La violence en temps de guerre et en temps de paix. Partie 2

Les femmes dans l'engrenage de la violence Durant l'opération militaire menée en 1981, une jeune femme du nom de Carmen, alors âgée de dix-sept ans, m'avait demandé de la photographier dans l'une de nos cachettes. Elle a souri pour la photo, oubliant que les militaires salvadoriens étaient en train de bombarder les sommets du canyon où nous nous cachions quelques heures plus tôt. Le troisième jour des combats, Carmen a été touchée au dos par un éclat d'obus alors qu'elle défendait l'une des ..

Structural vulnerability to narcotics-driven firearm violence: An ethnographic and epidemiological study of Philadelphia's Puerto Rican inner-city.

BackgroundThe United States is experiencing a continuing crisis of gun violence, and economically marginalized and racially segregated inner-city areas are among the most affected. To decrease this violence, public health interventions must engage with the complex social factors and structural drivers-especially with regard to the clandestine sale of narcotics-that have turned the neighborhood streets of specific vulnerable subgroups into concrete killing fields. Here we present a mixed-methods ethnographic and epidemiological assessment of narcotics-driven firearm violence in Philadelphia's impoverished, majority Puerto Rican neighborhoods.MethodsUsing an exploratory sequential study design, we formulated hypotheses about ethnic/racial vulnerability to violence, based on half a dozen years of intensive participant-observation ethnographic fieldwork. We subsequently tested them statistically, by combining geo-referenced incidents of narcotics- and firearm-related crime from the Philadelphia police department with census information representing race and poverty levels. We explored the racialized relationships between poverty, narcotics, and violence, melding ethnography, graphing, and Poisson regression.FindingsEven controlling for poverty levels, impoverished majority-Puerto Rican areas in Philadelphia are exposed to significantly higher levels of gun violence than majority-white or black neighborhoods. Our mixed methods data suggest that this reflects the unique social position of these neighborhoods as a racial meeting ground in deeply segregated Philadelphia, which has converted them into a retail endpoint for the sale of astronomical levels of narcotics.ImplicationsWe document racial/ethnic and economic disparities in exposure to firearm violence and contextualize them ethnographically in the lived experience of community members. The exceptionally concentrated and high-volume retail narcotics trade, and the violence it generates in Philadelphia's poor Puerto Rican neighborhoods, reflect unique structural vulnerability and cultural factors. For most young people in these areas, the narcotics economy is the most readily accessible form of employment and social mobility. The performance of violence is an implicit part of survival in these lucrative, illegal narcotics markets, as well as in the overcrowded jails and prisons through which entry-level sellers cycle chronically. To address the structural drivers of violence, an inner-city Marshall Plan is needed that should include well-funded formal employment programs, gun control, re-training police officers to curb the routinization of brutality, reform of criminal justice to prioritize rehabilitation over punishment, and decriminalization of narcotics possession and low-level sales

Narrar el mundo narco: diálogo con Cristian Alarcón y Philippe Bourgois

Salud Colectiva initiated a dialogue between anthropologist Philippe Bourgois and journalist Cristian Alarcón. They offer here a backstage introduction to two daring, controversial and innovative books. Bourgois' In search of respect, recently published in Spanish, recounts the daily lives of crack dealers in Harlem, New York. The book Si me querés, quereme transa (If you love me, love me as a transa), by Alarcón, enters into the world of cocaine and "pasta base" (base paste) dealers in Buenos Aires. In the two works we see how both journalistic and ethnographic researches evolve into learning processes completely devoid of the typical arrogance of an explorer in strange territories. Alarcon and Bourgois had to undergo transformations and learn a habitus completely unfamiliar to them in order to build connections with Buenos Aires "transas" and Puerto Rican crack dealers. Such bonds are presented as necessary conditions for the kind of qualitative investigation they defend.Salud Colectiva convocó a un diálogo entre Philippe Bourgois y Cristian Alarcón. El antropólogo y el cronista ofrecen aquí una excursión al backstage de dos libros innovadores, polémicos y desafiantes. En busca de respeto, de Bourgois, recientemente publicado en español, construye un relato sobre la trama cotidiana de los vendedores de crack en Harlem, Nueva York. Si me querés, quereme transa, de Alarcón, ingresa en el universo de los traficantes de cocaína y "pasta base" en Buenos Aires. En ambos, vemos la forma en que tanto la investigación periodística como la etnográfica devienen un proceso de aprendizaje, totalmente despojado de la soberbia del descubridor en territorios extraños. Alarcón y Bourgois tuvieron que transformarse ellos mismos, aprender un habitus que les era completamente ajeno, para poder construir relaciones afectivas con traficantes ("transas" y puertorriqueños vendedores de crack). Esos afectos aparecen posicionados como condición de posibilidad del tipo de investigación cualitativa que ellos defienden

