Primo the main character of the book with his friend Caesar talk about many of their difficulties in trying to find works and their inability to adapt to the new service sector based job market when trying to stop their drug dealing. One theory of poverty is that they lack cultural capital, they do not know the language of main stream society or it’s etiquette and therefore unable to succeed. The Puerto Ricans hold a completely different set of beliefs and values. This theory formed by Bourdieu has been used to explain why working class children and ethnic groups can fail in education as well as adults in the work place. The other issue that stops the main characters in succeeding the workplace has been that of selling out, meaning they turn their backs on their culture and adopt the main stream middle class culture. This is seen as a submission of inferior identity by other members of the group. Their identity is lost if they conform to main stream society.
Primo’s lack of cultural capital was also reflected in the clothes that he wore; he lacked the money to buy smart clothes and also had a different understanding of what was considered suitable in the workplace. His clothes were also part of his identity and a way for him to have any power, however in the workplace they were the reason for ‘ridicule or anger’ (p158) these factors all enforced his segregation from main stream society. There is a similar incident when Candy. Primo's lover for a short while, appears in court.
“At her first hearing, the judge almost ruled Candy to be in contempt of court because of the clothing. It was a clash of how their different class and cultural interpretations of how a contrite mother should dress in a formal public setting.”(p256)
Candy thought she had done what her lawyer had asked by wearing a “good new suit” by wearing a skin tight blood red jumpsuit. The Puerto Ricans also had a different accent and speech code than that of main stream society. The language that the Puerto Rican community use is also a tool to keep them separated from main stream society through racism and negative stereotyping. An example of this is shown when Primo’s talks about his experiences of answering the phone at work. People on the other side would stop talking and ask him where he was from (p136), as well as being asked not to answer the phone at work by his boss. Primo’s attempt to show initiative in the workplace was almost seen as damaging the company image.
The Puerto Rican males strive to keep some of the jibaro strong masculine identity alive, but this also creates conflict in many cases when many of the managers in the service sector jobs are women. The factory work, which is the only thing that many of them know, is no longer available and manual work such as building work is dominated by other ethnic groups such as the Mexicans who deter Puerto Rican workers through means of racism.
There is a strong jibaro culture underpinning their community; however this is now accompanied by a new more accepting street culture. In the jibaro farming culture the children are a financial asset and large families are favoured, however in El Barrio many women still have that underlying preference, but also face the difficulties of failure through poverty and relationships with men who are unemployed and involved in the underground illegal economy. Women have children as a form of self fulfilment and self worth to fill the void of meaningless.
Gender roles in the rural Puerto Rican community were laid out very clear cut however patriarchy is failing El Barrio, as men leave their girlfriends once they become pregnant. Women also want the same autonomy as the males and become more masculine. One example is when Candy finally confronted her abusive husband and shot him. She sought greater solidarity through selling drugs herself, while still attempting to bring up her four children. Candy’s strive for power led her to invert patriarchy when dating Primo, she financially provided for him as well as being the sexually dominant authority. This is a definite taboo in rural Puerto Rico, and even though this may have been Primo’s inner city fantasy it conflicted with his definition of masculinity and that of his jibaro culture. Primo ended the relationship. The definitions of masculine and feminine gender role are constantly being remoulded in El Barrio.
There is a crisis of masculinity where the males feel powerless and take on a gigolo type role with many children from different partners without any responsibility to them, and celebrate this behaviour. The females struggle between trying to find personal solidarity and independence through drugs and between traditional roles where they are mothers and wives. Street culture represents even more exploitation of women and female roles however. When Candy sold cocaine she was berated by other men for ignoring her children.
‘The men in Ray’s network roundly decried her failings as a single mother and head-of-housed…..One of the recurrent criticisms was that Candy needed a strong male figure to discipline her’ (p277 Bourgois)
There is another side to the new found autonomy of the women El Barrio. Primo’s mother is dissatisfied with her independence and this is sense stronger in the first generation. Primo’s mother wants the sense of community that she had experienced in rural Puerto Rico. The new found independence, but isolation she has acquired from New York is only comparable as satisfying by the “…middle class, Anglo definition of empowerment that hinges on individual autonomy” (p242). The jibaro definition of empowerment is very different.
