NCJ Number
221099
Journal
Journal of Drug Issues Volume: 37 Issue: 4 Dated: Fall 2007 Pages: 781-804
Date Published
2007
Length
24 pages
Annotation
This article uses hierarchies, markets, and network models to explore the organization of drug distribution with regard to ethnicity/race.
Abstract
The analysis suggests applying ethnic skepticism when assessing the specified role ethnicity/race can or does have in drug distribution. Existing knowledge about drug distribution sometimes looks like a form of orientalism, but fails to operationalize ethnicity/race in a useful way. By drawing on the hierarchies, markets, and network models, the research demonstrates how each of them might illuminate particular facets of this debate; there should be no assumption or claim that other groups share or develop an ethnic code that is opaque, difficult to pin down, and provides them with particular methods of operating in crime or drug markets, unless the elements of such practices can be established empirically and are demonstrably useful in the commission of crime. These models are well established as conceptual approaches to the coordination of social life. Each of them is employed in the analysis of drug distribution, though not always clearly. This paper aims to explain their key features as they bear on questions of ethnicity and race. In doing so, it argues the way that ethnicity/race is employed in research and policy circles, and challenges naïve assumptions about ethic sameness and ethnicity/race as bases for organizing drug distribution. Ethnicity may be a useful resource for criminal and legitimate enterprises, but both comparisons between the two, and details of what is specifically ethnic are generally lacking. Some avenues for future research and simple principles to guide such research are proposed. Notes, references