{"id":326,"date":"2017-10-11T19:02:02","date_gmt":"2017-10-11T23:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/?p=326"},"modified":"2017-12-04T11:53:50","modified_gmt":"2017-12-04T16:53:50","slug":"code-of-suburb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/cities-and-society\/code-of-suburb\/","title":{"rendered":"Code of Suburb"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Scott Jacques and Richard Wright\u2019s piece, <em>Code of the Suburb, <\/em>outlines the lives of middle-class drug dealers. While many of these suburban kids used drugs, few of them actually became dealers. It is this transition, from drug user to drug dealer, that Jacques and Wright explore. Their findings present a unique dichotomy between the drug dealers short-term, and long-term goals.<\/p>\n<p>Jacques and Wright present this notion of \u201ccoolness\u201d to highlight the middle-class drug dealer\u2019s short-term goals. Irrespective of the consequences, these suburban teenagers only care about becoming cool in the eyes of their peers. It is through this notion of \u201ccoolness\u201d that these teenagers disregard the law and the expectations of their parents, and become drug dealers. This made me think of Grace\u2019s expert questions regarding the three dimensions of community that we have defined throughout the semester. I think this notion of \u201ccoolness\u201d highlights the socio-structural sense of community. Specifically, the idea of \u201ccoolness\u201d makes \u201cinvisible\u201d groups \u201cvisible.\u201d Before becoming drug dealers, these kids were largely invisible by their peers. They were not seen as cool, but instead were seen as \u201clame.\u201d Further, the kids who took on the idea of being \u201clame\u201d were disrespected and ostracized into their own social group comprised of other \u201clame-os\u201d (Jacques and Wright 6). In order to gain some respect from their peers, and more specifically become \u201cvisible\u201d, these kids resorted to selling and using drugs, showing their peers that they acted irrespective of the law and their parent\u2019s rules (7). This contrast between being lame and being cool is correlated with the idea of making invisible groups visible. As drugs allowed them to transition from being lame to being cool, it also allowed for the once \u201cinvisible\u201d group of \u201clame-os\u201d to become \u201cvisible.\u201d This representation of \u201ccoolness\u201d satisfied their short-term goals and put them higher up on the social ladder.<\/p>\n<p>There is a stark contrast between their short-term goals of being cool, and their long-term goals of obtaining successful careers and financial success. While these kids did engage in heavy drug consumption, they also knew that this was a temporary phase which would soon be replaced by careers and independence from their parents. However, one thing that we discussed in class was how this short-term phase led to the development of quasi-primary ties, in that these kids were only connected through the consumption of drugs, rather than deep personal connections. From my high school experience, I think this is true of drug dealers today. When I was in high school it was pretty obvious that the drug dealers were their own distinct friend group within the school. Looking back, it is more clear that these groups of kids were not friends through their similarities and interest, but rather through their habits of using and selling drugs. Now that they are much older, many of these drug dealers are no longer friends, as they broke out of their temporary drug phase, and went their separate ways. Conversely, the kids who did not consume drugs and had deeper and more meaningful relationships with their high school peers, are still friends to date. Through this, I think it is evident in both in Jacques and Wright\u2019s, piece and my experiences that quasi-primary ties amongst drug dealers is a common phenomenon.<\/p>\n<p>One thing that I found interesting in Karyn Lacy\u2019s piece, <em>Race- and Blass-Based Identities, <\/em>was her discussion on strategic assimilation, and the black middle-class\u2019 intentionally limited incorporation into the white mainstream. Further, I thought her idea of racial dualism was very interesting, as it showed the ways in which these middle-class individuals resisted the white mainstream, and instead were able to maintain their strong ties to the black community (Lacy 153). In contrast to the work of Jacques and Wright and the quasi-primary ties therein, I think Lacy\u2019s piece showed a greater sense of community in suburban life by outlining the stronger and more meaningful ties to one\u2019s culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scott Jacques and Richard Wright\u2019s piece, Code of the Suburb, outlines the lives of middle-class drug dealers. While many of these suburban kids used drugs, few of them actually became dealers. It is this transition, from drug user to drug dealer, that Jacques and Wright explore. Their findings present a unique dichotomy between the drug [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":498,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cities-and-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/498"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}