Primo shows double standards where he himself could not get legal work, but threatened his girlfriend at the time that he would leave her if she did not take a job in McDonald’s. He saw this same job as un-masculine, but regarded it acceptable for his girlfriend. The situation is made worse by the fact that many of the women accommodated patriarchy by legitimising the actions of the men who had many different partners. Candy explains in one tape recording
‘Some men are just like that. It doesn’t mean they are bad fathers. Maybe they don’t got a job and they don’t support their kids right now. But maybe they will support him some other day
And suppose the mother’s got another man. I mean, I’ll be damned, if I’m a man, and if I’ll be giving a woman money just to support another nigga’. Just because she wants – excuse my language – sex pleasure;’ (p315 Bourgois)
Bourgois presents his argument legitimizing the actions of this group involved in drug dealing and having multiple children as an act of trying to find respect. Exclusion from main stream society from school through to the work force has lead these people to try and find respect in the underground economy where their lack of middle class Anglo cultural capital is not a hindering force. In the crack house power and authority were attained through acts of violence and putting fear into the hearts of those you wished to control. Ray the manager also manipulated kinship networks, as many of his workers were related he had a personal bond with them as well a professional one.
Bourgois talks about how Ray managed the crack houses in the same way that one would run a private legal enterprise. The major difference was that Ray enforced his authority through violence. Although he did reward his employees with free beers and a line of cocaine on occasions so show his approval as well. The only reason Ray was unable to use this same strategy in the legal economy was because he lacked the cultural capital to do so. Ray also gave his employees an equivalent to insurance, whereby if is his employees were arrested while working for him, he provided bail to get them out of prison. This builds an extremely strong network with a high level of productivity.
One of the most disturbing rituals in the book is when the taboo of rape is condoned and even celebrated within the male gang and used as a rite of passage. The peer group is extremely important while growing up as this is the few sources of approval one of the few places these men get respect. Caesar talks about he does not want to be excluded and Primo has similar reasons. Then they try to legitimize it. Also after the act, women confused rape with romance and would try to set up house with the rapist. Gang rape is considered normal in street culture in socialising the members of the gang. This act from a functional perspective trained these young boys into the ways of street culture including its gendered violence. ‘learning to be a rapist was definitely part of … coming of age’ (p208)
The young men then convinced themselves that they had not done anything wrong by convincing themselves that the girls wanted to be raped. That they knew what was going on and acted accordingly. ‘….if they hang out too long, believe me, then they know what’s happening. If a girl is gonna hang then she’s gonna get dicked’ (p211). When Candy’s daughter Jackie was raped a similar code was followed. Jackie who was abducted and raped at the age of 12 by her then boyfriend returned home after a few days, but instead of Candy punishing the boy who had committed the act he was completely exonerated. Everyone then convinced themselves that Jackie had not been raped and she just happened to be “getting influenced into screwing” (p270).
“The ultimate exoneration of the rapist hinged on Jackie’s lack of remorse and her failure to follow the traditional solution of establishing a nuclear household with her rapist abductor” (p270)
One of the main features of all the failures of the people within this culture such as the inability to understand main stream culture, getting legal employment and quitting drugs is that these problems are internalized. Bourgois argues those are as much the fault of society as a whole and can also be given a political and economic basis. In school because they could not get the approval of teachers and other students respect again due to a lack of cultural capital they tried to assert themselves through deviant acts. This early socialisation carries on through adulthood.
The bulk of Bourgois’s research is from his participant observation and his tape recordings. It’s high in qualitative content, but the criticism of this is obviously that Bourgois himself chose what to include in the book and is very determanalistic in his approach.
One of the major strengths of this book is the fact that Bourgois was able to win the trust of the drug dealers and became friends with them. This is quite a groundbreaking piece of work from the perspective that much of the work done on rural poverty before especially on street culture has depicted the groups in a hostile and negative way. One of the aims of this book was to give a true account of the drug dealers, their friends and families, their structural oppression and daily difficulties. In my opinion this book has managed that beautifully, putting a face to the drug dealers and humanising them in a completely new way. Bourgois has stepped away from using anthropology’s functionalist approach that explains all actions to be in harmony with each other, he refuses ideas such as Lewis’s culture of poverty and uses a political and economic argument to base his reasoning. I believe that Bourgois has managed to represent this community accurately and has presented it in an easily readable and digestible manor.
Bibliography
In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. 2nd Edition, Philippe Bourgois (Cambridge Press 2000)
