Résistance et autodestruction dans l'apartheid américain

Bibliographic Data

ID2979655
AuthorsP Bourgois (0000-0002-1600-233X, corresponding author)
Year1997
Volume120
Issue1
Pages60-68
Publication date1997-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueActes de la recherche en sciences sociales (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0335-5322 • E-ISSN: 1955-2564
PublisherPERSEE Program (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.3406/arss.1997.3236
OpenAlexW2329061803
LanguageFR
Citations received7

Resistance and self-destruction in apartheid America. The American debate on inner-city poverty has veered towards personal value judgements loaded with racial connotations and suffused with puritan thinking. Reacting to the accusatory-style of discourses justifying the persistence of urban poverty by holding the victim responsible, liberal intellectuals commit the opposite error of glorifying the poor with the status of "spotless victim". This type of analysis consequently glosses over the destructive power of American-style apartheid, ignoring the mecha-nisms that generate and reproduce the daily suffering of inner-city dwellers. Analyzing data gathered over four years of participant observation in an East-Harlem Puertorican community of crack-dealers, the author sets out the details of everyclay violence as well as the humiliating experiences of those seeking to participate in the legal job market. The dealers, drug-addicts and criminals frequented by the author manifest their opposition and resistance to exploitation and social exclusion by celebrating "Street culture", thereby becoming the direct agents of their own and their community's destruction. The underground economy and drug-dealing thus offer an economic and cultural alternative to those excluded from the "American dream". The author focuses his analysis on violence connected with the dynamics of class, race and gender relations in a context marked by a shrinking public sector and a restructuring of industrial capital. An approach which looks at the problem of relations between individual actions, and historical, political and economic structural constraints reveals that urban apartheid in the United States reproduces the logic of the American dream

Political economy · Political science · Politics · Poverty · Sociology · African history and culture studies · Gender Studies · Homelessness and Social Issues · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · North African History and Literature · Political and Social Issues

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