ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the exploratory analysis designed to identify common factors during adolescence and early adult years reported by African—American women involved as crack and other drug distributors. It shows how the impact of structural and cultural disinvestment constrained the family backgrounds and labour market opportunities of these women so as to effectively exclude them from the formal economy. The chapter focuses on understanding the complex and subtle factors which emerged during ethnographic fieldwork and data analysis - factors which are not captured by even the most sophisticated quantitative studies. Several key aspects of the womens' pathways to crack selling are presented: deviant networks and neighbourhood contexts, limited formal labour force participation, drug use/sale and non-drug users' criminality, and street life. The structural and economic contexts in which women's involvement in drug use and distribution are situated have altered significantly since the mid-1970s.
