Heroin Marketplace Essay

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Exchange in a Heroin Marketplace

In this chapter, the case study basically put the emphasis on exchange so as to reason that illicit drug marketplaces which were being produced and then reproduced by means of a dynamic and complex relations and social processes. This case study does give the understanding that contrasts with dominant conceptions of drug (and other) marketplaces that view them as driven by the mechanism of supply and demand, that mainly pay no attention to their constituent social relations and that have a habit of reifying the 'market' as an object to be measured instead of a process to be understood. This case study for this chapter likewise tests dominant and stigmatizing buildings of heroin users and sellers as degraded, abject 'others', showing that, in their day-to-day lives, they take part in similar practices and struggle with a lot of the same challenges as regular people do. With that said, this essay will discuss how we do not accurately understand the market for heroin and that is more complicated than demand and supply.

One of the main issues raised in the case study are we do not accurately understand the stigmatizing constructions of heroin users and sellers. For instance, the researcher set out to gain entry into that world of heroin. In these early attempts at making some contact, giving out cigarettes to people really helped him to create some kind of a space for an encounter. However, cigarettes was never the objective but heroin exchange between marketplace participants was the agenda. All of this took place at a dealers where daily heroin users were met personal drug requirements through the street-based sale of heroin. They were primarily independent entrepreneurs who purchased a larger weight of heroin. Trying to observe the heroin dealers was a little bit of a problem because, for the first time, they conveniently gathered around the cafe which was the last spot of exchange. It was clear they moved from a previous location.8 During the observation, it became a little difficult because the researcher needed to find out who would employ these heroin exchanges in order to establish and affirm the social relationships that are vital to any fieldwork endeavor.

Another issue were the unbalanced exchanges. However, this was not new at all in the Vietnamese community when it came in order to obscure the actualities of the war. It is clear that the community were very familiar with to heroin exchange. According to Zinberg (1986) most of the early evidence indicated that the drug was used heavily heroin exchanges because of their history in the drug trade. For instance, the growing intimacy of the researcher's relationships with Viet dealers was verbalized through heroin exchanges. Sometimes those exchanges were not effective because there was some miscommunication going on. Another difficulty was that the public nature of this marketplace meant that it was not always possible to observe this group of people as they went about their daily lives. So as to participate in these lives, nevertheless, it was essential for to engage with them and start to building relationships in order to find out more about the heroin trade. Furthermore, some other issues came up with heroin trade. Most were reluctant to exchange any kind of drugs with those that did not look Vietemese. For example, while dealers and customers frequently worked to develop social ties, more close social ties were obvious among dealers. These were frequently founded on family or friendship ties and normally reinforced by shared ethnicity. It was clear that the heroin environment was large and not that easy to control. According to Zinberg (1986) control of drugs in a society was not an easy task. He made the following point "Thus the public became increasingly aware that even with the advice of a physician, "good" drugs used for "good" reasons could be difficult to control."

The culture process of how the heroin trade was enforced was brought up in the case study. For example, According to Moore (1993) The term 'cultural processes' refers to the ways in which shared understandings are made and transmitted within and between social groups. For instance, in the case study, the heroin trade in the community obtained heroin on a reasonably reliable basis, through the employment of a broad range of creative devices.

Vietemese based on their social purposes, the researcher was able to distinguish three key forms of gift exchange that was a part of their social process. According to Moore (1993) by 'social processes' simply means the ever-changing technique of social relationships among individuals and groups within which everyday social life takes place.

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For example, gifts to maintain, gifts to substantiate and gifts to (re)incorporate. Preserving gifts could be read as aid. These were in general provided when the receiver was hanging out (in heroin extraction) and the donor 'felt sorry' for the individual. These kinds of gifts were, above all, presented merely to other Vietnamese.

One of the observation in the study was that it was sort of easy to hold the heroin exchange, especially in public. According to Martin (2013) he knew all to well about a community that made it possible to sell drugs but it was ina virtual environment. For instance in his article, explored a website which makes possible to sale of illicit drugs and operates on the TOR system, an encoded part of the internet otherwise recognized as the 'dark net'. The case study did not explore the exchange of drugs on the internet but it did display something close by exploring something which was called "helping out."

Helping out was from time to time created as charity while, at other times, it could be understood in terms of either balanced reciprocity when it came to the market for heroin -- a counter gift for past helping out or past giving generalized tradeoff -- informal gift-giving for which no accounts are kept, no immediate or specific return is expected and no source of repayment specified. Helping out interactions were one of the methods in which heroin dealers created and confirmed the social connections that related them with other Vietnamese heroin users and dealers in Footscray.

Through these social processes they formed and maintained the specific social category of Vietnamese individuality and acted to replicate the bounded nature of the covered market. Comparable boundary marking practices were a feature of the cigarette exchanges described talked about previously, for instance, when Van requested a cigarette while at the same time suggesting I should refuse an Aussie's appeal.

The complex social processes and relations that surround the production and consumption of drugs were things such as gifts and hanging out which were clearly talked about in the case study. For instance, when it came to gifts, they were complex because they were to substantiate and take the form of allocation of heroin and other merchandises, whether the recipient wanted these things or even if they did not. Sharing exchanges most of the time happened among kin, fictive kin or close by friends, and were used to express and validate these relations that were social.

We do not understand the market for heroin because in the case study, substantiating gift exchanges were a big part of that world. These were considered to be complex because most of the time substantiating gift exchanges are implied individuals utilizing the heroin all at once, in an articulated sociality. For instance the researcher account of complex social process of exc all through evenings socializing with Kiee'u and Leo.c could be understood as sharing to substantiate their close socialites. The third form of gift exchange complex social processes was that of gifts to (re)incorporate someone into the donor's social network. In contrast to maintaining gifts, (re)incorporating gifts were unsolicited and the recipient was not defined as being in need. (Re) including gifts likewise contrasted from substantiating (sharing) gifts for the reason that consumption of the gift was not common and the relationship among donor and recipient was more socially withdrawn. A key occasion that elicited such gift-giving was when persons were released from prison. They would return to the open market and be given a cap or a taste. These type of gifts served as a way of confirming relationships among people, of reincorporating them into the system of social relations. (Re) incorporating gifts was another complex social processes because it could be utilized by the recipients, or they could be re-exchanged by means of trade (Dwyer, 2014).

When it came to the heroin, the complex social processes was basically the trade of it. The case study made the point that trade was a central mode of exchange, and it was the exchange form by which the dealers defined their practices. The complex of Trade is frequently assumed to continue among individuals with no social ties, and the idyllic market exchange is commonly considered a 'spot transaction' where the exchange rapport is concluded instantly.

For instance, the complex social processes of trade in….....

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