The rules of violence

A perspective from youth living in South African townships

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12600321
AutoresSwartz (0000-0001-9886-5181, University of Cape Town, autor de correspondencia), Duncan Scott, Darwin Scott (0009-0007-3810-0786, University of Aberdeen)
Año2013
Volumen17
Número3
Páginas324-342
Fecha de publicación2013-07-24
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Youth Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1367-6261 • E-ISSN: 1469-9680
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13676261.2013.815699
OpenAlexW2057187749
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas12
Referencias citadas31

Levels of violence and violent crime amongst young people in South Africa are extraordinarily high and, on the surface at least, evidence of lawlessness and a moral crisis. Responding to historian Eric Hobsbawm's 1969 assertion that in order to assuage increasing lawlessness, there is a need to identify the social uses and rules governing violence, this paper explores the settings, forms and experiences of violence amongst a group of 37 post-Apartheid black youth living in an impoverished township in Cape Town. It discusses five apparent rules of violence that emerged from an analysis of youths' accounts of violence that include using violence to defend dignity, the importance of social positions in using violence, violence as means of social sanction in the absence of institutional action, the rules of revenge and valuing the threat of violence over violence itself. The paper offers Swartz's nascent theory of moral capital as an extension of Hobsbawm's theory. It argues that the presence of rules in the midst of violent behaviour does not just mean that lawlessness in society is not increasing – a deficit view. Instead, moral capital argues that young people's use of rules to govern violence may be viewed as a social asset that demonstrates their somewhat rational decision-making despite adverse contexts

Criminology · Dignity · Lawlessness · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Intimate Partner and Family Violence · Law