Righteous Dopefiend

I am so glad I read Bourgois & Schonberg's Righteous Dopefiend, an ethnography of homeless injection drug users in San Fransisco.


I had been concerned that this photo-ethnography would be voyeuristic poverty porn, but instead it painted a complex, nuanced, in-depth portrait of human suffering, contextualizing individual lives within a socio-economic and political history. Righteous Dopefiend takes the reader into a "Community of Addicted Bodies", exploring the nature of community, habitual drug use, and biopower. The photographs are disturbing and beautiful, and provide detail, texture, and humanity to the work. In addition to being an excellent ethnographic work, Righteous Dopefiend includes journalistic portraits of unique individuals and relationships, and chronicles violence and abuse. Finally, it includes a thoughtful and realistic analysis of policies affecting homeless and indigent drug users.