In the ethnography “In Search for Respect”, a book written by anthropologist Flippe Bourgois, it focuses on the opportunity he was given to observe and participate in the culture and life events of a Latino community in inner city East Harlem, New York City. Bourgois formed bonds and friendships with drug dealers and thieves. He questioned and documented the struggles they went through in order to survive in an extremely poor area. After reading such a vividly powerful book, one can’t help but question whether or not Bourgois should have written and published this book. Some may view it as negatively portraying these Latinos living in this community and the way they live their lives. This could effect how our society views them and instead of empathizing for them, we judge and begin to …show more content…
Referring back to the introduction, Bourgois’s hope from writing this book was not only for us to become aware of the situation and circumstances of this poverty and drug use in this community, but also for us as a country to be able to come up with effective ways to reduce these problems not only for this particular community but for our entire country. Throughout the book, Bourgois points out examples of why we must fully understand the context of this particular culture in order to improve all populations that are living this way. He points out that the only reason why the community was resulting to this drug business called the “game room” (essential a crack house) was due to the high unemployment rate in the United States and the loss of legal jobs. It is a no brainer that when anyone loses a job they essential lose the capability to provide for their basic needs so naturally if selling drugs lead to a paycheck that was double or triple the amount of the paycheck they would receive from the previous job they lost, they would result to drug