NCJ Number
144053
Date Published
1993
Length
299 pages
Annotation
Based on first-person accounts from drug addicts in New York City, this volume examines the economic, political, and ideological forces that shape the nature of the lives of street addicts.
Abstract
Disputing the view that hard-core, low-income drug users are social marginals situated in deviant subcultures, the discussion questions popular images regarding drug addicts. The analysis considers the position of addicts in the social structure; the kinds of legal and illegal work they perform; and their relationships with family, friends, and lovers. The author describes daily life from the addict's point of view and demonstrates how addicts are structurally vulnerable to the larger sociocultural system within which they live. The analysis also seeks to connect micro-level ethnographic data with macro-level understandings of the political economy. It also extends social reproduction theory to redefine the social organization and social processes that characterize racial and ethnic relations, gender relations, relations centering on sexuality, and the social conception of drug use and drug users. Addicts are portrayed as members of the class of working poor that has emerged in New York City, especially in the past 15 years, and has been displaced by gentrification. Addict interactions with police, attorneys, judges, and inmates are presented and revealed to be characterized by varying degrees of conflict. Drug treatment and medical care are also described as being in many ways another bureaucratic effort to set limits on behavioral alternatives. The analysis suggests the need for a change in our perception of the drug situation and offers specific political and policy recommendations. Appended methodological information, notes, index, and 206 references (Publisher summary modified)