Philippe Bourgois is an ethnographer who moved his family to East Harlem so that he could study drug culture in El Barrio. He used his firsthand experiences to write In Search of Respect. In El Barrio, Bourgois, referred to as "Felipe," befriends drug dealers and slowly immerses himself into the underground economy of selling crack, to which he records what he sees and hears. He has a hard time throughout the narrative with remaining an observer for research purposes while wanting to intercede in the lives of his “friends and neighbors” (xiii) when they do things that seem unethical. Bourgois wants above all to paint the individuals he befriends as human beings with flaws, yet he doesn’t want readers to think that their actions are symbolic of Puerto Rican culture as a whole. He wanted to give back to the community, and writing this book was his way of doing so.

Ray is the owner of the Game Room crackhouse and the Social Club. He’s instrumental in Bourgois being accepted into the underground world. Bourgois’s research almost ends when he inadvertently "disses" (22) Ray by showing him a news clipping and asking Ray to read it, not knowing that the dealer is illiterate.