title: 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.
authors: Harvard Medical School (25 Shattuck Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, U.S.A.).
authors: George
authors: G
authors: Karandinos
authors: Edmund and Margiana Stinnes Professor of Global Studies and Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology of Haverford College (370 Lancaster Avenue, Haverford, Pennsylvania 19041, U.S.A.).
authors: Laurie Kain
authors: LK
authors: Hart
authors: Department of Anthropology of Columbia University (452 Schermerhorn Extension, 1200 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, New York 10027, U.S.A.).
authors: Fernando Montero
authors: FM
authors: Castrillo
authors: Richard Perry University Professor of Anthropology and Community Medicine in the Department of Anthropology of the University of Pennsylvania (3260 South Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6398, U.S.A.).
authors: Philippe
authors: P
authors: Bourgois