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Righteous Dopefiend
This powerful work of gonzo journalism, predating the widespread acknowledgement of the opioid epidemic as such, immerses the reader in the world of homelessness and drug and alcohol abuse in the contemporary United States. For over a decade Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg followed a social network of two dozen heroin injectors and crack smokers in the San Francisco drug scene, accompanying them as they scrambled to generate income through burglary, larceny, panhandling, recycling, and day labor. Righteous Dopefiend interweaves stunning black-and-white photography with vivid dialogue, oral biography, detailed field notes, and critical theoretical analysis to viscerally illustrate the life of a drug addict. Its gripping narrative develops a cast of characters around the themes of violence, racism and race relations, sexuality, trauma, embodied suffering, social inequality, and power relations. The result is a dispassionate chronicle of fixes and overdoses; of survival, loss, caring, and hope rooted in the drug abusers’ determination to hang on for one more day, through a "moral economy of sharing" that precariously balances mutual solidarity and interpersonal betrayal.
392 pages, Paperback
First published November 27, 2008
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January 19, 2012
A wonderfully researched and heartbreaking ethnographic study of homeless addicts in San Francisco. The authors of this book lived among the "dopefiends" under highways, at abandoned factories, in campers and cars. They did not merely record the activities of the heroin, alcohol, and crack addicts, but instead, they presented them as humans with histories. The writers show how the downsizing of the manufacturing industries in the 1990s and Reagan's cutback of support for subsidized housing in the 1980s played a part in the growth of the homeless population. Though almost all of the people presented attempted to begin new lives that did not require dependence on drugs, few were successful. The authors show how the requirements for free treatment programs (limited to those who are terminally ill) and difficulty of getting into a paid program thwarted many of their efforts. They also detailed the repeated destruction of the addicts' shelters by government workers, which left these people who have so little with nothing--not a change of clothes, not a blanket, nothing. It causes me great despair to think that we have essentially treated the homeless as nuisances to be removed from our view, but I am thankful to the authors for presenting this comprehensive analysis.
August 2, 2012
Anthropologist Philippe Bourgois, currently employed by the University of Pennsylvania, became widely known in social sciences as an author of the book In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio (1995), ethnography of inner-city street culture in East Harlem. The study meant a breakthrough as the author was the first person to win trust of drug dealer gang members. Subsequently he conducted a several year long intensive field research. The monograph, in a masterly way combining classical ethnographical style and a modern concept of social structuration, won him legitimately positive reviews and many awards, including Margaret Mead Award and C. Wright Mills Award. After almost fifteen years a new book Righteous Dopefiend was published, co-authored with a photographer and post-graduate medical anthropology student Jeff Schonberg.
Whereas in the previous publication Bourgois described a sub-culture of drug dealers, interpreting it as a manifestation of resistance, a counter-culture offering alternative means of status saturation in conditions of social inequality and exclusion, in the recent title he and Schonberg introduce the reader among drug addicts living in the streets of San Francisco, where the authors found desperation and suffering instead of resistance. They spent incredible twelve years by participant observation of twenty middle-aged intravenous heroin addicts, whose everyday concerns were to satisfy their basic living needs (especially those which result from their addiction) and fight to retain their dignity and respect in gears of marginalization and stigmatization.
The Introduction is devoted to a brief overview of methodology and a more detailed description of theoretical foundations and concepts used to examine the surveyed issue. Nine following topical chapters deal with different aspects of the informants’ life: ethnic differentiation, partner relationships, physical and social impacts of addiction, childhood, subsistence, parenthood, homosocial relations, everyday aspects of addiction and addiction therapy. Partial findings lead to theoretical, but more importantly, practical conclusions in the closing part of the book. Although the topics, thoughts and findings appear across the chapters and are occasionally repeated and the text structure is not a very systemic one, the book works as a compact and organic complex. With regards to the length of the survey the authors were also able to tie the text together using a linear plot taking place in the background following the trajectories of the key informants with occasional retarding and retrospective diversions over the course of more than a decade. As anticipated, many of them finish in a tragic way.
This novel-like plot increases the dramatic character and authenticity of the criticism of neoliberalism. The criticism is nowadays modern even among Czech left wing intellectuals. I can see a problem in the fact that similarly to a lot of other critics Bourgois and Schonberg define neoliberalism only very vaguely as a „political-economic model of capitalism“, adopting several general phrases from David Harvey (A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), transforming the term in a bit unclear chimera. The term is then hanging over the text as deus ex machina and here and there, whenever necessary, is pointed out as the reason of marginalization, even in the context where conservatism used to be pointed out just several years ago. Evidence of the change of the concept can be found for example in the criticism of War on Drugs, one of the main tools of criminalization and marginalization in the USA. The repressive strategy, declared by Nixon at the beginning of the 1970’s, used to be labelled as an idea of authoritarian conservative thinking, but now it is taken as an example of a neoliberal policy. Current intellectual “epidemic” of the vague term of neoliberalism can also be identified in the fact that Bourgois did not mention it once in his previous book. On the contrary, he managed with only a brief criticism of conservatism, although the book was written in mid 90’s, the times when, according to the above mentioned David Harvey, neoliberalism had been a dominant doctrine for more than a decade.
Theoretical fundaments of neoliberal American society criticism are based on concepts taken from works of Bourdie, Foucault and Marx. Through the concepts of symbolic violence and habitus the authors deconstruct inequality, poverty and drug addiction as ontological categories and point out their rootedness in the social structure (and the agent’s habitus) and their unconscious reproduction by means of everyday actions, in the framework that leads to the categories being perceived as natural consequences of individual’s behaviour. The book includes very impressive demonstrations of specific displays of symbolic violence in the form of agents’ internalized racism, homophobia or a body technique. The concept of symbolic violence is connected with Foucault’s interpretation of biopower, exerted against the surveyed homeless, predominantly through their drug addiction, on the level of anatomo-politics (e.g. the way of abscess therapy or using informants’ bodies for medical students’ practice), as well as on the level of biopolitics (e.g. substitution therapy or on the contrary criminalization of addiction). Means of exerting biopower could be positive or negative, however, in both cases they can be displayed in the form of symbolic violence. It is probably not surprising that according to the authors the dominant forms of biopower in the current American society are definitely the negative ones. They have destructive impact on marginalized groups of population and they even constitute these groups. With a reference to Marx the theoretical fundaments are in the context of empiric data framed by a complex concept of lumpen-abuse. The concept refers to the process of creating and maintaining a non-productive part of population through social, psychological, physical and economic means of abuse produced by neoliberal society. However, lumpenization does not constitute a social category that would exist as a social class on its own, but is comprehended in the context of Bourdie’s system of classes and habitus as a form of subjectivity shared by agents and reproduced by their everyday practice.
