The violence industry : the misappropriation of urban misery

• Main Author: Tabac, Lara Bonham.
• Other Authors: Corin, Ellen (advisor)
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: McGill University 2000
• Subjects: Crisis intervention (Mental health services) > New York (State) > New York.; Violence > New York (State) > New York.; African American children > New York (State) > New York > Social conditions.
• Online Access: http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=36716

Conceptions of community violence that circulate in American society are shaped by, and shape, the way that public health violence intervention programs are designed and implemented. As a conceptual point of departure for public health programming, community violence focuses on acutely violent events, where homicide and/or hospitalization are the potential outcomes. The violence experienced by poor people living in marginal neighborhoods is chronic and does not resemble this conception of violence on which public health intervention programs are based. The violence that is most pressing to these intended service recipients is driven by their immersion in poverty. As a result of this lack of conceptual correspondence, intervention programs are unable to achieve the intended goal of violence reduction. === Drawing on and adding to the literature from the anthropology of violence and the anthropology of public health, this thesis explores public health conceptions of community and domestic violence intervention as contrasted with the experience of structural violence for the individuals for whom intervention services are designed. The research that underwrites this project was conducted in an inner-city public hospital and focused on a clinically-driven, community-based youth violence intervention program. === Clinical and community violence intervention programs bring three groups together: clinical practitioners, community workers and youth service recipients. This study explores the heterogeneity of the world views of members of these groups and exposes the power imbalances inherent to clinical and community collaborations. The power differentials exist between the clinical, community and youth factions, as well as within each faction. This work shows how this unequal distribution of power---between and among these sub-groups---mirrors themes in American society and comes to influence internal program adjustment and negotiation. The process observed highlights how power politics, as well as incongruent perspectives on violence, play out initially in the implementation process and secondarily in the lives of the youth who were program participants. === This work, which has theoretical and practical implications for scholars working in the areas of poverty, violence, public health interventionism or adolescent programming, concludes with a summary of alternative strategies to approach violence prevention programming.