In Search Of Respect Analysis

In Search Of Respect
East Harlem also known as El Barrio is a neighbourhood of upper Manhattan in New York City. In addition to this, East Harlem has historically suffered from many social problems such as the highest jobless rates in NYC, teenage pregnancy, AIDS, drug abuse and homelessness (Chaturvedi, 2016). In Search of Respect is a book written by Bourgois and he goes to stay in East Harlem to conduct ethnographic research (I understand this as you basically going out to live with the people that you are studying- this is done when you observe the people through participant observation). Bourgois (1995) gives us the uncensored reality of living in poverty. In this essay, I will look at the characters: Primo and Ray and the way that the
In other words, local cultural dynamics is the things that people are doing to oppose the system (Chaturvedi, 2016). For example, the local areas that resulted due to Apartheid, people within a group (people of colour) being denied access and so forth. In the book, the example would be what Bourgois (1995) calls “street culture”. Street culture involves the inclusion and exclusion of people from a mainstream society based on their beliefs, values, feelings and thinking as well as the ways in which they interact and communicate with one another. In addition to this, street culture is embedded in history because they saw it to create their own culture and to rebel against the norms of society (sense of oppression) and the life that they were living (Bourgois, 1995:8). In other words, street culture is the things that people are doing in their day-to-day lives to resist being marginalised or exposed, sense of opposition against mainstream society. Street culture has two aspects that I will focus on substance abuse and the underground economy. On the one hand, Primo was struggling to find work and all the employment rejections that he was getting lowered his self-confidence and thus he turned to substance abuse (I understand substance abuse as people turning to alcohol or drugs when they cannot handle things anymore). On the
Culture of poverty is the people living in poverty in East Harlem, when the statistics say that they all should be starving and they are not. East Harlem is known for the high levels of poverty and people living below the poverty line when you take a close look at this data- their income, you would think that the people of East Harlem are starving, but they are not actually starving because of the underground economy (Chaturvedi, 2016). The culture of terror theory became famous for the way it as critiqued, the writing is understood as poverty perpetuating a destructive culture and poverty perpetuating a feeling of helplessness, disappointment and powerlessness that consequently just transmits itself from generation to generation and poor people are unable to help themselves (Chaturvedi, 2016). The poor can never be seen taking collective action and trying to alleviate themselves from their lives of poverty because the state is always going to close on them a