Abstract
Set in a middle-class Atlanta suburb at the turn of the 21st century, Code of the Suburb endeavors to provide a portrait of the lowest level of drug dealers, adolescents who supply their high school classmates with portions of an ounce of marijuana and, on occasion, other drugs, such as pills. If readers feel as if these data are antiquated given changes in attitudes toward marijuana in the 15 years since this research was primarily done, they would be correct. In fact, much of what we learn here could have been written 40 years ago, and was, when sociologists were first exploring the ‘hippie’ drug dealers of the 1960s and 1970s, with whom Jacques and Wright’s subjects have much in common.
The first author was a member of the community when he was in high school, and the crux of what he collected was done as part of an Honor’s thesis he did at a very thinly veiled pseudonym for the University of Georgia. From reading the book, it seems as if there has been no additional research conducted since 2005, when he received his undergraduate degree. The book begins with a brief, three-page, inadequate methodological prolegomena, where the authors attempt to describe the setting and its members. While we applaud this foreshadowing for the book, we learn nothing about the author’s role in the setting, whether he dealt drugs himself (many of the people he interviewed were his friends), any epistemological issues that may arise from studying friends, and problems engendered by relying so heavily on retrospective data, as all of the interviews were done ex post facto, after these youth had left high school and were in college.
The crux of the book, outlined in Chapter 1, is that drug dealers’ motivation is to pursue coolness, to be seen as people with high social status, a principle that has been oft-cited by many ethnographers of both drug dealers and high school students. In this case, the allure of drugs lies in the ability to get product for free (or cheaper), to have extra spending money, and to look generous to their peers; essentially, though, the hope was not to be seen as ‘lame’ but rather as ‘cool’ guys you can go to for a good time. Being cool by dealing drugs puts them at the top of the ladder.
Much of the rest of the empirical chapters in this brief book replicate time-worn studies of drug dealers. We re-learn how dealers locate suppliers and buy from their sources. Dealers, too, have strategies for selling to customers, acquiring steady users, dealing with the vagaries of selling illicit products and protecting one’s self, and to whom they can sell to remain safe. During their dealing careers, these adolescents have to worry about coming under the scrutiny of their parents and police, although the police in this quiet, tree-lined community do not seem to focus their gaze much on these youths, giving them fairly free rein to do their business unfettered. Parents, too, while disappointed if they catch their youths dealing, offer little resistance, other than taking away a few privileges (cars, cell phones), lest they thwart the upward mobility they seek for their progeny.
Like any illicit transactions, drug deals involve the possibility of victimization. However, unlike their more urban brethren, these sellers worry little about violence, rarely, if ever, turn to it, and would rather tolerate, avoid, or negotiate than to engage in fisticuffs, or far worse, guns to settle disputes.
The code of the suburb, an obvious homage to Elijah Anderson’s brilliant work, maintains ‘that when it comes to conflict management, less is more’ (p. 100). Suburban dealers are uncomfortable with violence, incompetent at it, and have no desire to be seen as ‘badasses’. Serving as a backdrop to the comparisons the authors later make to inner-city (read: black) youth, this code flies in the face of how we stereotypically think of the violent, retaliatory, flashy, and unconventional norms of people in the drug trade.
Herein lies the rub: the authors claim that ‘the adolescent dealers in this book do not fit the academic or media images of the drug seller’ (p. 137). This is patently absurd. Most readers would recognize that life in the suburbs is different, that these middle-class, privileged white kids are not going to fit the ‘hustle and flow’ stereotypes, and that drug dealers, like criminals of all sorts, come in a variety of stripes. In the conclusion, the authors illuminate the similarities and differences between urban and suburban dealers, drawing primarily on previous research (not done for this book) of the second author and others, on urban dealers. While the authors have a good grasp of the extant literature, they do little to add to it. Both groups seek coolness, albeit in different ways, both seek status due to their relatively low position in society (young vs. black), and both are at increased risk for legal and parental problems as well as victimization. In the end, though, due to the suburbanites’ increased cultural capital, educational advantages, disdain for violence, delayed gratification, and ability to find conventional success, they eventually give up drug dealing, enter the university, and lead lives dedicated to attaining the middle-class dream, a style to which they are already accustomed.
The book offers few new insights that have not been explored previously. The authors make little to no attempt to use classic and more recent theoretical models such as differential association, learning, shame, subcultural, control, constructionist, or social structural theories to make this book interesting to readers of this journal. We assume that they feel that despite the datedness of the data, things have not changed that much. We strongly disagree, as youth in high schools today in many states view marijuana in a highly different light than those who were friends of Jacques almost two decades ago. In the end, then, Code of the Suburb offers few empirical, methodological, or theoretical advances to explain the complexity of drug dealing, either in suburban, white settings or their more urban, minority counterparts.
That said, the book still can be a useful supplemental addition to undergraduate courses in Criminology and Drugs and Society because many students will recognize themselves, their friends, and their classmates. Its accessible writing, descriptions of well-known characters and events, and location within the literature can be a helpful tool for professors to explain how drug dealing works in this and other milieus.