Bourgois is a cultural anthropologist who wrote about the drug trade(specifically the sale of Crack)in Spanish Harlem, New york in the 80’s, he lived as an observer for more than three years with his wife to help understand what it is that makes these residents fall into a system of poverty and excess that results in them dishing out daily abuse they have experienced onto each other. Bourgois main argument is that contrary to ‘culture of poverty’ theorists who would argue that the poor people are poor because they manage to condition themselves this way socially which ultimately leads them to repeat this cycle, as well as believing a general “Blame the victim/culture” (Bourgois, 1989, p. 6) system, Bourgois shows that it’s more internalised …show more content…
7), this is the process where students resist school(Bourgois, 1989, p. 7) which in turn funnels them into some of the poorest sectors of the economy for the rest of their conscious life(Bourgois, 1989, p. 7). This process can then be seen in the Spanish Harlem at the urban level where the cultural reproduction theory brings light on the cultural resistance and self-reinforced marginalisation of the population. The high octane lifestyle of drug abuse, violence and criminal activity can be understood as symptoms of a “culture of resistance to mainstream, white racist, and economically exclusive society” (Bourgois, 1989, p. 7) More importantly than this, Bourgois states its this “refusing to accept the outside society’s racist role playing, and refusing to accept low wage, entry level jobs” (Bourgois, 1989, p. 7) which in turn leads to the depressingly high drug abuse rates, criminal activity and various forms of violence(whether that be household or community
Race becomes important because it is often the unconscious method of discrimination in the educational structure in Waretown. The Mexican-American girls who become upwardly mobile are seen as the exception. White girls who became upwardly mobile didn’t face any dissonant reactions when they achieved mobility because it was normalized of the white race. Mexican-American girls, however, did face dissonance because it was not typically expected of them. They would often fight the administration much more than white girls in order to avoid being placed on the vocational track and have to work harder to stay out of it. The exceptionality of these girls proves how important and influential cultural capital is in shaping class futures. Only a small fraction of working-class and Mexican-American girls were upwardly mobile, largely due to the fact that they didn’t have the needed cultural capital. There had to be intervening factors, such as sports, private schools, or siblings, in order for these girls to gain the cultural capital needed to be mobile. Without this cultural capital, many of the working-class girls would have had the same future as their parents and remained working class. Cultural capital becomes key for shaping class
Although poverty has minimized, it is still significant poverty which is characterized by a numerous amount of things. There are two types of poverty case and insular. “Case poverty is the farm family with the junk-filled yard and the dirty children playing in the bare dirt” (Galbraith 236)Case poverty is not irretraceable and usually caused if someone in the household experiences “ mental deficiency, bad health, inability to adapt to the discipline of industrial life, uncontrollable procreation, alcohol, some educational handicap unrelated to community shortcomings” (Galbraith 236).Case poverty is often blamed on the people for their shortcomings but on some levels can be to pinpoint one person's shortcomings that caused this poverty. Most modern poverty is insular and is caused by things people in this community cannot control. “The most important characteristic of insular poverty is forces, common to all members of the community, that restrain or prevent participation in economic life and increase rates of return.
The functions that take place in Los Angeles is what is causing these gangs and violence. Anomie is the social feedback from an individual due to the impotent access of reaching the "American Dream", status, income, education, and freedom. Anomie is a burden that people are usually born into and causes them to operate in way that are not useful to society and do not promote societal stability. Anomie shows that the opportunities here in America are not equal for all and this is because of boundaries an individual is stuck inside of, just how Michelle Alexander believes blacks are trapped inside of a racist criminal justice system for
The most obvious effect of poverty remains the material aspect. The family has no money, therefore they cannot afford a good of decent quality. They can only purchase subpar goods. The family gets cheated numerous times in money related incidents. The housing agent cheats them the most, as they must pay much more money then he told them they would. Not only do they get cheated on the insurance, but they pay much more for the house than the value of it. The bosses cheat them as well: “big businesses had become even bigger. Large corporations were making a great deal of money, and some owners and managers became very rich. However, most of the people working in business and industry were not getting rich” (Duyne). When problems arise with the house, the family can only buy cheap goods to fix them with. When the...
