47 pages 1 hour read

Philippe Bourgois, Jeffrey Schonberg

Righteous Dopefiend

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2008

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ConclusionChapter Summaries & Analyses

Conclusion Summary: “Critically Applied Public Anthropology”

Having explored the inner world of the Edgewater unhoused community and social network, Bourgois and Schonberg end on the question, “So what?” Their final thoughts tie together the theoretical lenses they’ve drawn on throughout the book—Foucault’s discourse on biopower, Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic violence, Marx’s philosophy around power and class, and their own theory of lumpen abuse. The harm of neoliberalism, the War on Drugs, and the criminalization of poverty contribute the most to the harm experienced by the Edgewater unhoused population by directing blame for their situation onto individuals rather than acknowledging the systematic discrimination they run into at every turn and the violence that besets them.

Conclusion Analysis

The conclusion of Righteous Dopefiend discusses the theoretical and practical applications of Bourgois and Schonberg’s fieldwork. The authors continue to express ambivalence about their role as anthropologists observing the personal misery of their interlocutors. As researchers, they are inherently in a position of power over their interlocutors, and they are aware of the risk of abusing that power. They question the usefulness of the fieldwork, asking how realistic it is to hope that their findings would be applied to better serve populations such as the Edgewater unhoused community.