Crack in Spanish Harlem: Culture and Economy in the Inner City Author(s): Philippe Bourgois Source: Anthropology Today, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Aug., 1989), pp. 6-11 Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3032654 Accessed: 02/11/2009 18:34 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=rai. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Anthropology Today. http://www.jstor.org Crack in Spanish Harlem Culture and economy in the inner city PHILIPPE A mugging in Spanish Harlem petuating cycle of poverty' (Lewis 1966: 5). The cul- The heavy-set, white undercoverpoliceman pushed me ture of poverty concept has been severely criticized for BOURGOIS across the ice-cream counter, spreading my legs and its internalinconsistencies, its inadequateunderstanding poking me around the groin. As he came dangerously of 'culture' and ethnicity, its ethnocentric/middleclass close to the bulge in my right pocket I hissed in his ear bias, its blindness to structuralforces, and its blame- PhilippeBourgois is assistantpr-ofessor of 'It's a tape recorder'.He snapped backwards,releasing the- victim implications (cf. Leacock ed. 1971, Valen- anthropologyat San his left hand's grip on my neck and whispering a barely tine 1968, Waxman 1977, Stack 1974). Despite the FranciscoState University, audible 'Sorry'. Apparently,he thought he had clumsily negative scholarly consensus on Lewis's theory, the al- currentlyon study leave in interceptedan undercoverfrom another departmentbe- ternative discussions either tend towards economic New Yor-kCity. He cause before I could get a close look at his face he had reductionism (Ryan 1971, Steinberg 1981, Wilson contributedan article 'The numbers-joint. Miskituof Nicaragua left the bodega grocery-store cum 1978) or else ultimately minimize the reality of PolarizedEthnicity' to Meanwhile, the marijuanasellers stationed in front of profound marginalizationand destruction-some of it A.T., April 1986. the bodega that Gato and I had just entered to buy 16- internalized-that envelop a disproportionateshare of 1. A botanica is a herbal ounce cans of Private Stock (beer), observing that the the inner city poor (cf. Stack 1974, Valentine 1978; see pharmacyand santet-ia undercoverhad been rough with me when he searched critiques by Maxwell 1988, Wilson 1988). More impor- utility store. through my pants, suddenly felt safe and relieved- tantly, the media, public policy-makers and a large 2. This researchwas finally confident that I was a white drug addict rather proportionof inner city residents themselves continue fundedby the United States Bureauof the than an undercover. to subscribe to a popularized blame-the-victim/culture Census, the Wenner-Gren As we hurried to leave this embarrassingscene we of poverty concept that has not been adequately Foundationfor were blocked by Bennie, an emaciated teenager high on rebuttedby scholars. Anthropological angel dust who was barging through the door along The inner city residents described in the ethnographic Research,two with two friends to mug us. I ran to the back of the vignette above are the pariahs of urban industrial US WashingtonUniversity bodega but Gato had to stand firmly because this was society. They seek their income and subsequently their JuniorFaculty Summer the corner he worked, and those were his former identity and the meaning in their life throughwhat they Researchgrants, and partners. They dragged him onto the sidewalk sur- perceive to be high-powered careers 'on the street'. LotteryFunds and an AffirmativeAction Grant roundinghim on all sides, shouting about the money he They partake of ideologies and values and share sym- from San Francisco State still owed, and began kicking and hitting him with a bols which form the basis of an 'inner city street University. An expanded baseball bat. I found out later that Gato owed them for culture' completely excluded from the mainstream version of this article will his share of the supply of marijuanaconfiscated in a economy and society but ultimately derived from it. be appearingin a special drug bust last week . After we finished telling the Most of them have a few direct contacts with non- issue of Contempoat-y story at the crack/botanical house where I had been inner city residents, and when they do it is usually with Drug Problems devoted spending most of my evening hours this summer, people who are in a position of domination:teachers in to crack in the United Chino, who was on duty selling that night with Julio school, bosses, police officers, and later parole or States. (pronouncedJew-Lee-oh), jumped up excitedly calling probationofficers. Pseudonymshave been used in orderto disguise out 'what street was that on? Come on, let's go, we can How can one understandthe complicated ideological identities of persons still catch them-How many were they?' I quickly dynamic accompanying inner city poverty without fall- referredto. stopped this mobilization for a revenge posse, explain- ing into a hopelessly idealistic culture of poverty and ing that it was not worth my time, and that we should blame-the-victim interpretation? Structural, political just forget about it. Chino looked at me disgustedly sit- economy reinterpretationsof the inner city dynamic ting back down on the milk crate in front of the emphasize historical processes of labour migration in botanica's door and turned his face away from me, the context of institutionalized ethnic discrimination. shrugging his shoulders.Julio, whom I knew better and They dissect the structuraltransformations in the inter- had become quite close to for a number of weeks last national economy which are destroying the manufactur- year, jumped up in front of me raising his voice to ing sector in the United States and are swelling the low berate me for being 'pussy'. He also sat back down wage, low prestige service sector (cf. Davis 1987; Sas- shortly afterwardsfeigning exasperatedincredulity with sen-Koob 1986; Steinberg 1981; Tabb aiqd Sawers, the comment 'Man you still think like a blanquito'. A eds., 1984; Wilson 1978, 1987). These analyses address half dozen spectators-some of them empty-pocketed the structuralconfines of the inner city dynamic but fall ('thirsty!') crack addicts, but most of them sharply prey to a passive interpretationof human action and dressed teenage drug-free girls competing for Chino's subscribe to a weakly dialectic interpretationof the and Julio's attentions-giggled and snickeredat me. relationshipbetween ideological processes and material reality, or between cultureand class. Culture and material reality Although ultimately traceable directly to being The above extract from sanitized fieldwork notes is productsof internationallabour migrations in a transna- merely a personalized glimpse of the day-to-day strug- tional world economy, street-level inner city residents gle for survival and for meaning by the people who are more than merely passive victims of historical stand behind the extraordinarystatistics on inner city economic transformationsor of the institutionalizeddis- violent crime in the United States.2 These are the same crimination of a perverse political and economic sys- Puerto Rican residents of Spanish Harlem, New York tem. They do not passively accept their fourth-class City, that Oscar Lewis in La Vida declared to be vic- citizen fate. They are struggling determinedly-just as tims of a 'culture of poverty' enmired in a 'self-per- ruthlessly as the railroad and oil robber-baronsof the 6 ANTHROPOLOGYTODAY Vol 5 No 4, August 1989 Left: childrenplaying in a city-owned vacant lot where tenementsstood twelve years ago. Right: Passers-by posing in front of abandoned tenementswhic h have been vacantfor over a dozen years. The City of New Yorkis said to be the biggest landlord of 'crack houses' as dealers and users often establish themselvesin abandoned structureswhose ownershiphas reverted to previous century and the investment-banker'yuppies' city can be understood as the manifestations of a 'cul- the municipality. of today-to earn money, demand dignity and lead ture of resistance' to mainstream, white racist, and All photos by Philippe meaningful lives. Tragically, it is that very process of economically exclusive society. This 'culture of Bourgois. struggle against-yet within-the system which exacer- resistance', however, results in greater oppression