In Sudhir Venkatesh’s ethnography Gang Leader for a Day, is his research is through the University of Chicago in the 1990s and chose to do research on poor black people. He stated about his experience with JT in the Robert Taylor Housing and to understand how their life if differentiates from others. Throughout this paper I will be speaking about Venkatesh’s research, the limitation, my opinion in how Venkatesh understood all of his findings, and how his experience mesh with my own. The novel is his dissertation, his ethnography where he collected data record their observations, and find a way to understand the meaning behind it all.
Social reproduction is the reproduction of cultural, human, and social capital in society. Therefore languages, traditions, cultural values, education, food security, and social circles are passed down from one generation to the next through Karl Mannheim’s concept of “fresh contact” and through society as a whole. Social reproduction is effective when social structures and equality within society are maintained. Inequality, poverty, and social changes that force society to adapt can impede the process of social reproduction causing what is known as a “crisis in social reproduction” (Wells, 2009). Born into Brothels demonstrates a crisis of social reproduction that negatively impacts the lives of children living in Sonagachi as a result of globalization, neoliberal policies, poverty, lack of adequate education and social structures to pass down capital, and the stigma of prostitution. Additionally, it shows the need for children to make economic contributions to their families that prevent them from leaving the brothel.
The audience is to towards everyone such as the young boys of color who can relate to the book and the authorities who mistreat them. Ethnographic research methods between forty Black and Latino boys aged 14-18 in Oakland are used in this book. All of the participants had been arrested, or were socially linked with others had been arrested, or were on probation. Rios collected data by carrying on participant observations, interviews, focus group, and fieldwork. In the inner cities, most of the young men's parents still try to infuse their children with positive thinking, and all of the young men were originally eager to go to college or learn a skill and have a normal life. However, many of those people are in extreme poverty so that they are lack of enough resources on family and school. Also their communities limited their educational and career chances. They are living in a difficult life with intense policing and dense crime. Numerous young men had to cope with the problems and shame related to family members' drug issues and incarceration. And all of them believed their chances of also being incarcerated were
This text also persuades readers about how race is an issue of gentrification. The author’s claims on the issues show that gentrification is mainly influenced by race and income. The writer wrote the text also to show how the media can be influential to be discouraging poor colored communities, criticizing the views on gentrification in those areas. There are some persuasive appeals that are supported by the author in the text. The first is Ethos, he is a credible source in his claims retelling his own experience as a paramedic and how his patient impacted his criticism on how the media portrays the “hood” as being atrocious and worthless in the community. The author also attempts to convince his readers through his own emotions, including specific evidence and claims for his appeals. The second persuasive appeal used is pathos when he explains how these communities are dealt with moving place to place being invaded from their own residence and businesses. The third persuasive appeals he presents is logos, which he describes the situation of the the people being affected by this issue first hand to show the reader it is a mistaken
In Punished: policing the lives of black and Latino boys author Rios, victor. Victor Rios grew up in the ghetto in the Oakland, California in the 1980s. Rios, a former gang member and juvenile delinquency. Rios managed to escape this trend of gang violent as a teen; he managed to escape the gang violent lifestyle from his peers. He provides us a with a depth overview of a three-year study of 40 minority youths, 30 of whom were previously arrested. The study was done in Oakland, California. Rios give us a clear overview inner city young Latino and African American. Rios emphasize on the difficult lives of these young men, who are faced with policies in their schools, communities, and policing. Importantly, he gives us a clear understanding
I connected the article about the rise in Hip Hop in the Bronx and its relation to curbing violence to two different ideas found in the articles we read, the first being black reurbanism from Robert Fishman’s, “The fifth migration” and the second being the concept that the city of Kinshasa while being very poor, was a thriving center of arts and popular music from the Kinshasa article, I could not find the author of this article as there was many different names there. There are many similarities in these articles, one being that in the Bronx, despite the challenges it faces, it has overcome much of its violence with the use of arts such as they did in Kinshasa, all on their own. Instead of using violence, they have resorted to a much more peaceful and creative way to settle their differences, such as dance, graffiti, and fashion. Another connection is that even though the Bronx is the home of hip hop and so many ideals from mainstream pop culture originated there and should be a city of great wealth, the city is still suffering. This relates to black reurbanism in the sense that
