Righteous Dopefiend

The goal of Chapter 8 is “to portray the creative agency of the lumpen that both takes a destructive toll on them and on society and is also imbued with a fleeting joy of living and a sense of dignified oppositionality,” (167-68). To achieve this, Bourgois and Schonberg mainly draw from field notes and recordings, allowing the interlocutors to speak for themselves with minimal analysis.

The reader gains insight into how the many elements previously discussed impact Tina and Carter throughout the course of the day. Tina and Carter go to great lengths not to get too comfortable anywhere, due to the constant police raids and the tensions that arise as they jockey for more crack and heroin. When the police swarm a vehicle that Tina, Carter, and Carter’s great-nephew are staying in, Tina gives up information about Carter’s great-nephew’s crack-selling habits. The altercation briefly ruptures the relationship, though Tina and Carter eventually reunite after Carter’s great-nephew forgives Carter for loving the woman who snitched on him. Tina and Carter stay together at an old, largely abandoned factory, after the flight of the white indigent population there. However, due to the growing size of the unhoused populations, a police sting operation destroys the space and leads to Carter’s arrest.