Summary Of In Search Of Respect

Performing anthropological research in a complex society is different from performing research in a remote foraging group because with a foraging group you don’t have outside influences; you just get what you see and it’s easier to observe and learn. With a complex society, you have so many underlining issues that influence what you are observing that it gets difficult to actually pin point why something is the way it is. For example, in In Search of Respect by Philippe Bourgois, he went to do an ethnography on crack dealers and it wasn’t so easy because there were societal issues that influenced their lives but they weren’t easy to see firsthand, like how they were seen as being at the bottom and set up to always fail. For example, when they

Philippe and Pei-Lin run into some ethical concerns while doing their ethnographies. For Philippe, a big ethical concern was when he found out that the people he had met and came close to had participated in gang rapes. He had trouble with this because he morally couldn’t stand by and associate with those incidents that were horrific for him. Since he couldn’t as an anthropologist intervene, he had to step away, and by doing so his morals were satisfied by meeting half way with not intervening. He morally wanted to intervene, but simultaneously wanted to maintain his anthropological standards and I feel that the only way he could do this was by meeting each one half way so he could live with himself. This reminds me of when Pei-Lin intervened by saving the mom and the baby and how she actually crossed the line. I feel she did this because, unlike Philippe, she wouldn’t have been able to live with herself had she not done everything in her power to save their lives. It is easier for Pei-Lin to intervene in a hunter gather society than it was for Philippe to intervene in a complex society because there were less repercussions for her to face than there were if Philippe intervened. If he intervened he’d have to deal with many different aspects where Pei-Lin just saved a life and that was it. The effects of what they did or could have

Serena wrote her ethnography in chapters and in one part of the book it’s one chapter for different people. I kind of like this but at the same time I don’t because on one hand, you get to know them independently, but on the other hand I think that takes away from them being a society of their own. For example, with Philippe, he didn’t just do chapters for individual people. He set it up more with themes and then in the chapters you see the theme by hearing their conversations and stories and those stories are coming from different people. I like this because it shows how they all are dealing with the same things and everything intertwines showing how complex it is. To me, it gives the big picture but also allows the reader to be able to look closely to see what makes the big picture. I also really love how Philippe uses direct quotes and shows how the way they talk is a part of their culture. I loved this because where I come from we talk similar to what the book shows, as in using slang and “bad grammar,” but this doesn’t mean that we are ignorant. It’s just our culture and we can speak “correctly,” but we choose not to because it’s a part of who we are and it shows where we come from. When coming here I had a lot of