Facing Violence: Everyday Risks in an American Housing Project

Abstract

Many manage risks of urban violence through constructing of no-go areas — not so the residents there. How do they manage risks of violence? This paper approaches this question through the concepts of risk and (dis)trust of Sztompka (1999) and within a framework of disadvantage in a`matrix of oppression'(Collin 2000). Based on ethnography, the paper asks how people experience risks of `street violence' and `personal violence', how they manage them, and how their discourses about it relate to institutional discourses of how to solve problems of violence. I show that violence is being accepted and rejected in their specific relation to identity enhancement and respect within a context of intersecting forms of oppression along lines of race, class and gender.Through a discourse of fate, residents tell that violence concerns the wider context of stigmatization and exclusion — which does not match with the approach of local institutions.