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Summary Of Crack In Spanish Harlem By Philippe Bourgois

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Philippe Bourgois is a Richard Perry University Professor of Anthropology and Family and Community Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (CV). In the late 1980s he spent time as a participant observer in the neighbourhood of East Harlem, also known as El Barrio or Spanish Harlem. Here he collected data on its underground society, focussing on the drug trade. In this Ethnography Bourgois criticises the application of various social theories, such as ‘the culture of poverty’, in regards to the people of Spanish Harlem. He also sheds light on the culture of violence, the gender roles played by those in the drug trade and how capitalism and the ‘American dream’ affects the street economy.
Crack in Spanish Harlem opens with a vignette in which
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