Bourgois preserves his clear and readable ethnographic writing style and as in his previous monograph his fieldnotes, or in fact fieldnotes of both researchers, receive a lot of space. In this respect a methodology question might arise regarding the extent of interventions and alterations to the fieldnotes. The notes are in several places so detailed and include direct and extensive quotations of the informants’ utterances in situations where an exact recording would be very difficult that it makes one believe they were written in a significant retrospective. The strategy of transforming refined notefields into an independent literary work is definitely effective, as the authors themselves point out, in helping “to understand the pragmatic rationality for what at first sight may appear to be entirely self-destructive or immoral” (page 9). Moreover, the impact is enhanced by another effective documentary technique – photography. The text of the book is accompanied by several tens of photographs made by Jeff Schonberg. Captivating, raw and a bit underexposed black and white photographs do not function only as a staffage in the form of randomly chosen snapshots from field work as it is usual, but they are put on the same level as the text itself and they add a substantial emotional charge to the publication. The way they are presented and their quality turn the book into a full photo-ethnographical study. Nevertheless, I feel confident in saying that sometimes the photographs only work on the surface and are without more significant analytical importance although the authors point out that „embedding the photograph in text allows an appreciation of the effects of social structural forces on individuals“(page 9).
With regards to publishing the photographs featuring exposed faces of the informants who are often labelled as criminals in the text, a question of the research ethics arises as damage might have been done to the informants or their relatives, friends or contacts. The authors did not answer the question quite satisfactorily as they only changed the informants’ names. They cynically add that they had obtained informed consent for publishing the photographs. However, such consent protects the interests of the research institution against possible legal actions rather than the interests of the surveyed people who had voluntarily taken part in the research. They subsequently point out the key reason for publishing non-anonymous photographs, which was the wish of parties, the researchers as well as the surveyed population, to show real stories with real people striving to retain their dignity and respect of the others.
I see the most important strength of the book in its extension to applied anthropology, or more precisely to critically applied public anthropology. The authors unequivocally see anthropology as an engaged subject of science, which “in the early twenty-first century cannot physically, ethically, or emotionally escape the hardship of the lives of its traditional research subjects” (page 320). In accordance with this Bourgois and Schonberg do not formulate their conclusions only in theory, but stating they would otherwise became only “intellectual voyeurs“ (page 297), they step outside the comfort of intellectual academic discussions and formulate specific recommendations they think might lead to a remedy or at least improvement of the situation the observed population lives in. One of the recommendations, most of which we have to say is not original, is a socially controversial although pragmatic – and, as shown by criminology as well as medical studies also effective – provision of heroine on medical prescription.
Righteous Dopefiend is definitely a book aspiring to become “classics” and obligatory reading for students of social anthropology and associated disciplines. It has all necessary qualities. In the context of the surveyed issue it is extremely difficult to find a similarly intense and long term study getting to the very core of the ethnography approach and consistently making use of all its advantages. On the theoretical level the authors build on structural theories of power, social agency and inequality elegantly solving the agent-social structure problem and they overcome traditional dichotomy between individual and structural causes of marginalization. On the application level they provide recommendations for changing policies and they engage in the interest of their informants. And last but not least they are very successful in showing the reader a suggestive view of the surveyed environment. As sociologist Loic Wacquant rightfully stated, if Pierre Bourdieu, George Orwell and American photographer of the Great Recession Walker Evans had joined, they would have been unable to produce more revealing insight. Righteous Dopefiend is a breathtaking celebration of anthropology showing its role and contribution for understanding social structure of the modern society at the beginning of the third millennium.
Whereas in the previous publication Bourgois described a sub-culture of drug dealers, interpreting it as a manifestation of resistance, a counter-culture offering alternative means of status saturation in conditions of social inequality and exclusion, in the recent title he and Schonberg introduce the reader among drug addicts living in the streets of San Francisco, where the authors found desperation and suffering instead of resistance. They spent incredible twelve years by participant observation of twenty middle-aged intravenous heroin addicts, whose everyday concerns were to satisfy their basic living needs (especially those which result from their addiction) and fight to retain their dignity and respect in gears of marginalization and stigmatization.
The Introduction is devoted to a brief overview of methodology and a more detailed description of theoretical foundations and concepts used to examine the surveyed issue. Nine following topical chapters deal with different aspects of the informants’ life: ethnic differentiation, partner relationships, physical and social impacts of addiction, childhood, subsistence, parenthood, homosocial relations, everyday aspects of addiction and addiction therapy. Partial findings lead to theoretical, but more importantly, practical conclusions in the closing part of the book. Although the topics, thoughts and findings appear across the chapters and are occasionally repeated and the text structure is not a very systemic one, the book works as a compact and organic complex. With regards to the length of the survey the authors were also able to tie the text together using a linear plot taking place in the background following the trajectories of the key informants with occasional retarding and retrospective diversions over the course of more than a decade. As anticipated, many of them finish in a tragic way.
This novel-like plot increases the dramatic character and authenticity of the criticism of neoliberalism. The criticism is nowadays modern even among Czech left wing intellectuals. I can see a problem in the fact that similarly to a lot of other critics Bourgois and Schonberg define neoliberalism only very vaguely as a „political-economic model of capitalism“, adopting several general phrases from David Harvey (A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), transforming the term in a bit unclear chimera. The term is then hanging over the text as deus ex machina and here and there, whenever necessary, is pointed out as the reason of marginalization, even in the context where conservatism used to be pointed out just several years ago. Evidence of the change of the concept can be found for example in the criticism of War on Drugs, one of the main tools of criminalization and marginalization in the USA. The repressive strategy, declared by Nixon at the beginning of the 1970’s, used to be labelled as an idea of authoritarian conservative thinking, but now it is taken as an example of a neoliberal policy. Current intellectual “epidemic” of the vague term of neoliberalism can also be identified in the fact that Bourgois did not mention it once in his previous book. On the contrary, he managed with only a brief criticism of conservatism, although the book was written in mid 90’s, the times when, according to the above mentioned David Harvey, neoliberalism had been a dominant doctrine for more than a decade.
