting collection of illness narratives depicting the lives of heroin addicts, specifically in the underserved area of Espanola Valley, New Mexico. She genuinely provides her audience the reality behind a marginalized population that suffers from an addiction crisis as well as the presence of institutional structures that criminalize addicts for their illness. This paper will focus on care and chronicity as two central ideas of Garcia’s work from two lenses of understanding. The first lens is the Foucauldian approach to bio-power and bio-bureaucracies, a mode of analysis that the author utilizes quite sufficiently to support her argument of “restoring the embodied, economic and moral dynamics of addiction” (Garcia 2010, 10 ). This approach illustrates care as a product of chronicity and vice versa. The second lens is Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and resistance, a mode of analysis
The Cocaine Kids and Dorm Room Dealers are two very different, but yet similar books. Cocaine Kids are about a group of kids, primarily of Hispanic race, with one kid of the Black race. The kids were raised in the inner city of New York. Dorm Room Dealers are about White, middle to upper-middle class college students, who was selling drugs for their status. The purpose of this paper is to prove that there are racial disparities among drug users. There will be examples from the texts that show the different takes on the drug markets and how race plays a factor. There also will be how these experiences shape the kids drug dealing and using. The paper will conclude how all the kids either remained in the drug career or left the drug career.
In their ethnography Bourgois and Schonberg are studying the culture of a community of heroin injectors from San Francisco, to which they are referred to as the Edgewater Homeless. They follow them in their everyday lives, recording burglaries, panhandling, love affairs, conflicts, alliances, hierarchies and deaths as well as trips to jail, hospitals, and treatment centers. They delve back into the lives of the Edgewater Homeless to analyze what factors lead them to heroin addiction. In class, it was said that cultures are system and the world is a product of culture exposure. However, this is a culture that has been unknowingly produced by the higher power forces of our nation and is constantly looked down on.
It describes the immigrants point of view as they sacrifice their most beloved things. Bodega and Chino risked their love ones in order to help other people and the community. Relationships throughout the story elaborated the sacrifice that they went through to better the community. The relationship between the Chino and Blanca demonstrates that they sacrificed themselves for the better outcome of their upcoming baby. Sacrifice was also demonstrated through the business in the community being overpowered by Bodega to ensure that the white supremacy did not change the Puerto Rican community. Sacrifices that the characters made affected the development of the community of Spanish Harlem. El Barrio transformed its bad reputation to a well-know and conservative community. People give up their most precious loving memories to ensure their or someone else
As you read you can picture his settings and characters. For the purpose of this book review, the reader will discuss how a migrant community in search of the “American Dream” encounters the “American Nightmare” as described by Tomás Rivera in his novel, “ …And the Earth Did Not Devour Him.”
the story of his journey and struggle to overcome his addiction with the help of the native
“As long as Latino kills Latino… we’ll always be little people,” stated Ernesto Quinonez. This statement comments on the integration of society within an individual’s identity and it’s long lasting effects. The perception of who we are behind closed doors and who we are in public greatly influences our state of mind and our internal well-being. Throughout Quinonez’s Bodega Dreams, the reader can clearly see how one’s traditional culture and perception of private vs. public image is valued amongst the characters. At times, the reader may notice an internal struggle within multiple characters. The thought of going against what may be considered “normal” can be quite nerve-racking for
Addiction is one of the hardest problems to overcome, yet people often find some reward in abusing drugs. We all ask the question to what makes a person an addict, or why is it so hard for drug addicts to kick a drug problem. However, can we say that getting a hold of drugs is much easier in today’s society, or is it made available to easy. In this day and age, heroine seems to be a major epidemic; furthermore, opiates have been around for centuries. Therefore, people have been battling addiction for as long as opiates have been around. In Drugstore Cowboy, the film takes a look in to the life of four people who rob drugstores in order to support their habit; however, this lifestyle
Gootenberg, Paul. Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
The struggle to find a place inside an un-welcoming America has forced the Latino to recreate one. The Latino feels out of place, torn from the womb inside of America's reality because she would rather use it than know it (Paz 226-227). In response, the Mexican women planted the seeds of home inside the corral*. These tended and potted plants became her burrow of solace and place of acceptance. In the comfort of the suns slices and underneath the orange scents, the women were free. Still the questions pounded in the rhythm of street side whispers. The outside stare thundered in pulses, you are different it said. Instead of listening she tried to instill within her children the pride of language, song, and culture. Her roots weave soul into the stubborn soil and strength grew with each blossom of the fig tree (Goldsmith).
McDermott, Jeremy. “US Targets Colombian Rebels as War against Terrorism Escalates.” Scottsman.com. February 10, 2002.
Thomas, Janet Y. Educating Drug Exposed Children: The Aftermath of the Crack Baby Crisis. Ed. Routledge. 2004. University of Phoenix. 3 April 2008 .