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Interaction orders of drug dealing spaces: local orders of sensemaking in a poor black American place

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Abstract

Based on ethnographic data, this essay analyzes the social order properties of a poor urban street, in a small city in the northeast United States, on which drug dealing is the principle occupation. Rather than treating drug dealing as an agent of disorder, we focus on the order properties of drug dealing and the ordered character of the local code of conduct that develops around it. Like Sudhir Venkatesh (American Journal of Sociology 103:82–111, 1997) we examine the interface between drug dealing and the neighborhood. However, in this small urban space the drug dealers are not outsiders, rather, they are long term residents: established insiders who are well integrated into community life. As such their work practices and the requirements they place on behavior in public spaces impact the neighborhood in comprehensive ways. We detail the phenomenon Elijah Anderson called the “code of the street” (Anderson 1999) as a set of practices and social markers, a local Interaction Order (Goffman, American Sociological Review 48:1–17, 1983; Rawls, Sociological Theory 2:136–149, 1987), that furnishes basic day to day sensemaking tools for residents (Rawls 2009). We propose that this order has a constitutive character that furnishes stable expectations (Garfinkel 1963, 1967) for meaningful social action and identity in the neighborhood. In a context of industrial decline and urban poverty, drug dealing careers constitute a major socialization factor, that touches everyone here—especially children.

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Notes

  1. See [48] for a discussion of constitutive orders of rule, [46] for a discussion of Interaction Orders, and [47] for a discussion of Interaction Orders of race.

  2. Lest we be accused of a sexual bias, it is important to note that women play no role in drug dealing on Lyford Street. In fact, the attitude of the drug dealers here toward women is very 1950’s Hollywood. Women are portrayed as either virgins or whores. But, they are never drug dealers and there is no sex work on this street.

  3. Our understanding of the drug dealing system is restricted to the street level, with some understanding of the wholesale level, but, not beyond that (big wholesalers, importers etc.)

  4. We have been told by a number of informants that this is a rule; that only dealers who live on the street can work on the street. But, we don’t know how the rule might be enforced.

  5. We are aware that the statute originated in dealing with criminal networks that intersected with kinship groups. Nevertheless, the RICO statutes require that an organization has been formed as a strategy for pursuing an illegal activity while avoiding legal consequences. We have analyzed cases in this neighborhood in which the association between members of a kinship group was the sole basis of prosecution. Kinship groups are a natural social formation – whether or not some members pursue illegal activities – they have not been formed in order to do so. Furthermore, membership in a kinship group is not a matter of individual choice, and given this fact it seems highly problematic that an individual can be prosecuted for belonging to a kinship group. RICO statutes also exist for the purpose of breaking up organizations formed to pursue illegal activities. A kinship network cannot be broken up – it exists through the blood relations of the members.

  6. Both Patillo-McCoy and Venkatesh describe their dealers as working in gangs. The dealers we studied are not organized as a gang. According to our informants, several of whom were dealers and then stopped, they are independent operators who have autonomy and control and can stop without consequence or pressure from other dealers, including suppliers.

  7. The police told us that targeting white buyers as a way of stopping drug dealing would be race discrimination. Targeting black sellers is not.

  8. The widespread nature of this disparity explains divisions between black and white feminists. For many black women black men are even more oppressed than they are. Therefore, they do not tend to see “feminism” as a gender issue, but, rather as involving the liberation of all people. Because of this the original collaboration between the women who originally started the women’s movement in the late 1950’s broke down along racial lines. Sue Rumph found this during interviews with women who began the organization that later became NOW [50].

