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Constructing Physical Fights: An Interactionist Analysis of Violence among Affluent, Suburban Youth

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Abstract

Based on more than four years of ethnographic fieldwork and a dataset of 189 violent encounters, this article explores the social phenomenology of physical fights in a novel setting. Although American sociologists have traditionally depicted violence as a distinctively “ghetto” phenomenon, the members of this sample were overwhelmingly white and affluent. Since the usual explanatory background factors—race, poverty, and neighborhood—cannot adequately account for their violent experiences, the dataset is especially valuable for analyzing the generic interactional processes through which physical fights unfold. Furthermore, the article suggests a model that runs counter to the prevailing sociological perspective that violence is universally motivated by independent, preexisting conflicts. Oftentimes, the sample members set out to “get into” fights for their perceived experiential rewards and only later instigated disputes as a means to motivate and justify violent action. Using the method of analytic induction, the article presents a generalizable theory of how fights unfold in interaction. Three stages were necessary for achieving a fight: (1) agreeing to fight as a solution to a challenge to “interpersonal sovereignty,” (2) transcending the ordinary fear of violence, and (3) using competitive techniques of violence.

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Notes

  1. I refer to the young people about whom I write as members in two senses of the term: as members of my research sample, but also as members of a particular culture, with its own boundaries, practices, and shared knowledge. As much as possible, I tried to organize my sample to follow natural categories of membership in friendship networks.

  2. But see Anderson (1999, 85–87) for an example in which both are described as gaining respect.

  3. Historical research provides some valuable exceptions (Gorn 1985; Monkkonnen 2001). Conley (1999), for instance, describes “the agreeable recreation of fighting” in nineteenth century Ireland.

  4. The population of Pima County, in which Tucson is located, was 61 % non-Hispanic white-alone, 29 % Latino (of any race), and 3 % black in the 2000 Census.

  5. Those unfamiliar with skinhead cultures may not recognize that they are far more heterogeneous than commonly perceived (see Sarabia and Shriver 2004). There is evidence to suggest, in fact, that American skinheads began as a nonracist youth movement (Wood 1999). The skinheads I knew claimed to have had occasional encounters with racist or Neo-Nazi skinheads at concerts and other public events, typically resulting group fights or attacks against the racist skinheads.

  6. Unless noted as a fieldnote, direct quotes are from transcripts of audio recordings.

  7. I recorded fieldnote observations on two full-blown fights, three cases of other violence, and 13 near fights. I wrote retrospective observations on 18 fights that happened prior to the fieldwork, three cases of other violence, and four near fights. I wrote all retrospective observations in October 1999, and preserved them as originally written.

  8. Tellingly, the “victor,” Chad, was reluctant to provide an interview, apparently ashamed or regretful of having beaten a close friend.

  9. I use pseudonyms and conceal exact locations.

  10. See also Foucault (1977, chap. 1) and Katz (1988, 34–36).

  11. Fieldnote Interview (April 26, 2003).

  12. Of 122 fights, 44 (34 %) were in carousing contexts. There were also 27 near fights, 19 jumpings, 12 individual attacks, four cases of gunfire, and four additional cases of showing a gun.

  13. In micro-sociology “preference organization” refers to a structural relationship between alternative courses of action, e.g. nonviolence vs. violence; agreement vs. disagreement (Sacks 1987); and informal vs. formal social control (Emerson 1981).

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Acknowledgments

This project received funding from The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the UCLA Graduate Division. The author appreciates comments from Randall Collins, Robert Emerson, Robert Garot, Jack Katz, Mark AR Kleiman, Calvin Morrill, and several anonymous reviewers at Qualitative Sociology. Previous versions of this paper were presented at the American Sociological Association Convention (2003), the University of Pennsylvania (2005), Northern Illinois University (2006), and UCLA (2006, 2009).

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    Curtis Jackson-Jacobs

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Jackson-Jacobs, C. Constructing Physical Fights: An Interactionist Analysis of Violence among Affluent, Suburban Youth. Qual Sociol 36, 23–52 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-012-9244-2

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