Street Codes, Violence, and Status Struggles
SOC604: Lecture III
Joseph D. Lewandowski
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Street Codes, Violence, and Status Struggles
•Street codes as effects of structural violence
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•Street codes as ‘deviant, anti-social attitudes’ that are apparently related to violent behavior
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•Synopsis of street code argument(p.1-3)
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Street Codes, Violence, and Status Struggles
•Respect and Disrespect in the Urban Milieu
• * In sites of profound scarcity, struggles over status and respect are acute
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• * Young people who experience racial discrimination are more likely to engage in violent behavior
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Street Codes, Violence, and Status Struggles
•Key causal factors in the adoption of street codes:
• * Neighborhood versus ‘the hood’ (embeddedness within an institutionalized ghetto) • *
Ethno-racial discrimination (including repeated encounters with police)
• * Family socialization: street versus decent
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Street Codes, Violence, and Status Struggles
•Reflexivity and street code adoption?
• * Complex entwinement of reflexive choices and actions (code-selecting and switching); and
durable constraints/structural violence in which such choices and actions are embedded • *
Dialectic of actions (violent or otherwise) and structures (violent or otherwise)
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Street Codes, Violence, and Status Struggles
•Conclusions
• * Being raised in a “decent” family appears to lower the risk of being involved in violence • *
Street families use the threat of violence (the ‘code’)as a form of deterrence • * Experience with
ethno-racial discrimination significantly predicted self-reported violent behavior
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