. 1. Does Bourgois and Schonberg’s attention to race/racism matter for our understanding of the Edgewater homeless? If so, why? Why would this matter to social service providers or medical
professionals? 2. Choose a main character of the book and make an argument as to why this character and his/her life is a good example of the theory of abuse that the two authors are working with.
3. When Bourgois and Schonberg argue that “addiction is not simply biologically determined; it is a social experience that is not amenable to magic-bullet solutions” (2009: 272), what do they mean?
Make an argument about what they mean with “social experience” and how this is supposed to differ from magic-bullet solutions. As was the case with the first essay, use relevant anthropological
concepts that we developed in class to make your argument. Pay particular attention to the thesis statement, but also to the evidence you mobilize. The more detail you can mobilize to show that you
have taken the book seriously and read it closely, the better.