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Summary Of In Search Of Respect

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Question three, explain the title of our book, “In Search of Respect.” What are the obstacles Primo faces in his search for respect? How does cultural capital explain his employment in the underground economy? The title of this book “In Search of Respect” means 2 different things, one is street respect and the other is respect for a legal job. The title of this book reflects on the idea of having street credit which is considered respect in the streets which every crack dealer would want in order to maintain their business. Another meaning of the title would be their search for respect in the legal economy. Since most crack dealers don’t have any cultural capital they think of the legal work as a dream to achieve however they degrade this work …show more content…

The title of this book shows how respect is harder to get in the legal economy compared to the underground economy. In the underground economy you will not be disrespected because “having the rep – like that dude’s cool; don’t mess with him - without even having to hit nobody” (Bourgois 25). In the underground economy in order to get respect all you have to do is make people fear you in some way and then they will respect you. In the legal economy crack dealers have difficulty gaining respect because of “racism and the other subtle badges of symbolic power are expressed through wardrobes and body language” (Bourgois 161). Theses crack dealers who lack this cultural capital struggle to gain respect in the legal economy. Primo faces obstacles in his search for respect one of them is “the sense of insult experienced by men because the majority of officer supervisors at the entry level are women” (Bourgois 146). He is unable to gain respect though theses supervisors because they disrespect him and humiliate him during work because of his lack of cultural capital. Primo is constantly degraded in the legal economy as his lack of education to be “humiliated by having to look up the word illiterate in the dictionary” (Bourgois 159). His superiors make fun of him and calls him illiterate because they know he does not have a good education. Primo who lacks cultural capital knows that “street culture is in direct contradiction to the humble, obedient modes of subservient social interactions that are essential for upwards mobility in high-rise office jobs” (Bourgois 142). Since crack dealers like Primo who lack basic cultural capital because of their underground work they are unable to maintain a legal job. Since they lack cultural capital they are forced back into the underground economy because they cannot find a

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