Tão perto de casa, tão longe de nós: etnografia das novas margens no centro da urbe

Philippe Bourgois é, desde 2007, “Richard Perry University professor” no Departamento de Antropologia e de Medicina Familiar e de Práticas Comunitárias na Universidade da ­Pensilvânia. Esteve durante largos anos ligado ao Departamento de Antropologia, História e Medicina Social da Universidade da Califórnia, São Francisco. A publicação, em 1995, de In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio projectaria o seu nome muito para além dos Estados Unidos: uma etnografia no coração porto­‑riquenho do Harlem, em torno dos actores e dos ambientes da venda de crack. Seguir­‑se­‑ia um longo trabalho de terreno em acampamentos de dependentes de heroína em São Francisco, orientando o seu trabalho para as formas mais radicais da pobreza e da marginalidade nos EUA. É deste trabalho de terreno que sai o seu último livro, Righteous Dopefiend. Em Junho de 2007 esteve em Lisboa para participar na 3.ª edição do “Ethnografeast”. Foi então que aproveitámos a oportunidade para ouvir um percurso invulgar contado pelo próprio: uma longa conversa no Hotel Zurique, cujo nome só vem ao caso por evocar o país onde passou uma parte da infância

Pax narcotica

Fondé sur un travail de terrain mené pendant cinq ans dans le ghetto portoricain de Philadelphie, cet article explore les logiques de violence et de paix dans ce secteur situé en fin de circuit de l’industrie globale du narcotrafic. Tout en recourant à la violence armée pour défendre leur territoire, les patrons locaux de la drogue doivent simultanément renvoyer l’image de figures généreuses pour éviter que les habitants ne les dénoncent à la police, en se montrant respectueux, prêts à redistribuer les ressources, à discipliner leurs employés et à contenir les excès de violence. Les chefs de la drogue sont donc contraints de transformer leur force brute en un pouvoir vertueux pour prospérer. Ils participent ainsi, avec voisins et employés, à une économie morale de relations patri-moniales et clientélistes au sein de laquelle ils s’imposent comme des leaders charismatiques. À partir d’une relecture du concept d’« accumulation primitive », cet article revient à la fois : sur la relation coloniale qui pousse la diaspora portoricaine ghettoïsée dans la niche économique que représente la revente de drogue au détail ; sur la violence symbolique à l’œuvre à tous les échelons de ce trafic ; sur les profits artificiellement élevés générés par cette industrie criminalisée par l’État ; et sur la prolifération opportuniste de secteurs spécialisés de l’économie légale et de la bureaucratie publique chargés de gérer les effets collatéraux de la coercition et des violences d’État.Drawing on five years of participant-observation fieldwork in the open-air heroin and cocaine markets of Philadelphia’s Puerto Rican inner-city we explore the logics for violence and peace at the endpoint of the global narcotics industry. The drug bosses engage in dramatic shoot-outs to fend off rivals. Simultaneously, however, they must try to convince neighbors that they are generous, responsible patrons, who redistribute resources, and limit the overflow of violence. The most successful drug bosses cultivate patrimonial clientelist relations with neighbors and employees to elicit personal respect and foster a charismatic legitimacy in the face of more volatile rivals and a hostile de facto police state. We draw on Marx’s concept of « primitive accumulation » to highlight : the colonial relation that propels the ghettoized Puerto Rican diaspora into the narcotics retail marketing niche ; the symbolic violence of the labor hierarchy that destroys and enchants the lives of its lowest rung employees ; the artificially high profits of an industry criminalized by the state that destroys both its customers and its labor force ; the explosion in size of the panoply of ancillary industries and parasitical special interest sectors of the legal economy and the public bureaucracy that manage the collateral effects of state coercion and abuse

Reinterpreting Ethnic Patterns among White and African American Men Who Inject Heroin: A Social Science of Medicine Approach