Theoretical fundaments of neoliberal American society criticism are based on concepts taken from works of Bourdie, Foucault and Marx. Through the concepts of symbolic violence and habitus the authors deconstruct inequality, poverty and drug addiction as ontological categories and point out their rootedness in the social structure (and the agent’s habitus) and their unconscious reproduction by means of everyday actions, in the framework that leads to the categories being perceived as natural consequences of individual’s behaviour. The book includes very impressive demonstrations of specific displays of symbolic violence in the form of agents’ internalized racism, homophobia or a body technique. The concept of symbolic violence is connected with Foucault’s interpretation of biopower, exerted against the surveyed homeless, predominantly through their drug addiction, on the level of anatomo-politics (e.g. the way of abscess therapy or using informants’ bodies for medical students’ practice), as well as on the level of biopolitics (e.g. substitution therapy or on the contrary criminalization of addiction). Means of exerting biopower could be positive or negative, however, in both cases they can be displayed in the form of symbolic violence. It is probably not surprising that according to the authors the dominant forms of biopower in the current American society are definitely the negative ones. They have destructive impact on marginalized groups of population and they even constitute these groups. With a reference to Marx the theoretical fundaments are in the context of empiric data framed by a complex concept of lumpen-abuse. The concept refers to the process of creating and maintaining a non-productive part of population through social, psychological, physical and economic means of abuse produced by neoliberal society. However, lumpenization does not constitute a social category that would exist as a social class on its own, but is comprehended in the context of Bourdie’s system of classes and habitus as a form of subjectivity shared by agents and reproduced by their everyday practice.
Bourgois preserves his clear and readable ethnographic writing style and as in his previous monograph his fieldnotes, or in fact fieldnotes of both researchers, receive a lot of space. In this respect a methodology question might arise regarding the extent of interventions and alterations to the fieldnotes. The notes are in several places so detailed and include direct and extensive quotations of the informants’ utterances in situations where an exact recording would be very difficult that it makes one believe they were written in a significant retrospective. The strategy of transforming refined notefields into an independent literary work is definitely effective, as the authors themselves point out, in helping “to understand the pragmatic rationality for what at first sight may appear to be entirely self-destructive or immoral” (page 9). Moreover, the impact is enhanced by another effective documentary technique – photography. The text of the book is accompanied by several tens of photographs made by Jeff Schonberg. Captivating, raw and a bit underexposed black and white photographs do not function only as a staffage in the form of randomly chosen snapshots from field work as it is usual, but they are put on the same level as the text itself and they add a substantial emotional charge to the publication. The way they are presented and their quality turn the book into a full photo-ethnographical study. Nevertheless, I feel confident in saying that sometimes the photographs only work on the surface and are without more significant analytical importance although the authors point out that „embedding the photograph in text allows an appreciation of the effects of social structural forces on individuals“(page 9).
With regards to publishing the photographs featuring exposed faces of the informants who are often labelled as criminals in the text, a question of the research ethics arises as damage might have been done to the informants or their relatives, friends or contacts. The authors did not answer the question quite satisfactorily as they only changed the informants’ names. They cynically add that they had obtained informed consent for publishing the photographs. However, such consent protects the interests of the research institution against possible legal actions rather than the interests of the surveyed people who had voluntarily taken part in the research. They subsequently point out the key reason for publishing non-anonymous photographs, which was the wish of parties, the researchers as well as the surveyed population, to show real stories with real people striving to retain their dignity and respect of the others.
I see the most important strength of the book in its extension to applied anthropology, or more precisely to critically applied public anthropology. The authors unequivocally see anthropology as an engaged subject of science, which “in the early twenty-first century cannot physically, ethically, or emotionally escape the hardship of the lives of its traditional research subjects” (page 320). In accordance with this Bourgois and Schonberg do not formulate their conclusions only in theory, but stating they would otherwise became only “intellectual voyeurs“ (page 297), they step outside the comfort of intellectual academic discussions and formulate specific recommendations they think might lead to a remedy or at least improvement of the situation the observed population lives in. One of the recommendations, most of which we have to say is not original, is a socially controversial although pragmatic – and, as shown by criminology as well as medical studies also effective – provision of heroine on medical prescription.
Righteous Dopefiend is definitely a book aspiring to become “classics” and obligatory reading for students of social anthropology and associated disciplines. It has all necessary qualities. In the context of the surveyed issue it is extremely difficult to find a similarly intense and long term study getting to the very core of the ethnography approach and consistently making use of all its advantages. On the theoretical level the authors build on structural theories of power, social agency and inequality elegantly solving the agent-social structure problem and they overcome traditional dichotomy between individual and structural causes of marginalization. On the application level they provide recommendations for changing policies and they engage in the interest of their informants. And last but not least they are very successful in showing the reader a suggestive view of the surveyed environment. As sociologist Loic Wacquant rightfully stated, if Pierre Bourdieu, George Orwell and American photographer of the Great Recession Walker Evans had joined, they would have been unable to produce more revealing insight. Righteous Dopefiend is a breathtaking celebration of anthropology showing its role and contribution for understanding social structure of the modern society at the beginning of the third millennium.
June 22, 2020
Like nothing I’ve ever read - gonzo journalism as field work at its most potent
January 16, 2025
Ora ho intenzione di parlare di homeless per il resto della mia vita
September 25, 2024
Don’t normally put books for school on here but I have to add this one because it was one of the most important books I’ve ever read. Humanizes addiction in the most heartbreaking yet poignant way.
January 22, 2014
Righteous Dopefiend is powerful, shocking, insightful, and demanding. It demands that readers suspend their judgment not just of homelessness and drug addiction, but of the large-scale socioeconomic and political systems that force large segments of the U.S. population to fall through the cracks into lives of abject misery. This book attempts to show how structural and historical forces have created a whole new subjectivity, a self-contained worldview, defined by poverty and violence.
