RT Article
T1 The Unusual Suspects: An Educated, Legitimately Employed Drug Dealing Network
JF International criminal justice review
VO 28
IS 3
SP 226
OP 242
A1 Salinas, Mike
LA English
YR 2018
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1751095428
AB This article challenges the mainstream discourse that is often used to conceptualize illegal drug supply. In particular, it questions the assumption that drug dealers and the markets they inhabit are a social aberration, restricted primarily to social outsiders operating in socially and economically marginalized communities. Drawing on 6 years of ethnographic fieldwork with 25 “conventional” working-class “lads,” the article makes two overarching arguments. First, that the illegal drug trade is by no means confined to a subset of violent or marginalized drug distributors. Second, that the organization and structure of drug distribution networks can often be entwined into the fabric of conventional routines. The article concludes that criminological research must move toward better conceptualizing the so-called silent majority of drug dealers if we are to accurately reframe the current reductionist drugs discourse.
K1 criminal stereotypes
K1 Drug dealing
K1 Drug supply
K1 Drug trafficking
K1 Ethnography
DO 10.1177/1057567717745583