In Righteous Dopefiend: Homelessness, Addiction and Poverty in Urban America, anthropologist Philippe Bourgois and photographer-ethnographer Jeff Schonberg document the daily lives of homeless drug users, drawing upon more than a decade of fieldwork they conducted among a community of heroin injectors and crack smokers who survive on the streets of San Francisco’s former industrial neighborhoods. About 40 black and white photographs are interwoven with edited transcriptions of tape recorded conversations, fieldwork notes, and critical analysis to explore the intimate experience of homelessness and addiction. Revealing the social survival mechanisms and perspectives of this marginalized “community of addicted bodies,” the exhibition also sheds light on the often unintended consequences of public policies that can exacerbate the suffering faced by street-based drug users in America. Righteous Dopefiend is presented in conjunction with the Slought Foundation which offered a multimedia installation with related programming that ran December 3 through 31, 2009.
Watch a video about Philippe Bourgois' work
Play the opening presentation of Righteous Dopefiend by Dr. Philippe Bourgois on iTunes University.
Philippe Bourgois is the Richard Perry University Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania since 2007, and a Consulting Scholar at the Penn Museum. He has devoted the past 25 years of his life to researching inner city poverty in the United States. His work is situated at the intersection of the fields of cultural anthropology, medicine, and public health, and is dedicated to analyzing the negative health effects of social inequality. His previous multi-award winning book, In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio, is based on five years he spent living with his family next to a crack house in East Harlem, New York. He has just begun a new Philadelphia-based project, examining violence and HIV among young heroin and cocaine sellers and addicts in North Philadelphia's Puerto Rican community.
Jeff Schonberg is a photographer and doctoral candidate in medical anthropology at the University of California, San Francisco and Berkeley.
"Anthropology in the twenty-first century cannot physically, ethnically, or emotionally escape the hardship of the lives of its traditional research subjects. Even larger proportions of the world's population survive precariously in refugee camps, rural wastelands, zones of ecological devastation, shantytown, housing projects, tenements, prisons, and homeless encampments (Davis 2006). The Edgewater homeless represent the human cost of the American neoliberal model. Tia, Carter, Sonny, Al, Frank, Max, Felix, Victor, Sal, Scotty, Nickie, Spider-Bite Lou, Hogan, Ben, Stretch, Vernon, Reggie, Hank, and Petey are as all-American as the California dream."
-- Philippe Bourgois, Righteous Dopfiend (2009)
A donation box was set up in the exhibition for four local non-profits dealing with homelessness and addiction. Visitors were asked to fill out a card that asked why they chose to give. Here are a few of their answers...
"I have a place to live and so should everyone else."
"It is a shame to see this in the USA"
"I see the homeless everyday and I want to give something more lasting than my spare change."
"A very smart friend with a bright future turned to drugs when he could not get the proper treatment for his bi-polar disorder. He is still struggling."
"Pops, a homeless man I sang to and with in DC is gone but still in my heart."
"As a tourist from Europe I am shocked to see so much poverty and homeless people in the streets of USA cities. This should be a rich country!"
"We need to better understand to help addicts"
"Addicts need effective treatment and care not punishment"
"I have lost 3 family members to heroin addiction"
"I myself am a recovering heroin addict. I have a year and six months clean now and my old life still haunts my dreams at night. This exhibit had me in tears more than twice as I stared at my scars from track marks on my arms. This is a really strong exhibit. Prevention Point plays a huge part in keeping drug users safe and healthy. Because of their services, I was able to practice sanitary injections and avoid sicknesses as well as find and sign up for a recovery program. I owe a lot of my success to this organization. Thanks..."
"I'm saddened that drugs prevention rehab policies don't extend to funding needle exchange programs. Non-judgemental help is what's needed. Thank you for a genuinely provocative and important exhibition."
Community Support
Penn Museum is now collecting donations for four Philadelphia-based non-profit community service organizations in a kiosk set up in the physical space of the exhibition. The four organizations were chosen for their work in the areas of public health and drug prevention.
Prevention Point Philadelphia
Prevention Point Philadelphia works to provide safe and human alternatives to the war on drugs. We began in 1991 as a grassroots, volunteer organization conducting syringe exchange when it was still an illegal activity. We have grown into a recognized, multi-service public health organization that continues our commitment to a community-based model that seeks to minimize the adverse consequences of injection drug use and sex work, such as HIV or Hepatitis C infection.
Project H.O.M.E.
Project H.O.M.E. (Housing, Opportunities for Employment, Medical Care, Education) empowers people to break the cycle of homelessness, address the structural causes of poverty, and attain their fullest potential as members of society.
Philadelphia Fight
Philadelphia Fight (FIGHT) is a comprehensive AIDS service organization providing primary care, consumer education, advocacy and research on potential treatments and potential vaccines. FIGHT was formed as a partnership of individuals living with HIV/AIDS and clinicians who joined together to improve the lives of people living with the disease. FIGHT offers a variety of resources to do so.
Treatment Research Institute
Founded by the same researchers who developed the Addiction Severity Index, Treatment Research Institute is an independent, nonprofit research and development organization dedicated to science-driven reform of treatment and policy in substance use.
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The Penn Center for Public Health Initiatives is co-sponsoring these exhibits as a part of their 2009/2010 series: Creative Action: The Arts in Public Health, and Penn’s Arts and the City programming initiative. (Research funded by the National Institutes of Health.) |
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