This month we have reviews of two fantastic books, Offending Women: Power, Punishment, and the Regulation of Desire by Lynne A. Haney and Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and Inner-City Violence by Nikki Jones. Thanks to Kimberley Copeland and Emma O’Flanagan for serving as reviewers!
Review of Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and Inner-City Violence by Nikki Jones (Rutgers University Press, 2010)
Reviewer: Kimberley Copeland, Rutgers University
Terrie is a seventeen year old girl living in the inner city of Philadelphia. The residents in her neighborhood range from drug dealers to grandmothers living in row homes that often share walls with abandoned or condemned properties. Terrie lives with her mother and step father, her biological father is away serving time in a state prison. Terrie is known as a counselor in her community; when she is not caring for her younger sisters, she is spending time on her covered porch offering advice to different people in her neighborhood.
Everybody in her neighborhood knows and respects Terrie. Terrie is held in high regard because she has built a reputation as a ‘violent person.’ Terrie first fought when she was six years old, and in the time since she has participated in violent fights or threatened violence as a means to protect her reputation. This reputation offers Terrie the advantage of being able to roam her neighborhood freely and it places her in a position to protect others if necessary. Terrie fights with purpose, mainly to retain freedom and respect.
Terrie’s story is one of a focused group of narratives that are offered in Nikki Jones’ Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and Inner City Violence. Her research comes from an ethnographic study of African American girls living in Philadelphia’s inner city. The book is called Between Good and Ghetto because it presents the unique challenges that many African American girls face when trying to balance widely held gender expectations with the need to protect themselves in their distressed inner city neighborhoods. A ‘good girl’ traditionally avoids violence while a ‘ghetto girl’ identifies as a fighter. Through a skillful weaving of narratives like Terrie’s, Jones conveys that good and ghetto are not always polarized opposites. Rather the structural realities of distressed communities often cause many girls to locate somewhere in between.
The book originated when Jones was invited to work as an ethnographer for a city hospital-based violence reduction project (VRP). The project targeted youth aged 12-24 who had been treated in the hospital’s emergency room after being involved in violent altercations. Jones developed an interest in the girls involved in the project after discovering that the majority of them were African American and many of their motivations for fighting had to do with respect. This challenged the popular notion that girls fight for the attention of boys.
Jones’ fieldwork included participant observation, direct observation and formal and informal interviews with VRP participants. Her study was conducted with VRP participants between 2001 and 2003 in three stages. She spent the first year and a half observing VRP counselors on home visits with girls and boys involved in the program. Jones also interviewed VRP counselors who were familiar with the neighborhoods that the participants lived in. During the second stage, Jones spent a year visiting the homes of fifteen African American girls and nine African American boys on her own. During the third stage Jones spent a year conducting in-depth observations and open-ended interviews with three young girls involved in the program. Terrie, a self-described ‘fighter’, was one of the three girls that Jones chose for this phase of the study. She also focused on Danielle, a self-described ‘punk’ and Amber, a young mother living with a violent partner.
Each chapter of the book includes detailed descriptions of people, settings and social interactions. In chapter one, Jones invites the reader into the everyday world that shapes the lives of African American girls living in the inner city. The chapter opens with a description of a girl going through a metal detector and being patted down as part of her daily routine when entering her school building. Jones goes on to discuss the varying ways that mothers and grandmothers socialize their daughters to survive in violent neighborhoods. Chapter two discusses situated strategies to avoid violence that are used by girls who self-identify as ‘good’. Jones offers the concepts of situational avoidance and relational isolation to describe the ways that some girls navigate the inner city terrain. Through interview excerpts and narrative Jones presents interesting contradictions to the good girl identity; even ‘good girls’ know how to fight when they need to.
Chapter three looks closely at the experiences of girls who self-identify as fighters. She explores girls’ accounts of violent incidents to convey the ways in which girls work the ‘street code’ and seemingly challenge mainstream feminine ideals. Jones reveals the ways that African American beauty myths like the color complex and not having ‘good hair’ play a role in the early formation of many African American girl fighters. Long straight hair and light skin are physical attributes that have historically been celebrated as beautiful in African American communities. Girls who fall outside of these mythical beauty parameters may experience rejection and, in turn, reject the rejecter by expressing themselves in opposition to socially accepted western feminine norms; according to widespread socially accepted ideals of femininity, girls aren’t supposed to fight. Gender contradictions are present here as well; though many fighters reject traditional western standards of femininity, sometimes they fight for the purpose of upholding those standards.
