Global Street Code. A Cross-cultural Perspective on Youth Violence

ABSTRACT

Some twenty years ago Anderson’s seminal work, The Code of the Street, was published. The theoretical approach he developed there has been used in numerous studies focusing on youth violence, and is now treated as a general explanation of youth violence in risky neighborhoods in a number of disciplines. Expanding this, an international research project has used the concepts to compare violence-related norms and beliefs of male juveniles between 16 and 21 years of age in risky neighborhoods in Germany, Bulgaria, Pakistan and South Africa. In each research site, semi-structured qualitative interviews were completed with 30 participants in risky neighborhoods. The results of the cross-cultural analysis of the 120 interviews show, resultantly, that the ‘code of the street’ as illustrated by Anderson differs significant between the countries and that many elements of the original concept are shaped by contextual dynamics. Here we further make a distinction between those elements that were found to be in confluence with the original code from those which differ as a result of cultural influence. It is thus argued that while the street code approach is helpful in understanding the street violence of juveniles, it is not a general explanation and context-specific factors play as equally important a role.

Notes

¹ https://cfr.uga.edu/researcher-projects/; Last seen: 11/26/2018.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sebastian Kurtenbach

Sebastian Kurtenbach, born 1987, interim professor for social policy at the University of Applied Sciences Münster, and he was a senior researcher at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence at Bielefeld University in Germany from 2016 till 2018. His research interests are urban sociology, conflict studies and migration. Contact: [email protected]

Steffen Zdun

Steffen Zdun, born 1975, is a research associate at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence at Bielefeld University in Germany since 2006. He is also a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences for Public Administration and Management of North Rhine-Westphalia. His main research interests are: juvenile delinquency, street culture, desistance, and inter-ethnic relations. Contact: [email protected]

Simon Howell

Simon Howell, born 1984, is a research fellow in the Global Risk Governance program and Center of Criminology, University of Cape Town. He has published a number of academic articles, book chapters and reports, teaches a number of postgraduate courses, and comments regularly on select topics in the national press. His core research interest focused on the relationship between justice and violence, and how this relationship is made manifest both in the structures of modern governance and in the architecture of marginalized peoples’ identities. Contact: [email protected]

Muhammad Zaman

Dr. Muhammad Zaman, born 1981, established the Department of Sociology, Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad in 2014 and he was the Chair from 2014 till 2017. He is also Researcher at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence at Bielefeld University from 2016 to 2019 on the project “Violence related norms, attitudes and beliefs of young men in high-risk urban neighborhoods”. His main interests are youth violence and politics, childhood, marriage and family. Contact: [email protected]

Abdul Rauf

Abdul Rauf, M.A, born 1988, is working as a research associate at Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence (IKG) at Bielefeld University. Before, he was part of an interdisciplinary research team at the Institute of Social and Cultural Studies at University of the Punjab in Pakistan. His research interests are urban sociology, youth studies, migration, boundary-making and group relation. Contact: [email protected]