Alys Garrison Professor Heidi Esbensen SOC 310 US Society 7 May 2017 Righteous Dopefiend Analysis: Part 1 The United States has a history of poverty, class struggles, inequality, and homelessness. With poverty on the rise and bulky cuts to social service funding, homelessness is becoming more of a major social issue. As seen in Righteous Dopefiend, by Jeff Schonberg and Philippe Bourgois, the struggle throughout the daily lives of those living on the streets, extends beyond the lack of food in their stomachs or a roof over their heads. Schonberg and Bourgois experience life on the streets. They see the physical dependence upon heroin in the homeless community. As they insert themselves into the Edgewater community in San Francisco these issues …show more content…
These people, known as the Edgewater homeless, all come from different backgrounds and all have their own story. Even though the community is widely diverse, they share two commonalities: homelessness and addiction. Homelessness and addiction became the basis of their culture. Using firsthand interviews and accounts, this book illustrates the everyday struggles that the homeless population face. Schonberg and Bourgois give the oppressed an opportunity to have their voices heard. The lives of the Edgewater homeless were portrayed through characters like Frank, Sonny, Carter, and Tina. By allowing the voices of people who are actually living in the situation, such as the Edgewater homeless, a larger voice is given to the homeless community around the …show more content…
Frequently, heroin addiction becomes a physiological dependence on the drug, leaving users constantly in need for more when coming off. This is refer to as ‘dopesick’ to many of the users in the drug world. In Edgewater the need for heroin was a never ending cycle. Daily life was based on where and how to get the next fix. Psychical sickness such as when frank and Carter explain it, bone aches, vomiting, uncontrollable bowel movements, the feeling of spiders crawling through your bones, and the worst part is the anxiety (Bourgois and Schonberg, 81-82).While, the withdraw symptoms may not kill a person they are horrible to suffer through. With the chronic heroin use and the unsanitary living conditions, the homeless also face ailments such as, “Abscesses, skin rashes, cuts, bruises, broken bones, flues, colds, opiate withdrawals, and the potential for violent assault” (Bourgois and Schonberg, 5). When these cases become extreme they can end them up in the hospital or worse, due to the medical system the homeless postpone getting it looked at and will sub come to, death. The issue that Bourgois and Schonberg expose is the deep stigma in the structures of our medical
In Righteous Dopefiend, Bourgois and Schonberg delve into the lives of homeless drug addicts on Edgewater Boulevard in San Francisco. They highlight the moral ambiguity of the gray zone in which these individuals exist and the institutional forces that create and perpetuate their condition. The authors liken the experience of the daily lives of the Edgewater homeless to living in an everyday “state of emergency” (2009:21). Throughout the course of their work, they expose the conditions of extreme poverty that the homeless experience, the institutional indifference towards their suffering and the consequences of their crippling addictions. Bourgois and Schonberg describe the Edgewater homeless as a ‘community of addicted bodies’ driven by a communal need to avoid the agony of heroin withdrawal symptoms and held together through a “moral economy of sharing”. (2009: 6) The “webs of mutual obligation” that form as a result of their participation in this system are key to the survival of the Edgewater homeless as they attempt to live under conditions of desperate poverty and police repression.
This medicalized interpretation of heroin addiction heavily emphasizes a constant state of suffering for those who are affected (Garcia 2010, 18). Furthermore, Nuevo Dia employees take this framework into account when contributing their efforts to treat addicts, on the premise that relapse will soon follow recovery (Garcia 2010, 13). When detox assistants assure themselves that their patients will return to the clinic, as if they never went through a period of treatment, one can expect that the quality of such to be drastically low. The cyclical pattern of inadequate therapies, temporary improvements in health and detrimental presuppositions all widen the health inequality gap in New Mexico. Garcia shares that the “interplay of biomedical and local discourses of chronicity compel dynamics of the Hispano heroin phenomenon,” which is evident in how the judicial system handles the social issue of addiction (2010,
The homeless and addicts have been stratified to the bottom of the social ladder. They are thought to be deviants therefore as a society we are taught to ignore and despise them and disregard their needs. Bourgeois and Schonberg’s 10-year study, Righteous Dopefiend, follows the lives of heroin addicted homeless folk living on Edgewater Boulevard. The Edgewater homeless recognize that those with economic capital have a responsibility in caring for their needs thus they embrace their worthiness in society. As a result of this they label themselves as “righteous dopefiends” (2009, p. 5). Bourgeois and Schonberg show how structural violence has affected the Edgewater homeless, such as self-blame, lack of access to quality medical care and what is described as intimate apartheid.
Although most people know what homelessness is and it occurs in most societies, it is important to define because the forces of displacement vary greatly, along with the arrangement and meaning of the resulting transient state. The Stewart B McKinney Homeless Assistance Act of 1987 defined a homeless person as “an individual who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate night-time residence or a person who resides in a shelter, welfare hotel, transitional program or place not ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation, such as streets, cars, movie theaters, abandoned buildings, etc.” Resent surveys conducted in the U.S. have confirmed that the homeless population in America is extremely diverse and includes representatives from all segments of society, including: the old and young, men and women, single people and families, city dwellers and rural residents, whites and people of color, employed and unemployed, able workers and people with serious health problems. The diversity among people that are homeless reflects how difficult it is to generalize the causes of homelessness and the needs of homeless people. Robert Rosenheck M.D., the author of Special Populations of Homeless Americans, explains the importance of studying homelessness based on subgroups, “each subgroup [of homeless people] has unique service needs and identifying these needs is critical for program planning and design.” Despite these diversities, homelessness is a devastating situation for all that experience it. Not only have homeless people lost their dwelling, but they have also lost their safety, privacy, control, and domestic comfort.
