The Moral Economy of Violence in the US Inner City

Abstract

In an 8-week period, there were 16 shootings with three fatalities, three stabbings, and 14 additional “aggravated assaults” in the four square blocks surrounding our field site in the Puerto Rican corner of North Philadelphia. In the aftermath of the shoot-outs, the drug sellers operating on our block were forced to close down their operations by several mothers who repeatedly called the police. Drawing on the concept of moral economy (Thompson, Scott, Taussig), Mauss’s interpretation of gift exchange, and a political economy critique of hypercarceralization in the United States, we understand the high levels of US inner-city violence as operating within a moral logic framed by economic scarcity and hostile state relations. Residents seek security, self-respect, and profit in social networks that compel them to participate in solidary exchanges of assistive violence dynamized by kinship and gender obligations. A hierarchical, extractive drug economy fills the void left by deindustrialization, resulting in a dynamic of embodied primitive accumulation at the expense of addicted customers and chronically incarcerated just-in-time street sellers at high risk of assault. Nevertheless, the mobilization of violence organizing the illegal drug economy also follows ethical norms and obligations that are recognized as legitimate by many local residents.

The material, moral, and affective worlds of dealing and crime among young men entrenched in an inner city drug scene

“…However, the majority of the young men who self identified as being, or having recently been, involved in dealing were tenuously affiliated with one of the gangs described above. These affiliations took the form of street level subcontract illicit employment (Karandinos et al, 2014); young men described themselves as working for a gang member “employer” or “boss” by dealing drugs. They were also frequently subcontracted by gang members – who, it should be noted, were themselves likely very low level players in gang hierarchies – to engage in robbery and car theft, and the delivery of brutal physical punishments related to drug debts and other kinds of “beefs” (i.e., heated conflicts).…”

“…Complex subjectivities like the hero who protects women and children, and the loyal worker who keeps his mouth shut and goes to jail, should not be reduced to or celebrated as oppositional identities forged in the margins (Karandinos et al, 2014). Far from existing in opposition to state control, these subjectivities exist in mutually perpetuating and complicitous relationships with problematic state infrastructures, political ideologies, and technologies of administration, such as a criminal justice system that targets young men, and in particular young, racialized men (Grekul & LaBoucane-Benson, 2008).…”

“…If the violence that accompanies involvement in loosely gang affiliated, street level dealing and crime was consistently used and recognized by these youth as a way of “getting ahead” in the city, righting grievous wrongdoings, and mediating boredom, it was also regarded as traumatizing in many moments (Karandinos et al, 2014). Consistent with previous work (Karandinos et al, 2014: 9), young men often described and even celebrated violent altercations as “fun, exciting events rife with potential” (see Connor’s narrative below). Simultaneously, many youth had experienced tremendous loss as a result of these altercations.…”

“…Involvement in drug dealing and crime among “hypermarginalized” (Lopez, 2014) urban youth who use drugs often results in exposure to violence, trauma, and incarceration (Hayley & Jane, 2016; Karandinos, Hart, Castrillo, & Bourgois, 2014; Ralph, 2014; Windle & Briggs, 2015b). The synergy of using and dealing drugs in the context of entrenched marginalization also generates risks and harms that extend beyond these.…”

“…These activities can be understood as a way into “pleasure, status and meaning” in the context of entrenched social, spatial, and economic marginalization, and chronic boredom (Stevens, 2011: 51; Ferrell, 2004; Hayward, 2007; Katz, 1988). They are often bound up with an elaborate “moral economy” of the streets, in which everyday sociability is facilitated through the exchange of goods, services, money, and subcontract illicit employment (in the form of dealing, as well as the violent “enforcement” of drug debts and turf, for example; Bourgois & Schonberg, 2009; Karandinos et al, 2014; Wakeman, 2016). …”