For twelve years, the authors lived with homeless heroin addicts on the streets of San Francisco, becoming friends with the addicts, often eating and sleeping with them in their encampments. They showed compassion and solidarity for the homeless addicts, without glamorizing their lives in the least. In fact, they describe many instances of shocking violence, crime, and betrayal among the members of the homeless community. This violent behavior can be seen as an inevitable result of living in situations where each member of the community is strained to the limit and struggling to survive.
Each chapter examines a different aspect of the homeless addicts' lives. For example, there are chapters on race/ethnicity, romantic love, childhood histories, making money, and seeking treatment. The pages consist of a mix of ethnographic narrative, transcribed field notes, and photographs taken in the field. It is readily apparent how integrated the authors had become in the homeless community after twelve years of research. In addition to a rich and deep ethnography, the book provides insightful theoretical interpretations, drawing on fields such as critical theory and public health.
In the end, Righteous Dopefiend demands that readers look closely, without flinching, at the lives of human beings who are living on the streets in America today. At the proximal level of analysis, these people are "choosing" heroin over all else, including their children. However, it is apparent that people don't end up on the streets for no reason or for personal moral failures. As the authors write, "The Edgewater homeless represent the human cost of the American neoliberal model. [They] are as all-American as the California dream."
For twelve years, the authors lived with homeless heroin addicts on the streets of San Francisco, becoming friends with the addicts, often eating and sleeping with them in their encampments. They showed compassion and solidarity for the homeless addicts, without glamorizing their lives in the least. In fact, they describe many instances of shocking violence, crime, and betrayal among the members of the homeless community. This violent behavior can be seen as an inevitable result of living in situations where each member of the community is strained to the limit and struggling to survive.
Each chapter examines a different aspect of the homeless addicts' lives. For example, there are chapters on race/ethnicity, romantic love, childhood histories, making money, and seeking treatment. The pages consist of a mix of ethnographic narrative, transcribed field notes, and photographs taken in the field. It is readily apparent how integrated the authors had become in the homeless community after twelve years of research. In addition to a rich and deep ethnography, the book provides insightful theoretical interpretations, drawing on fields such as critical theory and public health.
In the end, Righteous Dopefiend demands that readers look closely, without flinching, at the lives of human beings who are living on the streets in America today. At the proximal level of analysis, these people are "choosing" heroin over all else, including their children. However, it is apparent that people don't end up on the streets for no reason or for personal moral failures. As the authors write, "The Edgewater homeless represent the human cost of the American neoliberal model. [They] are as all-American as the California dream."
February 8, 2024
Really frustrating that this is supposed to be a book of anthropologic work when the photos are edited so heavily. Just admit that you wanted to do an art project about homelessness and didn’t have any further ideas!
This reads like they shoved cameras in the faces of addicts to get pictures that are on-par with what my friends (who are actually homeless lol) post on IG, and called it anthropology.
This reads like they shoved cameras in the faces of addicts to get pictures that are on-par with what my friends (who are actually homeless lol) post on IG, and called it anthropology.
April 4, 2012
This book is INTENSE! Heartbreaking in places, endearing in places...the book will haunt you. It is amazing insight to the lives of several homeless drug users in California...their lives, the choices they made, the consequences of their actions. The book gets a little theory heavy in places, but it works to describe the conditions that are beyond our/their control and how that creates world views. I would say without hesitation that this book has altered the way I think about politics and policy and the way I view the people and the world around me. Highly, HIGHLY recommend.
August 10, 2016
This book challenged me to better understand a pressing social and policy issue in a productive and provocative way. The book is the field notes, photographs, and academic theory of two anthropologists who followed / engaged a community of homeless heroin addicts in the Edgewater community in San Francisco over the span of ~10 years. It was well written and edited to bring out themes effectively, which helped me understand anew issues about which I've long been curious and never understood well.
December 10, 2017
I was lucky to read this book in my anthropology class with Professor J. Schonberg, who is one of the authors. As a resident of San Francisco, I encounter homeless individuals on a daily basis. This book changed the way I look at them and made me get closer to them. Reading about all the characters and their lives on the streets of San Francisco was very emotional, especially after learning about how their stories end. I highly recommend this book for everyone who is interested in anthropology, sociology, social justice..etc.
December 12, 2015
An eye-opening look at the lives of heroin abusers in San Francisco. I read this for my anthropology class and enjoyed it! It was a pretty fast read and the use of images was great.
May 21, 2016
Read for school, learned some things I didn't know about drug culture.
July 4, 2017
Really insightful ethnography about drug addiction to the point of homelessness, backed up with historical, anthropological, and sociological context.
Read
November 9, 2023read for health illness & society class
November 11, 2021
“If you can’t see the face, you can’t see the misery”, says Nickie, a homeless drug addict and one of the many human subjects of Righteous Dopefiend, an excellent book by Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg. The duo offer a photo-ethnographic study of the homeless heroin and crack addicts living on Edgewater Boulevard in San Francisco. The result is a searing portrait of “the human cost of the American neoliberal model”, reinforced by a web of structural inequalities and perpetuated by a politics of indifference to human suffering.
Bourgois and Schonberg closely followed a number of these individuals over a period of approximately ten years beginning in November 1994. Their level of commitment to the research subjects is impressive. As a sub-discipline within the field of anthropology, ethnography is an interesting practice of commitment, because it is one of the few social sciences that fully embraces its inherent subjectivities. The nature of human consciousness and phenomenal experience is such that unmediated objectivity becomes an impossible ideal. When humans study humans – or when humans study anything at all for that matter – the subject intertwines with its object, collapsing the inside-outside distinction, and dissolving any sense of neutrality.
That is arguably the greatest strength of ethnography – it explicitly recognizes partiality, it champions the value of qualitative research, and its scholars are not afraid to throw themselves into the mix. Indeed, Bourgeois and Schonberg get completely immersed in local practices, often forming close friendships with their subjects, and even spending nights in their tents on Edgewater Boulevard. “As anthropologists studying people who live under conditions of extreme duress and distress”, they write, “we feel it is imperative to link theory to practice. Otherwise, we would be merely intellectual voyeurs.” To me, that is a highly valuable and virtuous objective. This is where philosophy meets praxis, where the rubber hits the road, so to speak.
