Abstract

The authors describe drug use and drug-related crime in the contemporary city. In this description, they adopt a notion of the city as a market-place, and more precisely as a "bazaar", for its multiplicity, incessant bargaining, trade and manoeuvre. In this bazaar legality and illegality intermingle, and moral boundaries are constantly negotiated. They also examine the metaphor of the "barricades", an important feature of the city in both literary and sociological accounts. Finally, they demystify the image of the drugs economy as somehow being a unique challenge to urban life. This demystification is based on noting similarities between illegal economies and characteristics of official, legal economies.