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Social ties and urban violence. Explorations in territorial dynamics
Abstract
Our research focuses on the relationships between socio-economic status, vicinal social networks and urban violence. Specifically, we use data from a survey done between 2004 and 2006 in six Argentine cities to explore the relationships between housing levels, social networks and victimization. The survey results are compared to what was found in ethnographic research. We discover that diverse kinds of social networks produce differing effects over victimization rates. Social networks based on kinship and friendship, do not have an effect on them. Instead, local leadership does play a deterrent effect, while conflictive social networks promote victimization. In this way, the survey data partly confirms and partly redefines what was found in ethnographic research.
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In 1989 Sampson and Groves proposed a model of social disorganization. In this model, neighborhoods with low socioeconomic status, high residential mobility, racial heterogeneity, and family disruption were predicted to have sparse local friendship networks, low organizational participation, and unsupervised youth groups. These, in turn, were predicted to increase neighborhood crime rates. Although Sampson and Groves' work represents the most complete model of social disorganization to date, it has only been tested twice and then on the same data set. Using data from 36 neighborhoods from 7 U.S. cities, this study examines extensions of Samps on and Groves' model suggested by past research findings. The results indicate that Sampson and Groves' model is modestly supported by the data. Social disorganization variables are more effective in transmitting the effects of neighborhood structural characteristics on assault than on robbery. Implications of the study and directions for future research are discussed.
Residents of poor barrios in Buenos Aires are deeply worried about widespread violence (domestic, sexual, criminal, and police) and about environmental hazards - two dimensions of marginalization that policy-makers tend to disregard and social scientists of the ethnographic persuasion seldom treat together for what they are: producers of harm. Based on 18 months of collaborative fieldwork, this article dissects poor people's experiences of living in harm's way. © The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav.
While the contemporary systemic model of neighborhood crime has emphasized the regulatory capacities that are imbedded in the structures of local community relational networks, very little attention has been paid to the dynamics of social control that are exercised through these linkages. This is a very important consideration, given recent reformulations of this framework as a multilevel model. This paper suggests that the social capital model of James Coleman (1990) can serve as an excellent theoretical basis for such an extension and examines the degree to which neighborhood networks serve as mechanisms of social control for a sample of Oklahoma City residents. Evidence is provided that while the degrees of integration into private and parochial neighborhood-based networks have the expected associations with susceptibility to social control, this is not the case for more general friendship and family relational structures.
Students of delinquency, preoccupied with subcultural and value conflict theories, have recently produced fewer ecological
studies. However, for the much-needed task of assessing the cross-cultural applicability of contemporary delinquency theories,
ecological studies need to be conducted in other cultures to indicate where delinquency occurs and among whom. Ecological
data are presented on juvenile offenders and their offenses from Cordoba, Argentina. These are discussed against a background
of United States studies and implications are drawn concerning delinquency theory. In general, the ecology of delinquency
in this Latin-American urban setting shows characteristics precluding the uncritical application of current delinquency theories.
Using victimization data from 57 neighborhoods, this article examines the relationship between neighborhood characteristics and rates of violent crime and burglary. We argue that Shaw and McKay's social disorganization theory provides a meaningful point of departure for examining the uneven distribution of criminal victimization across social units. Measures of three central theoretical elements in Shaw and McKay's social disorganization perspective (poverty, residential mobility, and racial heterogeneity), and variables from the subculture of violence, social control, and opportunity perspectives are included in this research. Results indicate that core components of Shaw and McKay's theory are important in explaining neighborhood victimization rates, although their influence is more conditional than direct and varies by type of crime. Evidence also emerges that supports social control models of aggregate criminal activity. Additionally, we examine whether parameters of macromodels of criminal activity vary across levels of urbanization. The implications of our findings for macrotheories of criminal activity are discussed.
Ecological theories linking community characteristics to the level of crime have rarely been tested outside the context of
the United States and Western Europe. In this study we examine the effects of social cohesion and neighborhood disorder on
crime using data from a survey of neighborhoods in Brazil. We find that lower-income neighborhoods, including irregular settlements
known as favelas, have higher levels of social cohesion. Contrary to the results of research in U.S. urban areas, we find
that greater cohesion among neighborhood residents is not significantly associated with lower levels of crime, and is in fact
associated with a higher perceived risk of victimization. By contrast, neighborhood social and physical disorder increases
violent victimization, but does not affect residents' perceived risk of being victimized. We argue that the effect of social
cohesion on risk perception is explained by the greater spread of information regarding crimes occurring in more cohesive
neighborhoods where residents interact more frequently with each other.
This paper examines the relationship between crime rates and aggregate economic conditions for 57 small social areas. The principal analyses address a continuing controversy—are community crime rates associated with absolute poverty, relative poverty (i.e., income inequality), or both. Using victimization data from 57 small residential neighborhoods, the analyses examine the association between absolute and relative poverty and rates of violent crime and burglary. The findings indicate that absolute poverty is more strongly associated with neighborhood crime rates, although the relationship is conditional on the type of crime considered. The implications of the findings are discussed within a perspective of community social control.
After nearly 20 years of democratization, residents of Rio's favelas suffer high levels of civil and human rights abuse at the hands of both police and drug traffickers. The government is generally unable to guarantee the political order necessary to protect the rights of residents in these communities. Existing theories of democratization and advocacy networks offer little to explain how the types of endemic violence that affect poor neighborhoods in the developing world can be brought under control. Based on more than two years of participant observation and interviews in Rio de Janeiro, this article examines how democratic order can be extended to favelas. It argues that networks can link favela residents to organizations in civil society, and state actors can play a critical role in reducing violence and establishing democratic order.
Major theorists have tended to equate peer-based delinquency and gang delinquency. Acceptance of this assumption hinders theoretical and empirical understanding of deviant youth cultures. Subcultural delinquency involves shared symbols-such as deviant values and speech-as well as behavior that is potentially noticeable by officials. Through the utilization of separate measures of shared symbolic deviance and interaction patterns, evidence is presented to support the contention that the cultural and social boundaries of a deviant youth culture have distinct referents and that the social unit of a subculture is most accurately described as a network of pairs, triads, groups with names, and groups without names.