The Problem Of Homelessness And Drug Addiction - 1224 Words

Anthropology is critical in order to understand many pressing contemporary issues such as social inequality, homelessness, drug addiction, structural, symbolic and interpersonal violence, and illicit economies. While all of these issues are important to understand, the public concern that is of the utmost importance is homelessness as well as the issues that correspond with this public concern. Homelessness is a very serious and pressing contemporary issue and it is strongly linked to another very serious contemporary issue, that being, drug addiction. Through the conduction of ethnographic research such as that found in Bourgois and Schonberg’s Righteous Dopefiend as well as Shandy’s â€Å"The Road to Refugee Resettlement,† it is possible to†¦show more content†¦Felix tried to urinate into the plastic water bottle that he kept next to his blankets, but his body Averkiou 2 was shaking too hard. He stood up, but his leg muscles spasmed and he fell down the highway embankment. He had to drag himself on his hands and knees to get back up to his mattress, pausing twice to retch† (Bourgois Schonberg 80). As this whole book was very graphic and depictive, this segment alone is enough to portray just how dangerous drug addiction is and how harmful withdrawing from drug usage can be on the body. It is too easy to get hooked, but very difficult to remove oneself from the utilization of drugs, so it is best not to begin using drugs in the first place. Why are these people using drugs in the first place? They are homeless. This excerpt poses one great example of how homelessness is directly related to drug addiction. In addition to attempting to remove themselves from heroine injections, receiving access to an emergency room was highly appreciated by white people who had contracted septic infections. â€Å"Ethnically distinct techniques of the body resulted in very different patterns of interaction with medical institutions. Most notably, each one of the whites was hospitalized for septic infections on multiple occasions during our fieldwork because skin-popping heightened their susceptibility to abscesses. The whites had enormous medical files at the county hospital. They