Code of the Suburb
Subtitle: Inside the World of Young Middle-Class Drug Dealers
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: May 08, 2015
Language: eng
Format: paperback
Number of pages: 208
ISBN-13: 9780226164113
Description: When we think about young people dealing drugs, we tend to picture it happening on urban streets, in disadvantaged, crime-ridden neighborhoods. But drugs are used everywhere--even in upscale suburbs and top-tier high schools--and teenage users in the suburbs tend to buy drugs from their peers, dealers who have their own culture and code, distinct from their urban counterparts. In Code of the Suburb, Scott Jacques and Richard Wright offer a fascinating ethnography of the culture of suburban drug dealers. Drawing on fieldwork among teens in a wealthy suburb of Atlanta, they carefully parse the complicated code that governs relationships among buyers, sellers, police, and other suburbanites. That code differs from the one followed by urban drug dealers in one crucial respect: whereas urban drug dealers see violent vengeance as crucial to status and security, the opposite is true for their suburban counterparts. As Jacques and Wright show, suburban drug dealers accord status to deliberate avoidance of conflict, which helps keep their drug markets more peaceful--and, consequently, less likely to be noticed by law enforcement.
Notes: Source title: Code of the Suburb: Inside the World of Young Middle-Class Drug Dealers (Fieldwork Encounters and Discoveries)