Creating violent conflict An ethnography about relationships, culture, and emotions in conflict situations among Dutch youths

Why do some youngsters at times engage in conflict and violence? Scientists have shown that background factors—such as neighborhood characteristics, socioeconomic disadvantage, subcultural affiliations, psychological profiles, or neurobiological traits—are related to violent behavior. However, these explanations fail to address why most people with the same “risk factors” remain non-violent most of the time, or why some conflicts escalate into violence while others do not. This book provides an answer to these issues and examines how and why some youngsters engage in conflicts and act violently at times.
By hanging out with Dutch men and women who regularly encountered violent situations, both from a wealthy town and an impoverished inner-city neighborhood, I studied how they engaged with conflict. I observed a) how these youngsters used “street culture” and how this led to the escalation or de-escalation of situations, b) how relationships played a role in conflict situations and how these conflicts transformed their relationships, c) how they described their emotions during conflict situations and acts of violence, and how they managed these feelings, and d) how the youths constructed gender in (talking about) conflict situations and how these conceptions made them aspire more or less towards violence. Combining these observations with insights from ethnography, street code literature, cultural sociology, micro-sociology, phenomenology, and the doing gender approach, this book offers a framework for understanding why young people engage in conflict and, at times, violence, showing how conflict situations and violent actions are produced and are productive forces in the lives of youngsters.