Chapter four discusses the ways that girls manage the threats of interpersonal and intimate partner violence. Jones opens this chapter with reflections from a conversation that she overheard on a city bus; several young girls talking about an incident where a man hit a woman and remarking that “she deserved it.” This response captures an attitude prevalent in many urban communities: that intimate partner violence is acceptable and is often the victim’s fault. Jones goes on to present the story of Amber, a young mom with a violent boyfriend. She talks about the compromises that Amber has to make for the purpose of survival. She describes Amber as being constrained by the pressures of motherhood, while living in an environment where there is little trust for the police. Amber is a poor young woman in a poor crime ridden community where domestic violence is not a police priority; she is isolated. Her struggle for survival involves continuing to return to the home of her abusive partner because she needs shelter for herself and her child when there is nowhere else to go.
Jones concludes by considering what her findings have to reveal to those who are attempting to understand gender in context. Jones draws out the history of African American women and their reliance on strength in the midst of adversity. Choosing to be strong has been encouraged, celebrated and embraced by African American women for decades, despite the fact that in many ways that choice contradicts traditional western ideals of femininity. The young women in Jones’ book are reliant on strength, however; being strong is not a choice but instead a requirement. Whether a ‘fighter’ or a ‘good girl,’ physical, mental and emotional strength must be drawn upon in order to survive in poor crime ridden neighborhoods. Without many choices, many of these young women hold their strength in tension with their desire to embrace traditional femininity. Studying gender in context involves considerations about cultural history, place, worldview and choice.
Jones calls her work urban sociology, because it is broader than criminology. She is not merely considering pathways to crime, but realities of life. What Jones offers is a glimpse into the social and situated realities of African American girls in the inner-city. Her study of gender in context weaves in the historical and present realities of ethnicity and class; they are intertwined and must be considered alongside gender. Each chapter expresses the complexity and contradictions inherent in these experiences of being good and/or ghetto. The stories personalize issues of structural inequality, exposure to gun violence and a drug economy, and larger societal pressures to subscribe to traditional ideals of femininity. Jones offers a textured approach to thinking about gender and violence that is refreshing and captivating. What she has so brilliantly woven together through interview and narrative gives great credence to the importance of using a qualitative approach to studying the intersection of gender, race, class, age and place.
Review of Offending Women: Power, Punishment, and the Regulation of Desire by Lynne A. Haney (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).
Reviewer: Emma O’Flanagan, Rutgers University
In Offending Women: Power, Punishment, and the Regulation of Desire, Lynne Haney examines the social, political and economic consequences of the broad restructuring of state government within the context of corrections. Haney’s ethnographic study of two alternative-to-incarceration institutions, Alliance and Visions, sheds light on the complicated dynamics underlying the correctional system. In a time where mass incarceration has crippled the government’s ability to house offenders, alternatives to incarceration have increasingly been sought. Alliance and Visions are two of these alternatives, housing female offenders with their children, yet operate under different strategies of governance.
Haney discusses the concept of the new hybrid state that ‘governs from a distance’ as a product of broad patterns of state restructuring. She states, with “the dismantling of the centralized social state under advanced liberalism – the arena of government has devolved, decentralized, and diversified” (Haney, p. 15). The administration of national-level publicly funded social service programs are sent down to the local level. Governments form partnerships with nongovernment, non-profit and faith-based organizations for the implementation of public programs. Haney describes the diversification of state authority and the increase in state privatization as mechanisms of institutional change. Using this theoretical framework, Haney is able to conceptualize the effects and limitations of institutions such as Alliance and Visions. Conflicting norms and ideals can lead to ineffective and unrealistic goals and mandated practices or regulations can limit the therapeutic potential of these facilities. However, these privately run organizations cannot operate completely independent of broad correctional purposes.