  9. All names of research subjects and places are pseudonyms.

  10. Field observations were made by Waverly Duck with frequent discussions by cell phone from the field with Anne Rawls.

  11. Both authors had some familiarity with settings similar to the field setting, from both personal experience and prior research, and this was helpful in making sense of what was going on. When we presented an earlier version of this paper we were asked about the moral order of this community and to specify the values we brought to the research. A complete answer to this question would be long. However, we think it is important to point out that we make a distinction between a person’s values and the constitutive requirements of a situation or interaction order that this question does not recognize. What we argue in the paper is that in spite of “decent” values the residents of Lyford Street must make use of the local interaction order of the street as a sense-making tool. Values do not direct action. Similarly, our values as authors are not the key issue. Of course, if we believed that poor people living in urban neighborhoods were inherently bad or deviant, and that the neighborhood was inherently chaotic, we would not have been interested in a research opportunity that promised to show otherwise. But, beyond effecting our choice of research project our values are beside the point. We show that the situated practices of the street overshadow the values in importance. Although it often sheds light on morally relevant aspects of situations, research on interaction orders is not directed by values and beliefs, but toward order properties of observed phenomena.

  12. Police told us that earlier efforts to focus on the white buyers were halted due to the complaint that they involved racially profiling the white buyers. One of the authors encountered this same problem doing research on policing in a police department near Detroit Michigan. The buyers there were also white and attempts to arrest them were also stopped due to complaints of racial profiling.

  13. We have also discovered that the gym shoes memorialize fallen drug dealers.

  14. See also the account by Bruce Jacobs in Robbing Drug Dealers—Aldine Press. The market has a cyclical and retaliatory element to it. The development of gang structures makes this more efficient and reduces the waste from competition. That also means that the competition on Lyford Street is more evidence that they are not organized as gangs—but as small groups of independent entrepreneurs .

  15. The distinction between public and private as it relates to these spaces raises interesting questions. Residents seem to avoid officially public spaces—while nevertheless doing their business in “public” but not in officially public spaces. Whether or not this relates to feelings about the control of space—and the significance of public vs private spaces is an important question for future consideration.

  16. There are two accounts about why the playground was demolished. Initially, the police officer who was our informant saw it as dangerous and an eyesore. However, the city produced a report that stated that the playground was demolished due to safety reasons such as bad lighting.

  17. Groups of Black Muslims who have recently moved into the neighborhood are an exception that proves the rule. Members of this community dress distinctively, walk together in groups, and generally make it clear that they want no contact with anyone outside of their group. But, they also stay off of the street after five o’clock, avoid certain areas, and in other ways observe the rules of the street.

  18. This is an aspect of the Lyford Street interaction order which will require further elaboration. It is clear that order is episodic and unpredictable. But, it is also clear that during stretches of order, the Lyford Street interaction order affords everyone assurances about what things mean and what people are doing. The question is whether this episodic character leads to something like the unpredictability of the relevance of the local interaction order, or whether that unpredictability is actually a part of the local interaction order as it would be in a game of chance with jokers thrown in.

  19. There is an important contrast between beliefs/values and practices. One does not have to “believe” in practices. One has only to use them. Would we say for instance that miners “believe” in mining? They might hate mining. But, as Orwell describes them, it is the only job they have access to. The belief question is often irrelevant in regard to practices. The important thing is that they have mastered the practices necessary to accomplish this high risk job. Treating practices as though they were cultural values obscures this distinction.

  20. In the paper “Senseless Violence: Making Sense of Murder” [8] the argument is made that treating the activities of drug dealers as gang activities makes it impossible for the police to understand their crimes - thus the frequent label “senseless”.

  21. Each of these is discussed in the work of Peter K. Manning [32, 33, 35, 36], who identifies the emergence of new types of policing in the evolution in the war on drugs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh, 230 South Bouquet Street, Pittsburgh, PA, 15260, USA

    Waverly Duck

  2. Center on Race and Social Problems, University of Pittsburgh, 230 South Bouquet Street, Pittsburgh, PA, 15260, USA

    Waverly Duck

  3. Department of Sociology, Bentley University, Morrison Hall 149H, Waltham, MA, 02452, USA

    Anne Warfield Rawls

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Correspondence to Waverly Duck.

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Duck, W., Rawls, A.W. Interaction orders of drug dealing spaces: local orders of sensemaking in a poor black American place. Crime Law Soc Change 57, 33–75 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-011-9353-y

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