With regard to childhood experiences, In relation to current incidents of violence, The researchers found that women who had experienced the most traumatic and severe incidents of physical, emotional and sexual abuse as children also reported the highest rates of violent victimization as adults.
Focus group data illustrated that the vast majority of women who reported incidents of violence were rather fatalistic about their experiences. Most regarded the violence in their lives as an inevitable aspect of their work. Based on these findings, Surratt et al. However, whether their evidence is sufficient to support this claim is debatable. As they acknowledge, this study does not include a systematic assessment of values or attitudes towards violence.
In addition, Surrat et al. Despite these shortcomings, their findings raise important questions about gender in relation to offending and victimization when assessing subcultural supports for violence. Both works offer comprehensive examinations of the concept of disputatiousness.
In these studies, the high rates of violence in the inner city and the South are theorized as resulting from cultural codes that permit the use of violence in situations where property, honour and family are at stake. In The Code of the Streets , Anderson conducted ethnographic research to explore the lives of residents in an inner-city Philadelphia neighbourhood in order to gain insight into the meaning and function of violence in their lives.
Unlike The Subculture of Violence, both The Culture of Honour and The Code of the Streets present arguments regarding the genesis of the violent cultures in the South and the inner city. Nesbitt and Cohen present a historical explanation, tracing Southern proclivities for violence to the herding economy, which was brought to the area by Scotch-Irish settlers in the late 17th century Nisbett and Cohen, 8.
For Anderson, the code of the streets is a cultural adaptation to structural constraints, a theorization that is also implicit in the culture of honour thesis. Both studies find conclusive proof for subcultures of violence in the South and the inner city. According to Nisbett and Cohen , cultures of honour tend to develop in societies where individuals are at severe risk of losing their resources.
Due to a combination of limited state protection and an economic system generative of few resources, the authors contend that a form of frontier mentality emerges. As a consequence, citizens, particularly men, feel the need to embrace hyper-masculine characteristics to ensure the protection of their property, families and themselves.
Those who are known or appear to be capable of protecting their resources and themselves are less likely to become the victims of theft and violence Nisbett and Cohen, xvi.
Considering these conditions, the use of violence for the purposes of protection becomes culturally permissible and, to a certain degree, a necessity. Nisbett and Cohen note that in the 17 th and 19 th centuries, cultures of honour existed in various parts of the South and had developed in congruence with herding economies imported to the area by Scotch-Irish settlers. Despite the passing of such lawless times, they argue, the cultural conditions associated with this way of life have persevered and continue to guide the actions and behaviour of the descendents of these early settlers today.
After disputing some of the most common explanations for the high rates of Southern violence, such as the legacy of slavery and the hot climate, they examine whether the subculture of violence thesis is an appropriate explanation for the high rates of violence in states such as Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia.
Rather than focusing on racialized populations in the inner city or disorganized neighbourhoods, Nisbett and Cohen focus on the high rates of violence amongst Southern white males. To examine the appropriateness of a cultural explanation for violence in this region, the authors perform a multitude of comparative experiments to determine whether white northern and southern men vary in the degree to which they embrace pro-violent values and norms. Attitudes towards disputatiousness were captured through survey data and questions exploring approval for violence in hypothetical situations depicting incidents of violence committed in the name of honour.
Noting the potential disparities between conduct and attitudes, they supplement their study with tests to determine whether southern males do in fact act and perceive confrontation differently from their northern counterparts. Is their masculinity really put on the line when they are affronted, as survey results would imply? To answer these questions, the authors performed a series of social-psychological experiments, which involved testing variations in perceptions and reactions towards insults and shoves amongst a sample of northern and southern college students at the University of Michigan.
The most noteworthy and intricate experiment involved a staged interaction, in which a confederate of the researchers bumped into each research participant while walking down a hallway and swore at him Nisbett and Cohen, The authors found support for the culture of honour hypothesis: insulted southern participants experienced the greatest increase in cortisol and testosterone levels, expressed far more concerns about being perceived as masculine during an interaction with an individual who had observed the staged altercation, had firmer handshakes, and tended to express more hostility than their insulted northern counterparts did.
The same finding applied to a control group composed of southern men who were not insulted Nisbett and Cohen, 41— Nisbett and Cohen supplement these experiments with macro-level analyses to assess any institutional supports for violence in the South.
In so doing, they observe focus on collective expressions of culture as reflected in laws, social policies and institutional behaviour, relying on both field experiments and archival data to do so. The authors point out that the law and social institutions are critical to shaping the behaviour of citizens by defining what is acceptable and unacceptable. Accordingly, they investigate a variety of policies, including: laws that embody norms of self-defence, particularly those in relation to gun control and national defence; policies on corporal punishment and domestic violence, which they consider to be reflective of attitudes relating to violence for the purposes of social control; and corporal punishment, which, they argue, captures collective attitudes towards the use of violence for retributive purposes.
Based upon the voting habits of legislators as well as an array of statistics and opinion polls, Nisbett and Cohen conclude that the South is indeed more favourably disposed toward capital and corporal punishment and far more concerned with national defence than the North is, and is generally opposed to gun control. All of this, they argue, is conclusive evidence that a culture of honour exists in the South. Nisbett and Cohen found additional evidence for their thesis following a series of field experiments conducted to determine the existence of institutional supports for a culture of honour in the South.
