NCJ Number
227844
Journal
Journal of Social Issues Volume: 59 Issue: 1 Dated: 2003 Pages: 1-14
Date Published
2003
Length
14 pages
Annotation
This introductory article for this issue's theme, "Youth Perspectives on Violence and Injustice," discusses the theoretical, methodological, and practical rationales for examining this theme.
Abstract
Recognizing that it is rare to find a scholarly text about violence written critically from the perspectives of youth, this issue presents a series of articles written from youths' perspectives on violence by drawing upon positive youth development theory and addressing the diversity of perspectives among youth living under adverse conditions. The issue's articles encourage theorizing abut how diversity among youth - based on race, ethnicity, class, gender, nationality, and sexuality - influences their perceptions of engagements with and experience of violence. Section I of this issue contains papers that present theoretical and methodological approaches which focus on the problematic social world of youth, a world that requires negotiating social dangers and dilemmas in which violence becomes a means of coping with these dangers. Each paper in this section analyzes a realm of violence in terms of how youth in diverse oppressive or challenging settings must create identities and lifestyles for which concepts of legality and illegality are irrelevant to their survival. The paper examines sociological environments for youth through historical and archival analysis, a methodology that is increasingly used to provide context for culture and individuals. The papers in Section II approach youth perspectives on violence by examining how the public institutions that have sought to counter youth violence have contributed to, rather than contained, youth violence, particularly among oppressed racial, ethnic, and class-based groups. The papers in Section III focus on youth perspectives on violence within intimate relationships that challenges development and well-being. 26 references