NCJ Number
220090
Journal
Aggression and Violent Behavior Volume: 12 Issue: 5 Dated: September-October 2007 Pages: 552-563
Date Published
September 2007
Length
12 pages
Annotation
This article explores the link between institutional and community culture, and then compares traditional perspectives on the influence of culture on violence in both institutional and community settings.
Abstract
A model is presented for understanding and researching culture that is based on the notion that value systems in institutions and neighborhoods influence one another. Offering examples from recent research on prison culture, the key dimensions of this new cultural paradigm are examined which describes culture as “intersubjective, performative, cognitive, relational, and world-making." It is concluded that further examination of the reciprocal relationship between institutional and community culture is needed before beginning to consider the policy implications of the “culture in action” paradigm. Much has been written about prison violence; and for many observers, one of the primary causes of prison violence is the negative prison culture that exists in Federal and State prisons. Similarly, culture has reemerged as one of the primary causes of community violence. This is based, in part, on new research that challenges some of the basic assumptions of social disorganization theory in general, and the racial invariance hypothesis in particular. This article examines a new conceptual framework (or paradigm) for studying the culture of violence in both institutional and community settings. The goal is to consider how both institutional and community violence may be explained using a new cultural paradigm, which moves beyond traditional views of “culture as values” to a new relational theory of “culture in action.” Table, figure, references