Thanks, Juliana. Interesting about the bicycles. Hadn't thought of that at all. Beepers as surveillance devices, rather than the drug trade itself was my starting point. And I'm enjoying setting drug dealers against office people (whatever it is that they do) Perhaps, after I write "The Political Economy of the Beeper," I'll do something on the political economy of the bicycle. I'll move onto the political economy of the shopping cart, and so on. At the end I'll have my dissertation which I'll entitle "The Political Economy of Racialized Technologies" or something like that.
I know that beeper carrying drug dealers are more stereotypical than real at this point. Or, rather, that beepers have diffused through the general society. But there was a point when there was a popular perception of drug dealers w/beepers. They were part of that whole gangsta thing a few years ago, and people who talked about dealers talked about beepers. And it is interesting to look at the office employee and his/her beeper, and the drug entrepreneur w/ his or her beeper. At least, I hope it's interesting. *I* think it's interesting. But I think even this historical look at the (gangsta) beeper and the contemporary office beeper is interesting. From the tool of the active entrepreneur to the surveillance device of white collar folks...
There's very little work done on beepers at this point. (The beeper is undertheorized and unproblematized. teehee!!) I'm listening to gangsta rap because that's the only place I can find beeper references. Driving my neighbor crazy as I play the same bit of a song over and over, trying to get the lyrics down.
Sorry for going on for so long...
Frances On Fri, 21 Aug 1998, Juliana Shearer wrote:
> In my experience, it seems that it would be more important to look at
> the role of bicycles.
>
> I see young people with beepers working at the local food stores and at
> other lower-paying jobs, and they just seem to be a status symbol. Every
> "inner-city" school in Chicago is chock-full of beeper-carrying
> students. These are used for communication between friends, and also
> because many have to work while they go to high school, and this is the
> only way for people to get a hold of them. There is even candy that
> looks like a beeper for those kids who aren't old (wealthy?) enough to
> have real ones. I cannot imagine that police would look twice at them.
>
> But the kids out bike-riding are very suspicious. They are the ones who
> take the orders and go get out the drugs to give to buyers. Then the
> guys in their late twenties or early thirties come by in cars (German
> ones seem to be the choice, particularly BMWs) to pick up all the cash
> once a day or so. I used to live on a busy corner, and I could look down
> and see the deals going down. The guys thought my husband and I were
> funny, because although we were white, our car was a wreck, and for a
> while we had to push it backwards to get it parked (admittedly, it was
> funny, but just showed their stereotypes about white people, who they
> thought had it made).
>
> Now I live near a busy street (Fullerton Ave.) where kids on bikes go
> back and forth all day and night, trolling for customers. Once as I was
> going along the street, a teenager on a bike came careening around the
> corner after some guys on foot. As he was riding he was trying to aim
> his gun at them across traffic.
>
> Trying to find some peaceful time so I can stop being a lurker,
>
> Julie
>
> -----
> Frances wrote:
> > I'm working on a paper exploring the various ways beepers work in
> > US capitalist economies.
>
>