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Structure, Context, and Agency in the Reproduction of Black-on-Black Violence

NCJ Number
180047
Journal
Theoretical Criminology Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Dated: February 1998 Pages: 29-55
Author(s)
Marino A. Bruce; Vincent J. Roscigno; Patricia L. McCall
Date Published
1998
Length
27 pages
Annotation
This analysis of race and violence focuses on theoretical limitations of traditional frameworks and develops a model that suggests that black-on-black violence is most appropriately regarded as a dynamic and emergent phenomenon that is patterned by the intersection of social structure, local context, and agency.
Abstract
Violence has a substantial impact on morbidity and mortality within the African-American community. Existing conceptual frameworks provide insight into macro-level and micro-level factors that affect this violence, but they have limits. A more comprehensive and integrated theoretical framework avoids reducing race-specific violence outcomes to social-psychological or deterministic structural factors. Instead, this model incorporates both macro-level and micro-level factors into a single framework. The model extends contemporary frameworks by accounting for stratification processes that make context meaningful, by relating structural context to normative and micro-interactional outcomes, and by avoiding the theoretically problematic assumptions of existing perspectives. This theoretical framework implies the need for multiple approaches to the analysis of crime. These approaches include ethnographic, community, qualitative, historical, social structural, and aggregate analyses. Figures, notes, and 102 references (Author abstract modified)