Righteous Dopefiend: Analysis

Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg, authors of Righteous Dopefiend (2009) excellently depicted the lives of homeless drug addicts in San Francisco’s Edgewater Boulevard community through the twelve-year study they conducted. Throughout the novel the reader can effortlessly grasp the sense of importance of the moral economy of sharing within the Edgewater Boulevard community. The moral economy of sharing played an instrumental role among the Edgewater Boulevard residents, as it was a crucial component for the survival of the homeless and drug-addicted lifestyle. Herein, I will discuss what constitutes the moral economy of sharing. This will be explained through the logic, values, norms, and basic practices that the homeless drug users exercised
Harm reduction was a “worldwide public health movement”, modeled in Holland based on a “hepatitis A” prevention initiative for heroin injections (Bourgois & Schonberg, p. 106). The outreach program sought out to rehabilitate drug addicts. It was created on the basis of being “pragmatic and reasonable”, and not to be confused with the “ encouragement of drug use” (Bourgois & Schonberg, p. 106). The harm reduction movement “advocated nonjudgmental engagement with active drug users and hoped to lower the cultural and institution barriers to medical services” (Bourgois & Schonberg, p.106). As previously mentioned the moral economy of sharing was crucial to the survival of the homeless drug users living on Edgewater Boulevard. Under this moral economy of sharing laid the common practice of sharing needles amongst the drug users. With that said harm reduction initiatives clearly did not support or encourage needle sharing for it completely went against their purpose and what they stood for. However, the drug users saw this differently, as Frank explains, “if you’re sick, you’re not going to worry about it, when you gotta fix, you gotta fix” (Bourgois & Schonberg, p. 107). Frank goes on to mention that him and fellow users worry about AIDS however when they are sick their main focus is geared towards “getting well” (Bourgois & Schonberg, p.107). It is
As the text mentioned, sharing injecting paraphernalia was ethical and practical on the streets. Street injectors viewed needle sharing as a means to promote health more so than a means to hinder the survival of the homeless drug addicts. Simply put, sharing needles allowed drug users to get their fix of drugs to “survive.” With that in mind another conflict of interest existed; this was the conflict between the goals of the drug users and the goals that harm reduction initiatives. Drug users had the goal of surviving on a day to day basis; they fueled this goal by using anything as a means to an end in order to obtain a fix of drugs; this commonly included needle sharing. On the other hand the goal of harm reduction initiative was long term survival and rehabilitation. As a result, the interests of the users and the interest of harm reduction fell far from each other, which ultimately hindered the goal of the initiative. The difference in logic, value, and norms depict where the conflict of interest stemmed from. The conflict of interest among the moral economy of sharing of the homeless addicts, and harm reduction revealed how and why harm reduction was hindered. Although harm reduction was fully intended to be “user-friendly,” it was referred to and seen as the “logic of governmentality,” held at the