Philippe Bourgois

Philippe Bourgois (born 1956) is a Professor of Anthropology and Family and Community Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He has conducted research in Central America on ethnicity and social unrest.

In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio (1995)
Cambridge University Press, 2003 edition, ISBN 0-521-01711-4


 * Self-destructive addiction is merely the medium for desperate people to internalize their frustration, resistance, and powerlessness. In other words, we can safely ignore the drug hysteria that periodically sweeps through the United States. Instead we should focus our ethical concerns and political energies on the contradictions posed by the persistence of inner-city poverty in the midst of extraordinary opulence. In the same vein, we need to recognize and dismantle the class- and ethnic-based apartheids that riddle the U.S. landscape.
 * Ch. 9: Conclusion (p. 319)