In addition to his three ethnographies Bourgois has published five edited volumes, including Violence in War and Peace (2004 Blackwell), co-edited with Nancy Scheper-Hughes and most recently, "Violence at the Urban Margins" (2015 Oxford), co-edited with Javier Auyero and Nancy Scheper-Hughes. He published an ethnographic study of East Harlem crack dealers, In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in East Harlem (Cambridge University Press. 1995). Bourgois is also the author of over 150 academic and popular press articles addressing segregation in the U.S. inner city, homelessness, gender violence, immigration and labor conflict, substance abuse, HIV, and intimate violence. He also published an article on his father's escape from Auschwitz ("Missing the Holocaust").[3]
In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio
Bourgois' ethnographic research of the crack dealers and their families revealed the structural barriers that marginalized the minority group of Puerto Ricans, and how their violent street culture further isolated them from mainstream society.[4]
The violent street culture was necessary for them to gain respect within their own marginalized groups. Many of the drug dealers did, in fact, want to enter the legal workforce, however, they were often subject to prejudice and with their lack of education and gap in employment history when they were selling drugs, they were often rejected or could only get jobs at minimum wage. Many subsequently returned to the drug trade.[5]
Righteous Dopefiend
Opioid addiction in San Francisco, California is explored by Bourgois and photographer Jeff Schonberg in their 2009 photo-ethnography Righteous Dopefiend wherein the two observe, photograph, and critically analyze a group of homeless heroin addicts from November 1994 through December 2006 (Bourgois 4).[6]
The ethnography takes a humanistic approach to counter action against opioid addiction in the California region by attempting to redefine the perception of opioid addiction and humanize the experiences of addicts by illustrating the presence of inequality, violence, racism, suffering, and complex power relations within the San Francisco drug scene. Bourgois writes: “The central goal of this photo-ethnography… is to clarify the relationship between large-scale power forces and intimate ways of being in order to explain why the United States, the wealthiest nation in the world, has emerged as a pressure cooker for producing destitute addicts embroiled in everyday violence” (Bourgois 5).[7]