He described the theory as having the capability of exposing the links between drug abuse, crime and violence, referred to as cultural resistance, and ‘white’ people’s refusal to accept entry-level jobs with minimum wage in the inner city, thus leaving it to the Puerto Rican residents (seen as the inferior race in this article) to occupy these job vacancies (an example of self-reinforced marginalization). As a result, this is reflected into high crime and drug addiction rates, and intra-community violence (Bourgois,
Class is something that is often defined by ones income, job, and family background, the area in which they live or indeed the schools or universities they have chosen to attended. This criteria is used to label people as a certain class and is something that can be seen in education through the likes of theories such as cultural capital. In this essay I am going to compare and contrast differences between middle and working class experiences of education focusing on two main theories; Cultural capital and social reproduction. I am going to concentrate upon the primary sector in oppose to secondary or higher education due to the fact I believe that primary school is where most children develop their personalities which they carry with them in further life and it is their first academic experience; therefore it is where social class first becomes clearly noticeable. In relation to these theories I am going to research into the argument that parents have a strong influence on their child’s education from this young age.
For my final paper I choose to sociologically analyze the book Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh. Newsweek describes Gang Leader for a Day as being “Compelling…dramatic…Venkatesh gives readers a window into a way of life that few Americans understand.” (Newsweek) Gang Leader for a Day tells the story of a young sociologist named Sudir Venkatesh and his search for answers to poverty problems in the urban projects. After being constantly warned of which areas not to visit, Venkatesh decided to ignore all the forewarnings and goes and walks into Lake Park Projects, to conduct surveys for his professor. On his trip into the projects Venkatesh ends up meeting a gang leader named J.T. After spending the night in the projects Venkatesh is allowed to leave after J.T. states “You shouldn’t go around asking them silly-a** questions —- With people like us, you should hang out, get to know what they do, how they do it. No one is going to answer questions like that .You need to understand how young people live on the streets.” (2008 : 21) From that day on Venkatesh would come to end up befriending J.T and spending almost all of his time in the projects. It isn’t until J.T gets relocated to the notorious Robert Taylor Housing that the real study begins. Over the next seven years Venkatesh would not only gather information from J.T but, also befriend everyone from the other neighborhood dealers, crackheads, squatters, prostitutes, pimps, activists, cops, organizers, and officials. Through his time spent with the residents and officials of the Robert Taylor Homes Venkatesh not only was able to gain insight on the day to day life of...
The movie City of God, showed the incredible world of gang youth in the undeveloped area of Rio de Janeiro, where gangs ruled the streets and young children were initiated into murder before they were teenagers. The urbanization of the third world is creating sub-cultures that are filed with chaos and run by crime, most of which is the result of drugs and other illegal activities. In his article Race the Power of an Illusion, Dalton Conley says, “the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s really marks both an opportunity and a new danger in terms of racial relations in America. On the one hand, the Civil Rights era officially ended inequality of opportunity. It officially ended de jure legal inequality, so it was no longer legal for employers, for landlords, or for any public institution or accommodations to discriminate based on race. At the same time, those civil rights triumphs did nothing to address the underlying economic and social inequalities that had already been in place because of hundreds of years of inequality.” (Conley, 1). Though the Civil Rights movement was able to get equal rights for blacks, it could not stop the brutality that still plagued them. The urban setting is so overcrowded that the people are living on top of each other.
In conclusion, sometimes actions take place that changes a person’s outlook on life and as you can see poverty is one that can have a huge effect on not only one person, but also the people around him/ her.