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"Damn, Yo—Who's That Girl?"

An Ethnographic Analysis of Masculinity in Drug Robberies

California State University, Fullerton

Previous street crime research has shown that female robbers manipulate their sexuality to secure male victims. Also, the larger ethnographic drug market literature has shown how male criminals construct masculinity through the sexual and economic manipulation of women. However, both accounts miss how male criminals manipulate the masculinity of other men to victimize them. This article fills that gap, showing how male drug robbers play on the masculinity of male dealers to bait them into a robbery. Through The Girl, a female accomplice, male drug robbers lure male dealers, believing that men demonstrate masculinity through sexual relations with women. Apart from this, male drug robbers construct their own masculinity through The Girl, who is often manipulated and exploited through sexist stereotypes and practices. This research is based on ethnographic field data collected on a group of Dominican drug robbers in a South Bronx neighborhood.

Key Words: masculinity • drugs • robbery • gender • ethnography

This version was published on August 1, 2009

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 38, No. 4, 465-492 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0891241608316645


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