Sir Raymond Firth said that ethnography “makes the exotic familiar and the familiar exotic.” We mostly hear stories of ethnographers and anthropologists who travel to other countries to study fascinating and unfamiliar societies so they can become familiar with and understand their culture. This is how we make the exotic familiar. In our country we have the impression that because we live around these people we know them and there is nothing to learn, but when we come in and start looking at what's in our backyard we realize that there are things that we don't we know Know. This is what Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg did in Righteous Dopefiend. In their ethnography Bourgois and Schonberg study the culture of a community of heroin addicts in San Francisco, who are referred to as the Edgewater Homeless. They follow them in their daily lives, recording burglaries, begging, love affairs, conflicts, alliances, hierarchies and deaths, as well as trips to prison, hospitals and treatment centers. They return to the lives of Edgewater's homeless to examine what factors lead them to heroin addiction. In class we said that cultures are a system and that the world is the product of cultural exposure. However, this is a culture that was unknowingly produced by the higher power forces of our nation and is consistently despised. Since homelessness is nothing new in the United States, we already have this stigma against them along with drug addicts. One of the challenges facing Bourgois and Schonberg is the practice of cultural relativism. As easy as it may be for them, they must not pass judgment on Edgewater's homeless people because everything they do is related to... middle of paper... the dismantling of government assistance to housing and gentrification. , getting off the streets was becoming increasingly difficult for the members of Edgewater Homeless, leaving drugs as the only thing to turn to. I understand this and I think Bourgois and Schonberg showed it well. Seeing drug addicts and homeless people is not new to me. I know that homeless people and drug addicts have a story and a reason why they live the lives they do. I am aware of withdrawal and I am aware of the urgency of addiction. However, this ethnography showed me that sometimes the addiction is not because they love it, but because they physically can't stop. This also showed me that these people are not docile; they can function and know how to get what they need to survive. However, I wonder if their desire for normality ever outweighs their need for medication.