Bourgois Philippe, Castrillo Fernando Montero, Hart Laurie, Karandinos George
University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, USA.
Columbia University. New York, USA.
Espac Abierto. 2013 Apr;22(2):201-213.
For five years, the open air drug sales block where the authors resided and conducted participant-observation fieldwork in the Puerto Rican corner of inner-city Philadelphia was subject to a routinized whirlwind of shootings, stabbings and assaults. The narcotics industry filled the void left by deindustrialization, turning the city's former factory district into an open-air narcotics supermarket staffed at the entry level by young Puerto Ricans serving primarily poor white injectors. A capacity to mobilize rage ensures success in the drug economy, protection in prison, and minimal income for the no-longer-worthy poor who are diagnosed as cognitively disabled. Many residents seek alliances in social networks that oblige them to participate in solidary exchanges of assistive violence. A dynamic of embodied, primitive accumulation kills, maims, disables or incarcerates most of this industry's entry-level employees and customers. Artificially high profit margins depend on violence and coercion. A rage-filled propels street-level sellers into violently defending the micro-monopoly power of their bosses in the underground economy as if it were fun. They rush to enforce commercial transactions in the absence of protective legal sanctions in an environment of scarcity that is flooded by streams of cash, addictive drugs and automatic weapons. With the end of welfare entitlements, the left hand of the state, in the form of social services, attempts to continue subsidies for vulnerable individuals by diagnosing scarred bodies and brains as proof of permanent cognitive disability in need of heavy pharmaceutical medication. Periodic outbursts of interpersonal or of self-inflicted rage-filled violence emerge as the best way to ensure the continuity of that fragile public subsidy. Simultaneously, within the bowels of the right hand of the state, in overcrowded, hostilely-supervised violent prisons, rage becomes a valuable physical self-protection strategy for inmates. In short, expressive violence becomes a practical basis for economic sustenance and masculine and feminine self respect.
五年来，作者居住并在费城中心城区波多黎各裔聚居区开展参与式观察田野调查的露天毒品交易街区，一直笼罩在枪击、刺伤和袭击的常规旋风之中。毒品行业填补了去工业化留下的空白，将该市昔日的工厂区变成了一个露天毒品超市，其基层员工主要是年轻的波多黎各裔，服务对象主要是贫穷的白人注射吸毒者。能够调动愤怒情绪确保了在毒品经济中的成功、在监狱中的保护，以及为那些被诊断为认知残疾、不再有价值的穷人带来微薄收入。许多居民在社交网络中寻求联盟，这迫使他们参与辅助性暴力的团结交流。一种具身化的原始积累动态导致这个行业的大多数基层员工和顾客死亡、致残、受伤或被监禁。人为的高利润率依赖于暴力和胁迫。充满愤怒的情绪驱使街头小贩在地下经济中暴力捍卫其老板的微垄断权力，仿佛这很有趣。在一个现金、成瘾性毒品和自动武器泛滥的稀缺环境中，在缺乏保护性法律制裁的情况下，他们急于执行商业交易。随着福利权利的终结，国家的左手，以社会服务的形式，试图通过将伤痕累累的身体和大脑诊断为需要大量药物治疗的永久性认知残疾的证据，来继续为弱势群体提供补贴。人际间或自我施加的充满愤怒的暴力的周期性爆发，成为确保这种脆弱公共补贴持续的最佳方式。与此同时，在国家右手的腹地，在过度拥挤、监管恶劣的暴力监狱里，愤怒成为囚犯宝贵的自我保护策略。简而言之，表达性暴力成为经济维持以及男性和女性自尊的实际基础。
