In Search of Respect

by

Philippe Bourgois

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on In Search of Respect makes teaching easy.
An opioid drug commonly used recreationally, which can lead to severe addiction, especially among those who inject it. Primo and Caesar frequently snort powdered heroin, often as speedball in combination with powder cocaine. In his preface to the book’s second edition, Bourgois notes that heroin has become more popular and crack less so in the decade following his initial research.

Heroin Quotes in In Search of Respect

The In Search of Respect quotes below are all either spoken by Heroin or refer to Heroin. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Anthropological Research and its Consequences Theme Icon
).
Introduction Quotes

Cocaine and crack, in particular during the mid-1980s and through the early 1990s, followed by heroin in the mid-1990s, have been the fastest growing—if not the only—equal opportunity employers of men in Harlem. Retail drug sales easily outcompete other income-generating opportunities, whether legal or illegal.

The street in front of my tenement was not atypical, and within a two block radius I could—and still can, as of this final draft—obtain heroin, crack, powder cocaine, hypodermic needles, methadone, Valium, angel dust, marijuana, mescaline, bootleg alcohol, and tobacco. Within one hundred yards of my stoop there were three competing crackhouses selling vials at two, three, and five dollars.

Related Characters: Philippe Bourgois (speaker)
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

Substance abuse is perhaps the dimension of inner-city poverty most susceptible to short-term policy intervention. In part, this is because drugs are not the root of the problems presented in these pages; they are the epiphenomenonal expression of deeper, structural dilemmas. Self-destructive addiction is merely the medium for desperate people to internalize their frustration, resistance, and powerlessness. In other words, we can safely ignore the drug hysterias that periodically sweep through the United States. Instead we should focus our ethical concerns and political energies on the contradictions posed by the persistence of inner-city poverty in the midst of extraordinary opulence. In the same vein, we need to recognize and dismantle the class- and ethnic-based apartheids that riddle the U.S. landscape.

Related Characters: Philippe Bourgois (speaker)
Page Number: 319
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire In Search of Respect LitChart as a printable PDF.
In Search of Respect PDF

Heroin Term Timeline in In Search of Respect

The timeline below shows where the term Heroin appears in In Search of Respect. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Preface to the 2003 Second Edition
Anthropological Research and its Consequences Theme Icon
The Crack Trade and the Underground Economy Theme Icon
...the street and noted less and less in “hospital emergency room and arrest statistics.” Overall, heroin became more common, as well as “cheaper and purer,” but involved another population—young whites, not... (full context)