THE POLITICAL-ECONOMY OF RESISTANCE AND SELF-DESTRUCTION IN THE CRACK ECONOMY - AN ETHNOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVE

The long-term transformation of the U.S,. economy from manufacturing to service has had profoundly dislocating effects on the lives of inner-city residents. Although researchers have argued extensively over the details of the statistics, they virtually all recognize that the disruptions caused by the loss of factory jobs in urban centers is a driving force behind inner city polarization (Sassen-Koob 1986; Waldinger 1991; Wilson 1987). In contrast, public ''common sense'' in the United States is not persuaded by this structural economic analysis. Neither upper-middle class white suburbanites, nor black and latino working-poor urbanites are convinced that the statistics on human suffering-from infant poverty to male adolescent murder rates to adult substance abuse-are fundamentally driven by the loss of stable factory jobs. The result has been a polarization around culture in public discourse and a lack of political will to address the apartheid-like concentration of poverty in major urban centers. Academics-and specifically anthropologists-have failed to engage these debates in a politically engaged manner, perhaps in part because the relationship between individual practice and structural exigency is poorly understood.