Righteous Dopefiend

1. Righteous Dopefiend Drugs & Society – summer 2013

2. ~Habitus~ Links a person’s position in social space with their practices Dispositions, shaped by early experience, that “generate & organize” practices throughout life, which become like enduring “habits” within the person Habitus is deeply embedded within the person Embodied – physically enacted! Flexible and durable– guides patterned action, but also improvisation The way society becomes deposited in persons in the form of lasting dispositions (tendencies toward action, thought, feeling) Examples: Career expectations, who to marry, how to raise kids, whether or not to talk about politics at dinner…

3. ~Habitus: Interplay betweenstructure and practice Social positions in a field Habitus– deeply rooted, but flexible guidelines that “orient” the person toward a particular way of seeing and being in the world. Repeated experiences in the positions you occupy shape your dispositions throughout life… HABITUS Practices: actions, behaviors, choices, etc. that signal your social position The habitus mediates between positions and practices.

4. Righteous Dopefiend – Theories Go through the introductory chapter, and work in groups of 2 to find definitions for the following: “Moral economy” among Edgewater homeless “lumpen,” “abuse,” and “theory of lumpen abuse” Symbolic violence “Subjectivity” “lumpen subjectivity of righteous dopefiend” “Gray Zone”

5. Righteous Dopefiend Ch 1: Define “intimate apartheid.” Describe the ethnic hierarchies on the street scene. Give an example of how US racial divisions were “embodied” through the habitus of the Edgewater homeless. (Also Ch 3- “racialized habitus”) Ch 2: Describe Tina’s life. How can we understand her involvement in sex work in the context of her past, and in larger gendered power relations in the US? Ch 3/9: Describe the public health system these addicts encountered. How do the authors critique this system? Ch 3/5: Define/describe the “moral economy of sharing.” Give 3 specific examples of income-generating strategies among the Edgewater homeless.

6. Recap: Sociology of Addiction • “Choice” is bounded within culture and biology. “Free willed individual” = cultural myth. • Social categories shape our experience. • Habitus: Addiction is the physical embodiment of social inequality, violence, histories of systemic abuse, and widespread suffering. (Righteous Dopefiend) • Normalization, socialization – Long-term suffering becomes “routine.” • Alexander: Addictive suffering is the product of large-scale economic and social transformations.