NCJ Number
168555
Journal
British Journal of Criminology Volume: 36 Issue: 3 Dated: special issue (1996) Pages: 412-427
Date Published
1996
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This article analyzes how the social and economic marginalization of second- and third-generation Puerto Rican immigrants in the inner city has polarized violence and sexuality against women and children, both within the family and on the street.
Abstract
The article is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted while the researcher resided next to a crack house in El Barrio, New York, for almost 5 years. Within the families of Puerto Rican immigrants, the traditional working-class patriarchy has been thrown into crisis by the restructuring of the global economy and the expansion of women's rights. Unable to replicate the rural-based models of masculinity and family structure of their grandfathers' generation, a growing cohort of marginalized men in the de-industrialized urban economy takes refuge in the drug economy and celebrates a misogynist, predatory street culture that normalizes gang rape, sexual conquest and paternal abandonment. Marginalized men lash out against the women and children they can no longer support economically nor control patriarchally. References