However, the ethnographer’s methodological slipperiness and unabashed subjectivity is also their greatest weakness. As a social science, it amounts to something of an ‘ouroboros’ snake swallowing its own tail. Left unchecked, ethnography can become messy, projective, and self-referential. Although, one could argue that, in practice, every science swallows its own tail. I think there is much to be said in that regard. Perhaps ethnographers are just better at accepting this reality than others. They do seem to be far less deluded in this sense, and are more willing to view medicine and health through a hermeneutic lens, not unlike that of Hans-Georg Gadamer. I’ll come back to this hermeneutic circle in a moment.
Through their neo-Marxist theory of “lumpen abuse”, Bourgois and Schonberg highlight the limits of medical science and logical positivism to solve social ills, such as the addiction and homelessness on Edgewater. The narrow focus on psychopharmacology effectively excises and abandons the human dimension from the treatment process, and ignores the fact that a person’s health is a sense of well-being, which is a matter of balancing holistic, structural, and immersive states of affairs in the world. In their view, medicine “seeks magic-bullet solutions for chronic human conditions”. They continue along that trajectory: “Medical technology is effective in curing many acute biological pathologies, but it is not designed to address the social structural problems that wreak havoc on the bodies of poor people. All sick people, not just the homeless, would benefit if doctors were trained to engage practically with the social dimensions affecting the health of their patients.” In my estimation, their views are highly compatible with Gadamer’s Heideggerian take on health as a hermeneutic artform – an applied science, which exercises “good judgment” (phroenesis) in order to restore a sense of equilibrium, or “well-being”, to the patient specifically, and to the human way of being-in-the-world generally (Dasein).
Reading Bourgois and Schonberg has complicated the way I view some of the essential public health measures we currently have in place. Here, I’m talking specifically about harm reduction techniques and strategies of disseminating health information, whose efficacy I’ve often taken-for-granted. For instance, clean needle exchange programs are rooted in a neoliberal logic of self-determination and free-will that does not necessarily apply equally to the lumpen class. Harm reduction methods often fail to appreciate the extent to which sharing hypodermic needles actually promotes and strengthens interrelationships and trust within the ‘buddy-system’ moral economy of intravenous drug users. Sharing can also mitigate and control withdrawal symptoms, which can be particularly awful for heroin users.
Of course, access to clean needles helps prevent the spread of HIV, Hepatitis, and other infectious diseases. This has been clearly demonstrated. But we cannot ignore the fact that it also dictates highly individualized and segregated injection practices, and reinforces this short-sighted idea that the responsibility for reducing harm and promoting safety falls squarely on the shoulders of the addict. The will of an addict is severely restrained, both internally and externally, physiologically and psychologically, structurally and pragmatically. In the throes of a full-blown addiction, it’s difficult to assume that an addict even has free-will, let alone a sound mind and body. Mental illness is comorbid with substance abuse disorders, and so to leave harm reduction efforts entirely up to the will of an addict is to miss the bigger picture.
Many of the Edgewater homeless are themselves a direct product of this rugged neoliberal individualism. The title of this book is derived from such a neoliberal mentality, which suggests that an addict has nobody to blame for their problems except themselves. When we ignore or downplay the broader structural forces that determine – or, indeed, overdetermine – homelessness and addiction, we decontextualize the individual and overemphasize the power of self-control and willpower. As a result, when an addict tries to get sober and fails, it makes sense why they would believe that their inability to change is a fixed part of their identity. They are then quicker to blame their shortcomings exclusively on internal character flaws, such as laziness, lack of motivation, or moral bankruptcy, rather than seeing their personhood within a complex tapestry of structures and factors. This is why so many of the Edgewater homeless exhibited a “die with my boots on” subjectivity – they were self-described “righteous dopefiends”.
Reframing addiction as a choice also reframes vice as a virtue, and attempts to reclaim a sense of dignity in one’s resignation to fate. It also spins drug use as virtue rather than vice, because it is interpreted as an expression of choice rather than a product of socio-economic determinants. Unfortunately, this kind of righteous subjectivity, in turn, reinforces a politics of indifference, which also fuels stagnation in public health policies. Bourgois and Schonberg follow this interpretation as far as it goes, offering tangible recommendations at the level of city management, local public health, and municipal government along the way.
A word on the photographic element of the photo-ethnography. The images are provocative and tragic, yet poetic and honest. I won’t soon forget the horrific photos of abscesses and skin grafts covering the bodies of the Edgewater subjects that required hospitalization. The candid snapshot of a man smoking crack through the tracheotomy hole in his neck was especially shocking and confusing to me. That image really translated the level of desperation we’re dealing with here. The sheer visceral quality of these photographs helps to ground the loftier, continental dimensions of their text in the brute reality of street life.
Righteous Dopefiend is a dense, cross-disciplinary micro-analysis of homelessness and addiction. It is a testament to the destructive legacy of the so-called "War on Drugs", and it is an intimate portrait of the development of the opiate epidemic from within. Some familiarity with critical theory and the continental tradition will help, particularly readings in Marx, Foucault, Bourdieu, Mauss, Benjamin, and Levi-Strauss.
Bourgois and Schonberg closely followed a number of these individuals over a period of approximately ten years beginning in November 1994. Their level of commitment to the research subjects is impressive. As a sub-discipline within the field of anthropology, ethnography is an interesting practice of commitment, because it is one of the few social sciences that fully embraces its inherent subjectivities. The nature of human consciousness and phenomenal experience is such that unmediated objectivity becomes an impossible ideal. When humans study humans – or when humans study anything at all for that matter – the subject intertwines with its object, collapsing the inside-outside distinction, and dissolving any sense of neutrality.
That is arguably the greatest strength of ethnography – it explicitly recognizes partiality, it champions the value of qualitative research, and its scholars are not afraid to throw themselves into the mix. Indeed, Bourgeois and Schonberg get completely immersed in local practices, often forming close friendships with their subjects, and even spending nights in their tents on Edgewater Boulevard. “As anthropologists studying people who live under conditions of extreme duress and distress”, they write, “we feel it is imperative to link theory to practice. Otherwise, we would be merely intellectual voyeurs.” To me, that is a highly valuable and virtuous objective. This is where philosophy meets praxis, where the rubber hits the road, so to speak.
