Place, Identity, and Deviance: A Community-Based Approach to Understanding the Relationship Between Deviance and Place

Abstract

Cities invariably have “gray” areas where formal policing and regulatory reach is relatively ineffective. By focusing on individuals or groups traditional theories of deviance fail to account for community-level processes that create local alternative norms that contribute to behavior seen as deviant by outsiders. By combining theories of space with issues of identity construction and deviance, we analyze an inner-city neighborhood in Mexico City in terms of four factors: Structural Location, Material Form, Meaningfulness, and Organizational Integration. This creates a model for understanding forms of deviance that are rooted in community processes of resistance to the dominant normative system.

Acknowledgments

We recognize the help and support of Dr. James Dingley, Dr. Alfonso Morales, and Dr. Patricia Fernandez-Kelly who have seen earlier versions of this article and other work leading up to it. We also thank the anonymous reviewers of Deviant Behavior for their insightful comments.

Notes

¹Zhao (1998) notes the importance of architecture in the student movement of Beijing.

²Similar to other inner-city neighborhoods, the area became known as the birth place of boxers, wrestlers, and other popular artists such as Cantinflas (Hernández 2005).

³See Cross (2010) and Karaganis (2010) for a much deeper discussion of the factors behind the growth of piracy in Mexico and worldwide.

⁴See Notimex (2008) for one example of violent reaction to a police raid.

⁵Note the similarity to Bourgois' discussion of the history of East Harlem (2002).

⁶An example of the interaction of religion and community building is the practice of dedicating a patron saint of each vecindad with a shrine located in a central area.

⁷See Grisales (2003) for a broader discussion of how Tepito is organized spatially in a way that contributes to informality.

⁸“Mexico es el Tepito del Mundo, y que Tepito es la sintésis de lo Mexicano.”

⁹“En Tepito, todo se vende, menos la dignidad.”

¹⁰See Cross and Peña (2006) for a discussion of the importance of such organizations and leadership as defensive and regulatory mechanisms.

¹¹Drug economies can have some similarities when they are based in inner-city communities, such as the crack markets of Harlem and East Harlem (Jacobs 1999; Bourgois 2002), but the high risks and moral uncertainties involved usually limit the level of community participation and thus the cementing effect on the local ideology.

¹²“En esta ciudad caótica, un barrio sin sombra no genera respeto.”

¹³In their study of a community in Cape Cod, Cuba and Hummon found that “community place identities are largely a function of social participation attributes in addition to friendship, organizational, and dwelling-related place affiliation …” (1993:124).

¹⁴This is clearly seen as a factor in studies of drug dealing communities in the United States (Topalli et al. 2002).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John C. Cross

JOHN C. CROSS , Ph.D., Professor of Social Work at the University of Salahaddin-Hawler. His research is on deviance, social movements, urban politics, ethnic identity, and the informal economy.

Alfonso Hernández Hernández

ALFONSO HERNÁNDEZ HERNÁNDEZ is a well recognized autodidactic urban chronicler of Mexico. He is the Director of the Centro de Estudios Tepiteños since 1984. From 2009 to 2010 he is the President of the Civil Association of Chroniclers of the City of Mexico.