The Violence of Culture and Becoming Homeless: An Anthropological Research among the Addicts of Darvazeh-Ghar in Tehran

This ethnographic research which has been done among the homeless drug users of the Darvazeh Ghar neighborhood in Tehran investigates the desire of some of them to become homeless. Against conventional views that relate the homelessness of drug users to economic and patronage issues, I concentrate on the birth of a new culture which produces negative intellectual and emotional categories about addicts. The violence of culture starts in the family, with the notion that becoming a drug user stigmatizes the family and erases its reputation and face. Then, the addicts have to become homeless, and stigmatized to save their families from stigma. The violence of culture extends to the relatives, public, and state, with the notion that the drug users are worthless people and even threaten society. Therefore, this new violence of culture doesn’t remain on the symbolic level and legitimates total physical violence against addicts, from beating to killing. The birth of this new culture in contemporary Iran discloses the moral economy in which some groups, different and distant from society, are subjected to violence.