However, the ethnographer’s methodological slipperiness and unabashed subjectivity is also their greatest weakness. As a social science, it amounts to something of an ‘ouroboros’ snake swallowing its own tail. Left unchecked, ethnography can become messy, projective, and self-referential. Although, one could argue that, in practice, every science swallows its own tail. I think there is much to be said in that regard. Perhaps ethnographers are just better at accepting this reality than others. They do seem to be far less deluded in this sense, and are more willing to view medicine and health through a hermeneutic lens, not unlike that of Hans-Georg Gadamer. I’ll come back to this hermeneutic circle in a moment.
Through their neo-Marxist theory of “lumpen abuse”, Bourgois and Schonberg highlight the limits of medical science and logical positivism to solve social ills, such as the addiction and homelessness on Edgewater. The narrow focus on psychopharmacology effectively excises and abandons the human dimension from the treatment process, and ignores the fact that a person’s health is a sense of well-being, which is a matter of balancing holistic, structural, and immersive states of affairs in the world. In their view, medicine “seeks magic-bullet solutions for chronic human conditions”. They continue along that trajectory: “Medical technology is effective in curing many acute biological pathologies, but it is not designed to address the social structural problems that wreak havoc on the bodies of poor people. All sick people, not just the homeless, would benefit if doctors were trained to engage practically with the social dimensions affecting the health of their patients.” In my estimation, their views are highly compatible with Gadamer’s Heideggerian take on health as a hermeneutic artform – an applied science, which exercises “good judgment” (phroenesis) in order to restore a sense of equilibrium, or “well-being”, to the patient specifically, and to the human way of being-in-the-world generally (Dasein).
Reading Bourgois and Schonberg has complicated the way I view some of the essential public health measures we currently have in place. Here, I’m talking specifically about harm reduction techniques and strategies of disseminating health information, whose efficacy I’ve often taken-for-granted. For instance, clean needle exchange programs are rooted in a neoliberal logic of self-determination and free-will that does not necessarily apply equally to the lumpen class. Harm reduction methods often fail to appreciate the extent to which sharing hypodermic needles actually promotes and strengthens interrelationships and trust within the ‘buddy-system’ moral economy of intravenous drug users. Sharing can also mitigate and control withdrawal symptoms, which can be particularly awful for heroin users.
Of course, access to clean needles helps prevent the spread of HIV, Hepatitis, and other infectious diseases. This has been clearly demonstrated. But we cannot ignore the fact that it also dictates highly individualized and segregated injection practices, and reinforces this short-sighted idea that the responsibility for reducing harm and promoting safety falls squarely on the shoulders of the addict. The will of an addict is severely restrained, both internally and externally, physiologically and psychologically, structurally and pragmatically. In the throes of a full-blown addiction, it’s difficult to assume that an addict even has free-will, let alone a sound mind and body. Mental illness is comorbid with substance abuse disorders, and so to leave harm reduction efforts entirely up to the will of an addict is to miss the bigger picture.
Many of the Edgewater homeless are themselves a direct product of this rugged neoliberal individualism. The title of this book is derived from such a neoliberal mentality, which suggests that an addict has nobody to blame for their problems except themselves. When we ignore or downplay the broader structural forces that determine – or, indeed, overdetermine – homelessness and addiction, we decontextualize the individual and overemphasize the power of self-control and willpower. As a result, when an addict tries to get sober and fails, it makes sense why they would believe that their inability to change is a fixed part of their identity. They are then quicker to blame their shortcomings exclusively on internal character flaws, such as laziness, lack of motivation, or moral bankruptcy, rather than seeing their personhood within a complex tapestry of structures and factors. This is why so many of the Edgewater homeless exhibited a “die with my boots on” subjectivity – they were self-described “righteous dopefiends”.
Reframing addiction as a choice also reframes vice as a virtue, and attempts to reclaim a sense of dignity in one’s resignation to fate. It also spins drug use as virtue rather than vice, because it is interpreted as an expression of choice rather than a product of socio-economic determinants. Unfortunately, this kind of righteous subjectivity, in turn, reinforces a politics of indifference, which also fuels stagnation in public health policies. Bourgois and Schonberg follow this interpretation as far as it goes, offering tangible recommendations at the level of city management, local public health, and municipal government along the way.
A word on the photographic element of the photo-ethnography. The images are provocative and tragic, yet poetic and honest. I won’t soon forget the horrific photos of abscesses and skin grafts covering the bodies of the Edgewater subjects that required hospitalization. The candid snapshot of a man smoking crack through the tracheotomy hole in his neck was especially shocking and confusing to me. That image really translated the level of desperation we’re dealing with here. The sheer visceral quality of these photographs helps to ground the loftier, continental dimensions of their text in the brute reality of street life.
Righteous Dopefiend is a dense, cross-disciplinary micro-analysis of homelessness and addiction. It is a testament to the destructive legacy of the so-called "War on Drugs", and it is an intimate portrait of the development of the opiate epidemic from within. Some familiarity with critical theory and the continental tradition will help, particularly readings in Marx, Foucault, Bourdieu, Mauss, Benjamin, and Levi-Strauss.
August 14, 2018
captivating - this is a must read for how to better approach humanizing an oft explored but disgusted subject - that of addiction, homelessness in the context of one of the world's wealthiest cities, San Francisco in the 1970s.
Bourgois and Schoenburg enter the foray of photojournalism with a weary and critical eye - they understand the power of visuals and the power play between the authors telling their point of views over trying to convey what their participants live through on a daily basis. It is because of this weariness and self-reflection that they really try to let the heroin addicts tell about their struggles, joys, pains and day to day stress. Bourgeois and Schoenburg manage to do this balanced and nuanced effort by putting in a lot of the dialogue between the groups, persons and photos involved, and then connects these lived realities to the systemic parallel policies and views of heroin addicts by society and interplay it with gender and race (albeit I wish they had included more intersectionality in their analysis).
I never was able to understand - therefore much less sympathize with Heroin addicts until I read this book. Through this book, the addicts became people whom I would come to know, love, feel and ultimately frustrated about how, because of the perceived disgust and ostracization by the larger public that these humans, who want to get help, are left stranded, poorly understood and with practically no one but each other to rely on.
