Philippe Bougois Case

John Oliver

Ant 201 Concept Paper #7

June 24, 2013

Chapter seven of Kottak's Cultural Anthropology studies making a living in our societies. It reviews our adaptive strategies and how people have adapted from hunters and gatherers to learning about cultivation and horticulture. How along with advances in agriculture, pastoralist's or herder's began to play an important role in aspect of food production. It defines economy as a system of production, distribution, and consumption of resources. In non-industrial societies, there is a more intimate relationship between the worker and the means of production than there is in industrial nations. When an economy is bad, it can put workers into bad situations and cause them to do things that they normally would not do.

The article, Poverty at Work: Office Employment and the Crack Alternative, Philippe Bourgois argues that drug dealing has increased in New York because of the large amount of job loss in the city. He explains that many Puerto Rican immigrants are unable to get jobs in the United States because either they don't have enough education or because they can to the U.S. illegally and cannot get a job because they are not citizens. It seems that working in factories may be the only type of job that they can find but those jobs are dirty and unstable positions. Due to the lack of jobs, many Puerto Ricans are becoming drug dealers. Bourgois explains that in his neighborhood, "El Barrio", where he and his family live, drug dealing is on the rise. Just blocks or even steps from his home, someone is selling drugs.