Philippe Bourgois in Amsterdam. An Interview

Samenvatting

Following a brief biographical sketch, Bourgois discusses his activities as an urban ethnographer. He acknowledges the influence of Pierre Bourdieu on his work, particularly in terms of his focus on the "extremes" of social space and "social suffering." Bourgois describes his ethnographic method in detail and demonstrates its application to analysis of the often self-destructive coping (or survival) strategies that are both a cause and a result of the "apartheid" that characterizes the US urban core. Bourgois's current fieldwork with homeless heroin addicts in San Francisco, CA, is reviewed, highlighting the importance of Bourdieu's concept of "symbolic violence" in understanding social suffering in the US and its causes/outcomes. Comments are also offered on the proliferation of postmodern writing in ethnography over the last two decades; the academic borders between sociology and anthropology; the political role and influence of social scientists; Holocaust survivor Primo Levi's notion of the "gray zone" and its relationship to street culture and resistance; the notion of habitus in the world of inner-city school children; the interplay between agency and structure; the material-symbolic dichotomy; and the "law of the conservation of violence.". K. Hyatt Stewart