BACKGROUND: Street-based heroin injectors represent an especially vulnerable population group subject to negative health outcomes and social stigma. Effective clinical treatment and public health intervention for this population requires an understanding of their cultural environment and experiences. Social science theory and methods offer tools to understand the reasons for economic and ethnic disparities that cause individual suffering and stress at the institutional level. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We used a cross-methodological approach that incorporated quantitative, clinical, and ethnographic data collected by two contemporaneous long-term San Francisco studies, one epidemiological and one ethnographic, to explore the impact of ethnicity on street-based heroin-injecting men 45 years of age or older who were self-identified as either African American or white. We triangulated our ethnographic findings by statistically examining 14 relevant epidemiological variables stratified by median age and ethnicity. We observed significant differences in social practices between self-identified African Americans and whites in our ethnographic social network sample with respect to patterns of (1) drug consumption; (2) income generation; (3) social and institutional relationships; and (4) personal health and hygiene. African Americans and whites tended to experience different structural relationships to their shared condition of addiction and poverty. Specifically, this generation of San Francisco injectors grew up as the children of poor rural to urban immigrants in an era (the late 1960s through 1970s) when industrial jobs disappeared and heroin became fashionable. This was also when violent segregated inner city youth gangs proliferated and the federal government initiated its “War on Drugs.” African Americans had earlier and more negative contact with law enforcement but maintained long-term ties with their extended families. Most of the whites were expelled from their families when they began engaging in drug-related crime. These historical-structural conditions generated distinct presentations of self. Whites styled themselves as outcasts, defeated by addiction. They professed to be injecting heroin to stave off “dopesickness” rather than to seek pleasure. African Americans, in contrast, cast their physical addiction as an oppositional pursuit of autonomy and pleasure. They considered themselves to be professional outlaws and rejected any appearance of abjection. Many, but not all, of these ethnographic findings were corroborated by our epidemiological data, highlighting the variability of behaviors within ethnic categories. CONCLUSIONS: Bringing quantitative and qualitative methodologies and perspectives into a collaborative dialog among cross-disciplinary researchers highlights the fact that clinical practice must go beyond simple racial or cultural categories. A clinical social science approach provides insights into how sociocultural processes are mediated by historically rooted and institutionally enforced power relations. Recognizing the logical underpinnings of ethnically specific behavioral patterns of street-based injectors is the foundation for cultural competence and for successful clinical relationships. It reduces the risk of suboptimal medical care for an exceptionally vulnerable and challenging patient population. Social science approaches can also help explain larger-scale patterns of health disparities; inform new approaches to structural and institutional-level public health initiatives; and enable clinicians to take more leadership in changing public policies that have negative health consequences

HIV/AIDS In Puerto Rican People Who Inject Drugs: Policy Considerations

We commend the important work of Deren et al. that underscores the high rates of HIV among Puerto Rican people who inject drugs (PRPWID) and highlights the health, social, and service disparities between Puerto Rico and the Northeast US region. As articulated in their article, HIV/AIDS risk and substance use are not individual problems with individual consequences—the epidemic impacts community and culture, across borders and boundaries. In addition to service disparities, various socioeconomic contextual factors are associated with and may exacerbate the spread of HIV/AIDS in PRPWID, including limited educational and employment opportunities, poverty, and political disenfranchisement. Efforts to reduce the incidence of HIV/AIDS and associated health risks and complications, including other infections, drug overdose, and social stigma, necessitate structural policy intervention in addition to programmatic improvements. Moreover, policy implementation that attends to contextual factors such as incarceration and impediments to culturally appropriate services is needed. We identify two contexts that represent opportunities for improvements in policy implementation that may curb the HIV/AIDS epidemic among PRPWID

Enseignement de la microélectronique à Supélec : Une nouvelle pédagogie mise en place en 2012

National audienceLa rentrée 2012 a été le cadre d’une réforme de l’enseignement de l’électronique intégrée au seinde la majeure MNE (Micro et Nano Electronique) à Supélec. Les objectifs étaient de proposer une nouvelleforme d’enseignement pratique au moyen d’un projet long, de regrouper un ensemble de cours dans unensemble cohérent, de faire intervenir tous les enseignants de l’équipe auprès des élèves dès la rentrée, etsurtout de proposer un maximum de pratique aux élèves de manière à remotiver les élèves autour d’unediscipline qui n’est pas toujours très à la mode dans le monde numérique actuel. L’évaluation des élèves aaussi été repensée de manière à sortir les élèves d’un cadre scolaire et les mettre dans la peau d’unresponsable de projet au sein de l’industrie. L’introduction de points de passage formels avec remise derapports et présentation orale permet aux élèves de découvrir la réalité de leur métier de futur ingénieur. Leretour des élèves a montré que ce nouvel enseignement a été très apprécié de l’ensemble des élèves