Righteous Dopefiend

To explore relationships between men in the homeless, addicted population Bourgois and Schonberg are engaging, this chapter opens with a focus on Petey and Hank, who are explicitly homosocial (as are many others) and whose relationship forms during the research period, after Petey’s previous running partner dies of an overdose. The anthropologists posit that because their interlocutors are considered lumpen, a term they use for people on the very fringes of society, shifts in societal pressures and understandings of biopower, or the internalized control of the state over its citizens (such as internalizing and perpetuating messages in public health campaigns), take longer to reach them.

US institutions affect romantic relations among the men primarily through the legal system. Law enforcement negatively affects all of the interlocutors through violent disruption, which escalates their already vulnerable situation to more desperate levels and carries grave consequences to their health. For example, as policies criminalize homelessness, Petey and Hank’s situation becomes precarious. The constant disruption of their lives causes them to take greater risks and have close to zero access to social services such as clean needle exchange programs.