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doi: 10.1111/1540-4560.00002pmid: N/A
Sociohistorical theory was used to examine illegality as a form of state violence that bears upon the formation of undocumented Mexican immigrants. This article proposes a theory of dialectical violence that integrates societal with personal enactments of violence through case illustrations of Mexican youth. In a grassroots association defending immigrants' rights, youth develop within conflicting discourses about undocumented immigrants proposed by society, family, and community. Methods included ethnographic analysis of the association's documents, a workshop in which five participants authored a booklet with texts and illustrations about their lives in the city, and an interview with their mothers. Findings illustrate how Mexican youth enter a cycle of violence as a result of their undocumented status, socioeconomic class, language and ethnic‐racial memberships.
Beale Spencer, Margaret; Dupree, Davido; Cunningham, Michael; Harpalani, Vinay; Muñoz‐Miller, Michèle
doi: 10.1111/1540-4560.t01-1-00003pmid: N/A
Spencer's Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory (PVEST) is presented as a theoretical framework to analyze potential effects of being a victim or co‐victim of a violent crime. Data are presented from a sample of African American adolescents residing in a Southeastern metropolitan area. Victims (n = 20) and non‐victims (n = 332) are compared on their self‐reporting of clinical symptoms normally associated with violent or traumatic experience during middle childhood and early adolescence. Results suggest that observed symptomatology may not be solely attributable to actual victimization. Discussion includes possible mechanisms by which factors such as cognitive developmental status, physical and social context, and previous victimization of the adolescent or a family member of the adolescent can influence symptomatology.
doi: 10.1111/1540-4560.t01-1-00004pmid: N/A
Haifa University (HU) is the stage for a prolonged social drama between Arabs (20%) and Jews. 86 students (38 Arabs and 48 Jews) were interviewed on their experiences of injustice. Three major differences emerged. For the Arabs, 92% of injustice took place on campus compared to 40% for the Jews. Arabs attributed injustice to discrimination (60%), Jews to the actors' personal characteristics (58%); the Arabs transformed injustice events into a political struggle for national recognition, identity, and narratives. The analysis intimates that Arabs' “social being” is developing through the staging of negative expressive acts, namely, respect/contempt and power/weakness. Thus actors at HU can stage social processes, and change sites of surveillance and injustice into places of reconciliation and coexistence.
doi: 10.1111/1540-4560.t01-1-00005pmid: N/A
The negative effects of slavery have been theoretically linked to contemporary problems faced by African Americans, such as family instability, low achievement motivation, and high rates of juvenile delinquency and youth violence. Combining historical, sociological, and psychological materials, the current analysis argues that Blacks exited slavery with the necessary social capital, inclusive of proactive family attitudes and patterns as well as high achievement motivation, for rapid acculturation into mainstream America. Shifting to the present, it is shown that the co‐existence of high Black crime rates and Black cultural integrity are not contradictory, especially when systemic forces neutralize or undermine the ameliorative potential of Black culture.
Daiute, Colette; Stern, Rebecca; Lelutiu‐Weinberger, Corina
doi: 10.1111/1540-4560.00006pmid: N/A
Evaluation research typically treats standards of violence prevention programs, like other curricula, as unquestioned values of a good society, while identifying youth as the problem to be solved. This article explains how the evaluative gaze can, in contrast, be critically fixed on the interpretations of various stake holders in the violence prevention enterprise, including curriculum authors, teachers, and youth, whose social values are often under‐represented. In the context of a year‐long literacy‐based violence prevention curriculum focusing on racial and ethnic discrimination in 3rd and 5th grade urban classrooms, 5 teachers, their classes, and 36 individual students from these classes expressed contradictory and conforming values, suggesting to us the need to invite negotiation of social values as part of democratic education.
Fallis, R. Kirk; Opotow, Susan
doi: 10.1111/1540-4560.00007pmid: N/A
In many urban public high schools today, students navigate their day by selectively cutting class leading to course failure and dropping out. Collaborative, qualitative research conducted with urban high school students indicates that cutting results from disengagement and alienation that students label “boredom.” Focus group data (N= 160 in 8 groups) indicate that class cutting has not only an individual component that schools address, but also a systemic, conflictual component that schools do not address. These unaddressed, intransigent conflicts can foster moral exclusion and structural violence. These data suggest that rather than relying on standard punitive approaches, schools can respond to class cutting more effectively by taking students' concerns seriously, working collaboratively with students, and engaging in institutional self‐scrutiny.
doi: 10.1111/1540-4560.00008pmid: N/A
This research elicited and assessed the perspectives on violence of 41 middle‐school students attending a unique school in a low‐income section of a large northern California city. Through participation in and observation of instruction and other school‐related activities, the researchers explored ways that these students experienced and reflected on violence in their lives and in popular culture. The researchers probed ways that these students' interpreted or reflected upon rap music and hip‐hop culture, particularly its representations of violence, crime, and sex. This research provided insights into what these youth thought about violence in their lives including its depictions in electronic media. Additionally, it revealed ways that they resisted and/or critiqued some negative images and influences of hip‐hop and rap.
Fine, Michelle; Freudenberg, Nick; Payne, Yasser; Perkins, Tiffany; Smith, Kersha; Wanzer, Katya
doi: 10.1111/1540-4560.t01-1-00009pmid: N/A
In order to document urban youth experiences of adults in positions of public authority, including police, educators, social workers and guards, a broad based street survey of 911 New York City‐based urban youth was conducted in which youth, stratified by race, ethnicity, gender and borough, were asked about their experiences with, attitudes toward, and trust of adult surveillance in communities and in schools. In‐depth telephone interviews were conducted with 36 youth who have experienced serious, adverse interactions with police, guards, or educators. Findings suggest that urban youth, overall, express a strong sense of betrayal by adults and report feeling mistrusted by adults, with young men of color most likely to report these perceptions.
Tolman, Deborah L.; Spencer, Renée; Rosen‐Reynoso, Myra; Porche, Michelle V.
doi: 10.1111/1540-4560.t01-1-00010pmid: N/A
In this paper, we explore how early adolescents' descriptions of their romantic relationships produce evidence of how precursors to violence are woven into the fabric of such relationships from the very beginning of their experiences of “heterosociality.” We identified concept of compulsory heterosexuality as an interpretive framework for analyzing these relationship narratives, examining qualitative data from two samples (combined n= 100) diverse in ethnicity and income to form a dialogue between youth perspectives and theory. We offer adolescents' descriptions, and our interpretations, of several themes, including the conceptualization of boys as sexual predators which normalizes such behaviors, girls' behavior in response to assumed male aggression, and boys' narration of their participation in relational processes which reproduce these beliefs and behaviors.
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