One notable study examined perceptions and reactions of various northern and southern employers to a fictional job candidate. The hypothetical job candidate is depicted as appealing for consideration despite his conviction of manslaughter for killing a man who was having an affair with his partner.
The researchers crafted this experiment by composing a letter confessing details of the crime, which they sent along with a resume to various employers in both parts of the country. As they had anticipated, the southern employers were far more sympathetic to the plight of the job candidate than their northern counterparts were Nisbett and Cohen, Finally, in an attempt to examine media reinforcements of the culture of honour, Nisbett and Cohen examine how various college newspapers in the South, West and North would write news stories about a fictional murder committed in response to provocation and for the purposes of maintaining reputation and honour.
After distributing an outline of the bare facts of the case to the universities involved in the study, the researchers reviewed the stories they produced, combing them for evidence of sympathy and blame.
Over all, they found that newspaper coverage in the West and South portrayed the offender more favourably than the news stories written by the northern students did. Nisbett and Cohen provide compelling empirical proof that the high rates of southern violence amongst rural white males in the South can be attributed to subcultural supports for violence committed in the name of honour.
A significant methodological strength of this study is that it reaches far beyond survey data and considers not only the attitudes and values of research participants, but also whether institutions reflect cultures of honour. The authors relied on data from the GSS, which allowed them to examine the relationship between growing up in the South and an increased likelihood to engage in violence amongst a national sample of over 2, US households.
Hayes and Lees analyzed the responses of research participants to a series of questions assessing their approval of the use of violence for the purposes of self-defence and maintaining honour and respect. The researchers predicted that individuals who reside in the South, as well as those who were socialized in southern states, would be more supportive of violence.
Unlike Wolfgang and Ferracuti, Anderson does not infer the existence of subcultures of violence based on statistical indicators of high rates of violence in poor racialized neighbourhoods. Rather, he attempts to explore in detail the meanings of and motivations for violence amongst those who are thought to be enmeshed within the subcultures of violence. Hoping to elucidate the cultural and social dynamics that foster internecine violence in the urban core of Philadelphia, Anderson engaged in four years of participant-observation and in-depth interviews with residents in a neighbourhood along Germantown Avenue.
He theorizes the violence occurring in this context as a form of capital that African-American men employ to demonstrate hyper-masculinity and ensure the preservation of their property and family. This masculine performance is crucial to maintaining status, self-preservation and respect. This instrumental use of violence is closely intertwined with the illegal drug market, which forms the basis of the underground economy in the inner city and operates in opposition to legitimate legal structures.
For those individuals involved in this economy, violence is a form of street justice, and appearing tough is critical to their economic survival. Thus, disputatiousness is a norm in the inner city.
Cultural proclivities for violence are conceptualized as adaptations to structural constraints and social disorganization, which in turn result from race and class oppression. By attributing differences in motivation to commit violence to values, he raises several questions about the relationships between social structure, violence and masculinity.
How and why do some inner city residents succumb to the pull of the streets while others somehow manage to resist it? As a consequence, many have questioned the validity and generality of his findings. In an attempt to address this shortcoming, Brezina et al.
First, they explored whether adherence to a code that encourages retaliation for the purposes of protecting and maintaining status is associated with racialized, low socio-economic and socially disorganized neighbourhoods. Second, they examined whether adherence to the code is related to neglectful and abusive parenting, experiences with violence and victimization, exposure to violent peers, and a general belief that legitimate means to attain status or respect are unavailable Brezina et al.
However, previous research did not support the contention that the code is solely an inner-city black phenomenon. Brezina et al. The authors examined whether those who had experienced high levels of victimization and youth who perceived a lack of future opportunities through legitimate means, such as school and the labour market, were more likely to use violence to protect and maintain their honour.
Three waves of data from a National Youth Survey, a self-report study on delinquent behaviour, were analyzed to assess these claims. The survey was based on a probability sample of youths between the ages of 11 and 17 and had been conducted in the late s.
The study sampled households within two Philadelphia neighbourhoods and interviewed youths within the selected households. These associations, in turn, increased levels of violence. Next, they examined whether youths who experience racism are more likely to embrace the code.
Subcultural theories are therefore to be appreciated for their understanding that deviation in certain groups is common. By also incorporating the idea of anomie theory of status and adaptation problems, the approaches show themselves as early attempts to use both learning theory and social-structural conditions to explain deviant behaviour patterns.
Subsequent attempts to extend it to crime in general have failed because it is obviously absurd to attribute any criminal activity to the existence of male delinquent subcultures. White-collar crimes cannot be explained, nor can crimes by the middle class or, for example, by women. Some critics also doubt whether these gangs of young people and gangs actually represent such postulated subcultures with fixed structures and deviating norms.
Quite a few studies have shown that many youth groups are rather loose and unstructured connections. Representatives of the neutralization thesis doubt, however, that subcultural values that deviate from those of mainstream society can actually be developed and completely internalized.
SozTheo is a collection of information and resources aimed at all readers interested in sociology and criminology. Subcultures consist of norms, values, interests—and artifacts associated with them—that are derivative of, but distinct from, a larger referential culture. The term also is sometimes used loosely to distinguish individuals, groups, or other collectivities based on their demographic characteristics e. Postmodernists point out that the nature of subcultures today has changed, in that subcultures are much more common today than they were in the s.
Today, subcultures are just a normal part of life. Related Posts Subcultural theories of deviance are the second group of theories of crime on the A level crime and deviance specification AQA , normally taught after functionalist and strain theories.
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