This book also made me realize how much I had generalized about addicts - they shouldn't be under one umbrella. Addiction manifests in so many ways, and this book is about a group of individuals striving to live (en)during a particular time, place, and historical context with their addiction. I had realized that photojournalisms' (along with the accompanying text) tend to cast sweeping generalizations, and this is, in fact, dangerous because of the potential of further stigmatization, perpetuation of perceived "truths" about humans that are very much so intertwined and intermeshed with their socio, natural, economic environments.
I highly recommend this book to anyone, period. But if you want specifics, I think anyone who want to see more humanity beyond the scope of news headlines and government policies, learn about textual/visual activism, or who are curious about the theme of drug addiction to read this book.
Bourgois and Schoenburg enter the foray of photojournalism with a weary and critical eye - they understand the power of visuals and the power play between the authors telling their point of views over trying to convey what their participants live through on a daily basis. It is because of this weariness and self-reflection that they really try to let the heroin addicts tell about their struggles, joys, pains and day to day stress. Bourgeois and Schoenburg manage to do this balanced and nuanced effort by putting in a lot of the dialogue between the groups, persons and photos involved, and then connects these lived realities to the systemic parallel policies and views of heroin addicts by society and interplay it with gender and race (albeit I wish they had included more intersectionality in their analysis).
I never was able to understand - therefore much less sympathize with Heroin addicts until I read this book. Through this book, the addicts became people whom I would come to know, love, feel and ultimately frustrated about how, because of the perceived disgust and ostracization by the larger public that these humans, who want to get help, are left stranded, poorly understood and with practically no one but each other to rely on.
This book also made me realize how much I had generalized about addicts - they shouldn't be under one umbrella. Addiction manifests in so many ways, and this book is about a group of individuals striving to live (en)during a particular time, place, and historical context with their addiction. I had realized that photojournalisms' (along with the accompanying text) tend to cast sweeping generalizations, and this is, in fact, dangerous because of the potential of further stigmatization, perpetuation of perceived "truths" about humans that are very much so intertwined and intermeshed with their socio, natural, economic environments.
I highly recommend this book to anyone, period. But if you want specifics, I think anyone who want to see more humanity beyond the scope of news headlines and government policies, learn about textual/visual activism, or who are curious about the theme of drug addiction to read this book.
December 21, 2011
Righteous Dopefiend is based on detailed and extensive photo- and team-ethnography conducted by Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg (and others)among a population of homeless drug injectors in San Francisco, CA, in the 1990s. This book was exceptional on a number of levels. First and foremost, Bourgois et al use ethnographic methods to capture the intimate details of lives on those living on the very margins of society without sensationalizing their plight. Bourgois details the life histories of those living in the "Edgewater" homeless camps, revealing narratives of abuse, trauma, violence, and family breakdown. What the authors do well is present these individual- and family-level behaviors in light of the greater social structure that actively marginalizes many individuals by creating structural barriers legitimized by gender, race, or income dynamics. Bourgois and team, through writing and black and white photography, use individual narratives and story of personal agency for larger theorizing on social suffering and structural violence. In my opinion, one of the biggest lessons of the book is the difficulty the individual characters have in seeing their choices as highly influenced by larger race-, gender-, and power-related forces, thus implicating individual weakness in their inabilities to achieve social mobility, continued employment, or a life free from drugs.
Burgois also illustrates the power of anthropology to illuminate the consequences of social policy. His careful re-telling of the changing policy related to homelessness and health care among the uninsured can serve as powerful motivation to policy makers to consider how legal change has far reaching affects on lives of disenfranchised individuals.
Burgois also illustrates the power of anthropology to illuminate the consequences of social policy. His careful re-telling of the changing policy related to homelessness and health care among the uninsured can serve as powerful motivation to policy makers to consider how legal change has far reaching affects on lives of disenfranchised individuals.
November 11, 2013
I learned so much from this book. Prior to reading it, I had basically zero knowledge of what life is like for homeless people, how drug addiction affects people day-to-day, or how social policies have influenced this segment of our population. The book is full of fascinating anecdotes, humanizing insights, heartbreaking photos, and thoughtful commentary.
Some of the analysis was a bit too deeply rooted in social philosophy for me to understand, as I've never studied Foucault or any of the other theorists they referenced. That said, the book helped me develop a mental framework for thinking about problems of homelessness and addiction. It portrays with great honesty the attempts by society, by individuals, by the users themselves to improve their situation, and the frustration as most of these efforts fail or even backfire. As a nurse I found the stories of how the homeless drug users interacted with the healthcare system to be especially illuminating and tragic.
I particularly appreciated the ethnographers' analysis of their own feelings, as they developed relationships with their subjects over twelve years: wanting to help without destroying anyone's autonomy, wanting to respect and trust without becoming victims of manipulation, balancing journalistic non-interference with our moral imperative as humans to help each other. Being a homeless addict is hard, and working with homeless addicts is hard too. I appreciated that this book neither wallowed in nor glossed over that struggle. This book will stick with me for a long time.
Some of the analysis was a bit too deeply rooted in social philosophy for me to understand, as I've never studied Foucault or any of the other theorists they referenced. That said, the book helped me develop a mental framework for thinking about problems of homelessness and addiction. It portrays with great honesty the attempts by society, by individuals, by the users themselves to improve their situation, and the frustration as most of these efforts fail or even backfire. As a nurse I found the stories of how the homeless drug users interacted with the healthcare system to be especially illuminating and tragic.
I particularly appreciated the ethnographers' analysis of their own feelings, as they developed relationships with their subjects over twelve years: wanting to help without destroying anyone's autonomy, wanting to respect and trust without becoming victims of manipulation, balancing journalistic non-interference with our moral imperative as humans to help each other. Being a homeless addict is hard, and working with homeless addicts is hard too. I appreciated that this book neither wallowed in nor glossed over that struggle. This book will stick with me for a long time.
