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Facing Violence: Everyday Risks in an American Housing Project

Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, t.v.blokland{at}tudelft.nl

Many manage risks of urban violence through constructing of no-go areas — not so the residents there. How do they manage risks of violence? This paper approaches this question through the concepts of risk and (dis)trust of Sztompka (1999) and within a framework of disadvantage in a`matrix of oppression'(Collin 2000). Based on ethnography, the paper asks how people experience risks of `street violence' and `personal violence', how they manage them, and how their discourses about it relate to institutional discourses of how to solve problems of violence. I show that violence is being accepted and rejected in their specific relation to identity enhancement and respect within a context of intersecting forms of oppression along lines of race, class and gender.Through a discourse of fate, residents tell that violence concerns the wider context of stigmatization and exclusion — which does not match with the approach of local institutions.

Key Words: Feminity • Poverty • Masculinity • Neighborhood • Race • Trust • Violence

Sociology, Vol. 42, No. 4, 601-617 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0038038508091617


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