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Abstract
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VioLit summary:
OBJECTIVE:
The purpose of this paper by Horowitz was to analyze the relationship between community tolerance and gang violence in Chicago's Chicano community and how tolerant or intolerant reactions to gang violence are contingent on the relationships between gang members and various community audiences. It focused on the process through which violent acts and their meaning are negotiated and mutually understood among gang members, non-gang members, and adult members of the community.
METHODOLOGY:
A non-experimental, participant-observation method of study was employed for a three year period on 32nd Street in Chicago, an area where violent gangs were prevalent. The gangs used guns and knives in their fights and occasionally both gang and non-gang youths were killed. The researcher took an overt role in the community, interacting with them in public and private social settings. These places included the streets, park-benches, dances, parties, homes, and in their basement clubhouses. The neighborhood residents were mostly poor minorities with little education. Census data was used to determine that 44,000 residents lived in a 150 square block area. These 44,000 residents estimated that close to 70 percent of the male population joined one of the eight major gangs that were subdivided into age graded groups the Tinys, Midgets, Littles, Juniors, and Seniors. Most of the gang data reported concerns the Lions which had about 30 core members who ranged from 15 to 18 years of age. The four key themes in the analysis were: 1) the relation of gang violence to gang members and other community members and the processes by which non-gang youths construct and maintain their presumption of order. 2) The conditions under which gang violence destroys the apparent safety and order of the neighborhood. 3) How the distinct meanings attributed to gang violence by outsiders created a situation in which violence is not understood or tolerated. 4) The reasons why gang violence continued to be tolerated by parents.
FINDINGS/DISCUSSION:
Acceptance. In the social relationships on 32nd Street, honor and its pattern of moral meanings are applied to a man's ability to command deference in interpersonal relations, and to be independent and dominant. This included a man's ability to support his family, accumulate no long-standing debts, protect the chastity of his women, and guard against any aspersions on his masculinity. In the process of developing a distinctive social identity, gang members distorted the traditional notion of honor to encompass displays of toughness as criterion for ones social identity. Gang members generally agreed on the kinds of incidents that were defined as demeaning, and the meaning of each incident was negotiated by the immediate participants. If an incident was judged unintentional, no response would be made, but if an incident was judged demeaning or intentional, then very often the gang members would respond violently. The ability to understand varying audience's definitions of gang violence allowed gang members to adjust their conduct towards the audience found in a particular setting. In general, demonstrating toughness was one way of achieving status, and the use of violence as a response was approved in the community. Different audiences employed different strategies to maintain their presumption of order and achieve varying degrees of tolerance. This was important for the ordering of social relationships among gang members. Gang members would seek out and initiate challenges to another's honor as a way of publicly asserting their toughness.
Positive Tolerance. In the gang neighborhood, gang membership did not define the boundaries of friendship, and there were many youths who spent time in the same settings as gang members. These youths did not fully understand gang violence and generally did not actively seek situations in which they challenged the reputation of gang members in order to enhance their own, and gang members saw non-gang member challenges as being unworthy. Most fights between gang members and non-gang youths took place over situations in which honor was at stake, and not as a means of asserting ones toughness or developing ones reputation.
Negative Toleration. The gang members were constantly working to insure that their parents had a feeling of order, so that their parents would continue to tolerate gang violence. While most parents did not approve of fighting to better one's reputation, they understand the use of violence to uphold one's honor, and most saw violence, and deadly violence as a proper response to offenses against family honor. The family strived to maintain negative toleration, by putting up with gang violence as long as it didn't enter their social world. Gang members would try to avoid fights at social occasions so that gang members and the family giving the party could maintain their presumption of order. When fights did occur, families could no longer remain unaware or maintain the pretense that a family member was not a gang member. Parents became upset, and angry at the sudden failure of the social arrangements that allowed them to tolerate conduct that they did not approve of. With the knowledge of a family gang member, the family could not help but experience disruption in their lives and came to feel that gangs were dangerous and that their activates should be stopped. For many, being labeled a gang member had serious consequences-being expelled or arrested, and this could jeopardize future plans. While some gang members maintained their affiliation as gang members into marriage, and employment, the majority dropped out of the gangs by the age of 18 or 20. As gang members matured, they began to feel that gang violence was less acceptable, and they began to tolerate rather than approve of violence.
Inside Intolerance. In the community, gang members actions were neither completely acceptable to adults, nor were they completely integrated into the social world of adults, but they understood the notion of honor for the gang members. The gang member was part of the community and accepted the conventional world of adults. The cultural link between the street world and the conventional world, particularly the framework of honor-at least partially accounted for the Chicano gang's complex relationship to parents and other community members. While the presumption of order was precariously maintained for most community members, it was unclear whether families' tolerant responses to violence were embedded in a context of freedom of choice or were indications of powerlessness. This issue existed because gang members were not strangers, they were relatives and friends. Family and neighborhood networks were too extensive to pretend that gang members did not belong to the community. The gang members activities were dangerous but they were not regarded as dangerous people.
Outside Intolerance. To those outside the community such as teachers and other outside help, the meaning of the youth's violence was obscure, and the framework of honor did not inform their interpretation of gang violence because their was no presumption of order. Law enforcement officials and the public often regarded gangs as symbols of disorder, and saw them as dangerous and unappealing. These people failed to distinguish gang members from non-gang individuals and they generalized all the teenagers in that area as problematic.
AUTHOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS:
The author argued that if community audiences were to react to gang members as deviant, they would be faced with dilemmas because they would have to reject beloved family members. It was concluded that the cultural and existential solution to the community/gang relationship stemmed from the ability to work with gang members in order to maintain a relationship of mutual toleration and to engage in negotiations which allow community life to proceed in an orderly fashion.
EVALUATION:
This study presents a rich, textured look at the complexity of gang life. There is a tendency to believe that gangs somehow exist outside of community and family, but this author's work shows just how much they are interconnected. There is a lack of generalizability to ethnographic research in that only one small group in a particular geographic area is studied; this study is no exception. However, the length of time in the field and the quality and quantity of information about these Chicago gangs give a high degree of internal validity to the findings. More importantly, the difficulty of approaching the gang problem and the necessity of a community-based, holistic approach are brought into light for further research and intervention efforts. (CSPV Abstract - Copyright © 1992-2007 by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Institute of Behavioral Science, Regents of the University of Colorado)
KW - Illinois
KW - Juvenile Gang
KW - Juvenile Violence
KW - Juvenile Offender
KW - Hispanic Gang
KW - Hispanic Offender
KW - Hispanic Violence
KW - Gang Violence
KW - Neighborhood Conditions
KW - Neighborhood Environment
KW - Community Environment
KW - Community Tolerance
KW - Violence Causes
KW - Violence Effects
KW - Social Organization
KW - Gang Membership Effects
KW - Gang Membership Causes |