November 6, 2015
Excellent!!! I had to read this for my medical anthropology class and it was worth reading beyond needing to know for the exam. The book, in the style of photo-ethnography, portrayed with unflinching rawness the everyday lives and histories of the San Francisco Edgewater Boulevard heroin-addicted homeless. You pity, admire, and even come to like some of the people the authors interview. You peek into their lives, and if you're lucky, you come away from the book with a better, more tolerant understanding of what causes their extremely precarious, dangerous situations. They are not 'lazy, unworthy, morally unrepentant' individuals, but people who fell through the cracks of the increasingly neo-liberal, capitalist, War on Drugs nation that would rather give profits to multinational corporations than create social service safety nets for the indigent. It is a powerful collection of personal stories and anthropological analysis that leaves the reader understanding exactly why the heroin-addicted homeless are Righteous Dopefiends.
I highly recommend this book to anyone in the medical, political, law enforcement fields because it gives a human aspect to a 'problem' wished away by the general public.
This book will change your outlook on the homeless and the drug-addicted. If it doesn't, well there's no hope for you.
I highly recommend this book to anyone in the medical, political, law enforcement fields because it gives a human aspect to a 'problem' wished away by the general public.
This book will change your outlook on the homeless and the drug-addicted. If it doesn't, well there's no hope for you.
June 26, 2010
I didn't get all the way through this before it was due back at the library, but I did find it a very interesting peek into this often invisible or vilified population of hard-core drug users, how they structure their day, how they feel about themselves, how they feed their habit, the culture and societal rules they develop within the world of other drug users and what drives them to do what they do. It was often disturbing; showing the lengths of degradation their addictions will drive them to; from shooting into abscessed sores, taking hits off used cigarette filters, pooping their pants, and generally being considered the lowest rung of drug abuser in within the drug culture. It's a horrible, realistic, fascinating look at this unexplored culture that is often right under our noses.
August 14, 2017
'Righteous Dopefiend' welcomed me to the world of photo-ethnography and was the text that gave me the light-bulb moment to explore 'social capital' in more detail to understand survival strategies of street-level heroin users in South Africa. the patterns are very similar to what one witnesses here, with users forming close ties and networks to ensure survival as well as protection from factors such as withdrawal which can be harrowing. the study shows deep compassion for users and within the user-community highlighting the human-side to hard-addiction coupled with the socio-economic-cultural marginalisation and ostracisation of the user-community. Hidden from the world yet so visible the study opens our eyes to a world most chose to ignore, but yet thrives despite the daily hardships faced merely to exist.
April 7, 2018
This book took me awhile to get through. It's written like a textbook. The authors layer in their professional understanding of homelessness and drug use on top of field notes and recorded conversations. This book is primarily scientific, but its effects appeal to the emotion. As a reader, I became attached to each character, empathizing with their struggles. The aim of the book is twofold - to discuss homelessness and drug use on the scientific/anthropological level and to illuminate the life of an addict on a more personal level. I suggest it for all types of readers.
The authors also suggest policy change in hopes to make addiction less stigmatized. They generally push for medicalizing addiction rather than criminalizing, and they provide evidence supporting their theories. It's convincing and heartbreaking.
The authors also suggest policy change in hopes to make addiction less stigmatized. They generally push for medicalizing addiction rather than criminalizing, and they provide evidence supporting their theories. It's convincing and heartbreaking.
October 12, 2009
Definitely in the top 20 of non-fiction books that I've ever read. This book should be required reading for anyone interested in public health policy, homelessness and addiction. The authors provide an incredibly thorough examination of the various societal and policy factors at play in perpetuating the cycle of this outcast population while also giving a very personal, engaging look into the lives of homeless addicts. They treat their subjects with great compassion without romanticizing or downplaying individual responsibility. Intellectually challenging and extremely pertinent to what I see on a daily basis in the bay area.
March 21, 2011
This is a pretty amazing book. The authors spent twelve years talking with a group of homeless heroin addicts who live under the freeway in San Francisco. Without excusing their behavior, the writers really empathize with their subjects, and through this book, they humanize a group of people that is often vilified. It's a harrowing story that is emotionally draining at times, but very eye-opening. I learned a lot about the interconnected and complex reasons why the "righteous dopefiends" ended up in their lifestyle. Likewise, there are no easy solutions. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in social justice issues.
December 1, 2009
This is an astounding photo-ethnographic study of addiction and homelessness in San Francisco. Through examining the many societal and political factors that have a hand in the continuation of this outcast population, Bourgois and Schonberg present a personal, academic, and engaging look into the lives of homeless addicts. I was impressed by how the authors were objective and respectful to the subjects in their book without romanticizing or downplaying their individual responsibility. A powerful book for anyone looking for more understanding about addiction and homelessness.
October 8, 2010
Wow. This is one of the most insightful, well-written, and creative ethnographies I have read to date. Bourgois and Schonberg apply powerful social theory to understand the lives, experiences, and most visibly, suffering, of a group of SF based homeless heroin users. They manage to truly integrate multiple levels of human existence, from the structural to the individual, which many who attempt to address these topics fail to do. The use of novel methodogical tools, from photoethnography to team ethnography really offers a multidimensional perspective.
July 27, 2010
An excellent photo-ethnography detailing the struggles of heroin addicts in San Francisco. While many may say that heroin addicts aren't worth studying, it's important to note that, anthropologically speaking, their strategies for earning money count as an "alternative economy," much as people who work under the table in unreported jobs do. It's also important to note that because they are addicts, the government and health care systems systematically ostracize and victimize them...read this and see how things really are for these people.
April 29, 2010
An ethnographic account of heroin addicts living on the streets in San Francisco in the 90's and early 00's - this particular book is so well written and interesting I'd recommend it to non-academic readers as well as those interested in anthropology. It traces the lives of a group of individuals living in shelters on the margins of society, gathering their histories and discussing their methods for survival and feeding their addictions.
May 15, 2010
It was interesting to read about addiction and homelessness through the lens of anthropology. The writers spent many years living with and observing homeless substance abusers in San Francisco. The field notes and photographs were quite effective in illustrating the struggles of their subjects. I am hoping policy makers will read this book since the authors provide excellent recommendations on how to alleviate addiction and homelessness.
December 22, 2013
Read. this. book. Even though it's on the lengthier side, absolutely every page was worth the investment. You're pulled into the lives of homeless drug addicts in a way that manages to avoid sensationalism, and you end up encountering yourself and your own tendency to ignore others and their pain (particularly when they're on street corners, under bridges, or panhandling). Similarly to LeBlanc's Random Family, this book haunts, shatters misconceptions, and demands attention.
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