Haney’s thoughtful description of the atmosphere, residents, practices and conflict at both Alliance and Visions provide a comprehensive look into those institutions. The ethnographic approach of her research provides insight into the personal narratives and inner workings of these otherwise socially isolated institutions. Also, Haney explores the concept of the hybrid state in the context of the correctional system. The hybrid state is one that ‘governs from a distance’ which allows nongovernmental, nonprofit, or faith based organizations to administer and operate correctional institutions. Haney describes how “the centralized social state was dismantled” and “the arena of government devolved, decentralized and diversified” (p. 87).
Part one of the book outlines Haney’s research at Alliance, a residential facility for young delinquent mothers that was operational in the early 1990s. She describes its institutional narrative as focusing on the deconstruction of the dependency that the young women have on the state and public programs. The staff’s dependency discourse permeated all aspects of Alliance including the psychological, social, domestic, and economic areas of the young women’s lives. Alliance described dependency as “the source of [girls’] social problems” (p. 31). In doing so, according to Haney, the program “pathologized poor women’s public and domestic relations…and presented women’s reliance on others as a devalued social condition to be overcome before they could reach the promised land of self-sufficiency” (p. 31). The staff at Alliance created this discourse to oppose the perceived control that the system had on young women, with staff perceiving themselves as promoting feminist goals of young women’s empowerment.
Haney provides generous detail of the residents’ backgrounds, opinions and actions within the facility and includes direct excerpts from interviews. Through this, Haney shows how the institutional narrative at Alliance produced continuous conflict and tension between the residents and staff and feelings of failure and resentment in the residents. While residents—teenaged girls who had lengthy histories of abuse and neglect—were eager for nurturing and support, such desires were ultimately deemed by staff as part of the dependency problem they needed to overcome. The facility’s reliance on state funding and requirement to abide by correctional norms limited its ability to freely construct an environment of dependency deconstruction. Eventually, the residents came together to oppose the staff and administration with such vigor that the facility was shut down by the same government authority that helped to create it. Haney points out that, ironically, it was the residents’ use of state agencies and regulatory bodies that caused the impetus behind the eventual failure of Alliance.
Part two of the book describes Haney’s research at Visions, conducted almost a decade after the study of Alliance. Visions housed adult female ex-prisoners and their children as well as women with children sent from court-mandated diversion programs. Visions was a therapeutic institution focused on recovery from addiction. The staff at Visions constructed their institutional narrative of addiction as the all-encompassing factor behind all of the resident’s problems. The residents were sent to Visions to recover from their addiction to drugs, alcohol, sex, relationships, attention seeking behavior, and crime. Haney describes the program at Visions as “recovery operated through the regulation of desire” (p. 132). The staff required the residents to share personal stories and intimate details of their lives in order to build self-esteem by publically exposing their vulnerabilities and failures.
As with Alliance, Haney uses in-depth interviews with the residents and participant observation of daily life at the facility to show the internal struggles that the institution faced. The program at Visions was wrought with internal divisions and conflict between residents and between staff members. Visions relied on funding from various sources and this became a constant source of difficulty for administrators. Eventually, the institutional narrative of recovery, freedom from addiction and empowerment became “more myth than reality” (p. 153). The Visions myth of empowerment was exposed by the residents’ expressions of frustration and resentment, and by practices that humiliated them in front of their children and traumatized both. Unlike at Alliance, where young women came together in a show of solidarity to oppose the program, at Visions women turned on one another with vigor. Haney characterizes Visions’ attempted therapeutic mission as being at odds with the overarching social and political environment of the hybrid state, and yet buttressing it through its emphasis on personal failure as the root cause of women’s problems.
The commitment of the staff and administrators of these facilities was genuine and unwavering. Also, the unique needs of women offenders with children undoubtedly have important social implications and require special consideration. However, Haney shows how the complexities of state supported private institutions can pose significant challenges to the success of alternatives to incarceration facilities, particularly when the goals are to provide gender specific programming for women. Haney’s ethnographic research of these facilities offers a detailed and important sociological account of these issues. Offending Women would be useful reading for both undergraduate graduate students in women’s studies, criminology and sociology as a supplement to research on traditional correctional practices in the United States. Offending Women contributes to the field of feminist criminology as well as traditional criminology by focusing on the political and social dilemmas facing the institution of corrections.