Substance abuse is a wide-reaching issue affecting millions of people worldwide. It is an issue particularly troublesome for members of an oppressed class, in this case homeless women, as examined by the authors (Wenzel et al, 2009) in the article. Nearly 50% of homeless women reported drug use, and 32% of them reported binge drinking in Los Angeles, compared to 16% and 17% for drug use and binge drinking among women occupying a low-income house (p. 16).
In america 3.5 million people are homeless, living under overpasses, in parks or even on a bus stop bench. there are many things that can make people homeless in America. With low wage jobs and high cost of living not everyone can make it. 1 out of every 7 americans could be at risk of hunger, and have to choose between shelter or food because they can’t afford both. 25 % of all homeless people have a mental illness, this means they are not fit to live independently, and instead of getting help from the government, they wander the streets and a lot of the time find closure in using illicit drugs or becoming alcoholics. 68% of people suffering from homelessness is addicted to drugs and/or alcohol.the leading causes of homelessness in america is Political, mental and economical reasons.WIth the economy down many Americans are unemployed and can barely sustain a life, and with all the layoffs and job cuts many families are put under terrible circumstances. Even people with good jobs can find themselves in debt from high mortgages, in recent years the rate of foreclosure rose 32%, and studies show that 10% of people looking for shelter in homeless shelters are doing so because of foreclosure. Homelessness is a cycle, once they get that low it is very hard to get themselves back
McNamara, Robert Hartmann. "Homelessness." Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Social Issues. Ed. Michael Shally-Jensen. Vol. 3: Family and Society. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011. 1024-1031. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 2 May 2014. .
As technology advances and more countries join the developed world, we here in America have a forgotten population. Here in America, a land of great wealth and opportunity, we have a neglected homeless population. In a land so rich it is hard to believe that over half-a-million people are left homeless, leaving hundreds of thousands on the street. (National Alliance) New York City has been upsetting the national trend of a decreasing homeless population. (Facts about Homelessness) Many people find it easier to look the other way rather than take on such a monumental problem. Disregarding this problem will not make it go away, and will even exacerbate the problem. Homelessness did not happen overnight, nor will it go away overnight, but change is possible. The systemic reasons for homelessness have changed over time, creating the need for community groups and governments to tackle homelessness in different ways. Until we have a concrete plan for solving homelessness the problem will persist.
For most Americans, homelessness is an abstract and foreign idea, but in reality it isn’t. People walk by this inequality on their way to work and ignore those who are pleading for loose change. There are multiple reason why this social travesty exists, not just one. The general public’s opinion and researchers...
As the cause of homelessness has broadened and become more tied to fundamental economic changes in our nation, homelessness has become both a symptom of chronic poverty and an event that cuts across traditional defenses of income, education, and geography. According to Mary E. Hombs, author of American Homelessness, "The population of the streets has been democratized correspondingly" (Hombs 2). Many of the homeless are young ...
Homelessness is a vast predicament in America and around the world. It is severely overlooked as people don’t really think of homelessness as real world problem. However, there have been ways that people have tried to fix the problem. They have come up with homeless shelters, emergency shelters, food banks and soup kitchens. These solutions have limitations though, which will hopefully come to an end.
There are many other cases of why the homeless are homeless like domestic violence, mental illness, addictions, and unaffordable health care. Homelessness is a problem which has been caused by many different aspects but mainly money because of massive unemployment rates. A hidden aspect to homelessness that we may not think of is ...
Thousands of homeless people live in the subway, railroad, and sewage tunnels that form the bowels of New York City. Jennifer Toth visits these communities to learn their stories and lifestyle beneath the city. Many of these homeless people are drug addicts, mentally ill, runaways, or gang members. The tunnels that these people live in are filthy, rat infested, diseased, and dangerous for anyone to live in; however, the homeless find these tunnels to be a safe haven from the world above. Most of these communities are tight knit and even function as societies with established leaders. The homeless act as a kin; there is a mutual understanding between each person and the struggle to live. Drugs, rape, mental illness, or so...
Homelessness has gained mass attention throughout the world. It’s an ongoing, insoluble issue that continues to exist and affect many in the Unites States. “Approximately 3.5 million people are homeless in the United States at any given time” (McBride, 2012). Sadly, due to the nature of homelessness, it is difficult to obtain an accurate number of the homeless population (McBride, 2012). Many people have negative prejudice views of homeless individuals. Self-worth, dignity, as well as trustworthy affects the homeless, often questioned by society. Through the testimony of John Doe, a better understanding will enlighten others, myself included, and bring awareness to this mass population.
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, there are nearly 554,000 individuals facing homelessness. (2016) Personally, this number, as big as it seems, only accounts for the ones that want to be found; the ones we have access to. However, there are several that cannot be accounted for; several we don’t even know exist. The growing concern for homelessness is its presence. Not only can we see this locally in areas of Scranton and the surrounding cities, but when we travel to other places, it is just as evident. My biggest concern with those facing homelessness is the stigma and biases associated with being “homeless.” Too easily are these individuals are referred to as beggars, bums, addicts, lazy, etc.