Sandy showed that the elderly were particularly vulnerable, modern society is highly interdependent, and living near the water can be very dangerous. But one thing Sandy was not was a worst case.

Sandy’s total body count was about 200. By comparison, Katrina claimed over 1,800 souls. And much like Katrina, the damage Sandy caused wasn’t unanticipated. Experts have long known of the vulnerabilities of the tunnels and subways. Lower Manhattan is very close to sea level. Climate scientists have been modeling the implications of sea-level rise for years, so they knew what storm surge could do. And while it’s not typical for a hurricane to strike New York, 11 major storms have affected the city since 1938. The vulnerabilities on New Jersey’s coast were similarly well known.

So, Sandy was not even close to the worst that could have happened. That would be a moderately sized earthquake under Manhattan.

Experts estimate that in a magnitude seven earthquake, half or more of Manhattan’s buildings would suffer moderate damage or worse, and 1,700 would completely collapse. They predict a total loss of 50 billion dollars or more. If it occurred at two o’clock on a work day, about 540 Manhattanites would either die instantly or suffer life-threatening injuries, and about 3,000 would require hospitalization — figures that are probably low estimates.

In Manhattan, a great many—if not most—of the tall buildings were built around the turn of the last century. New seismic codes didn’t start until 1996. And 80 percent of all buildings are made of unreinforced masonry, which often crumbles in earthquakes.

It would be fires that would be most lethal. That’s what killed so many in San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake. In Manhattan, water mains would break and firefighters would not be able to get through the debris to rescue people. Many fire houses and medical facilities would crumble. Nearly all police facilities would be unusable, along with three-quarters of all medical facilities. As fires raged out of control, the loss of lives and property would exceed anything we’ve ever seen.

Of course all of this is highly unlikely. Manhattan isn’t located above the boundary of tectonic plates, where the vast majority of earthquakes happen. It sits, relatively speaking, safely on its bedrock. But it’s not always wise to make personal and policy choices on the basis of likelihood. When we buy life insurance, inspect all airplane accidents, and hold fire drills in schools we’re making choices on the basis of possibilities — not probabilities.

So while worst case thinking shouldn’t supplant probabilistic thinking, sometimes it’s the smartest thing to do.

by Jennifer Johnson

Social science researchers have noted the advantages of using digital and entertainment media in soliciting youth civil involvement. “Youth generally find spontaneous, uninstitutionalized, creative forms of collective expression online more appealing than the online civic engagement initiatives sponsored by government and NGOs,” argued media scholars Henry Mainsah and Andrew Morrison in the Proceedings of the 12th Participatory Design Conference held in Denmark last year. “Young citizens [also] find more authentic experiences in edgier political sites and in entertainment media and games.”

In a photo caption challenge on Comedy Central, participants voted on and shared their political caption favorites via Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. Virgin America and PromoJam united behind nonprofit group Rock the Vote, allowing new voters to register by scanning a code found on in-flight entertainment consoles and t-shirts.

Communication researcher Kathryn Montgomery, in the 2008 book Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth, says these corporate collaborations are “emblematic of the growing practice of ’cause marketing,’ in which companies link their products to causes and issues in order to build customer appreciation and loyalty.”

While some decry these efforts, suggesting that they’re leading to the commercialization of the democratic process, when it comes to increased youth turnout, Democrats tend to benefit. In last November’s election, President Obama enjoyed a 24-point edge over Romney among 18- to 29-year-olds, even if preliminary data suggests that turnout among youth may have declined slightly since the 2008 election.

Photo by Daniel Garrett

Signs protested neoliberalism, the banking system, and state suppression. A tank signified the 1989 crackdown on student protesters in Tiananmen Square. Inside the camp were tables and message boards for activists, and meeting, living and meditation areas.

Following the trend of other world cities evicting occupy settlements, Occupy Hong Kong ended one day last September, as more than 100 guards and bailiffs descended upon the plaza, expunging all vestiges of the protest. It reflected China’s and the local power elites’ belief that Hong Kong should be an economic rather than a political hub which, given Hong Kong’s nickname, the “City of Protests,” was ironic indeed.

Many well-intentioned Westerners are involved in efforts to relieve the suffering of children around the globe. In Central Africa, as a deadly war ravages the population, a group calling itself “Invisible Children” has mobilized young Americans to raise millions of dollars to address the plight of those caught in the crossfire. Amy Finnegan’s article, The White Girl’s Burden, looks up close at the organization’s “non-wave-making activism,” examining its appeal to a largely white, affluent, female and Christian base. What she finds is less than encouraging: a philanthropic enterprise that feeds state-centered interventions and circumvents indigenous efforts, often with harmful consequences.

Young men’s masculinity is the focus as we move closer to home, to teenage boys’ lives in affluent societies, the subject of this issue’s Viewpoints. Mark McCormack, Freeden Oeur, C.J. Pascoe, Amy Schalet, and Niobe Way show us the limits of “boys will be boys” ways of thinking, and how the cultural scripts governing the lives of boys and young men are changing. We’re also pleased to present a sneak peak at Patricia Hill Collins’s forthcoming book on intellectual activism, an analysis by Bin Xu of public mourning practices from Steve Jobs to Kim Jong Il, and Greg McLauchlan’s interview with a founding father of the Occupy movement, Kalle Lasn, among other articles.

This issue also marks the end of our first year as editors, and it’s been a wild ride. Typically, we’re working on three issues simultaneously: as one goes to press, we’re putting the finishing touches on the content of the next one, and planning yet a third. Proposals and articles need to move through the review process at a rapid clip, and each issue must have the right mix of topics and authors. And then there’s images, copyediting, promotion, and all the rest — not to mention unexpected visitors like hurricanes. We’re indebted to the dedication of our editorial team, especially our fabulous managing editors, Carly Chillmon and Jennifer Hemler, for making the process enjoyable, and for helping us sleep at night.

We’d love you to tell us how you think we’re doing, and suggest ways we can make Contexts even better. And we invite you to get involved by sending us your work, and encouraging your colleagues and students to do so, too. And while you’re at it, please like us on Facebook!

Greg McLauchlan: Adbusters has been an important voice for political activists for several decades, challenging economic inequalities, environmental devastation and what might be called the cultural domination of capitalism. What name would you give this movement? What are its central motivations?

Kalle Lasn: For the last 20 years we called ourselves “culture jammers” and we thought culture jamming, a kind of situationist critique of consumer culture, could be one type of global activism that could change things. Now we may be beyond this, in a kind of revolutionary moment, where it’s quite obvious that the human experiment on planet earth is in crisis and that we’re hitting ecological and psychological and financial tipping points. What we need now more than culture jamming is a kind of global revolution — an “occupy” movement.

GM: “Occupy” is a more affirmative idea — a claiming of planetary space and planetary culture?

KL: Yes, exactly. The political left has been ineffectual for a long time. In our brainstorming sessions, starting a few years ago, we asked how we can move beyond a negative or reactionary response to the status quo. The ideas of “occupy Wall St,” “occupy yourself,” “occupy your local bank,” “occupy the world,” or “occupy theory”— all these seem way more positive. What you’re saying is “I don’t like what’s going on, I’m going to occupy the existing space, and I’m going to change it.”

GM: What role do you see Adbusters playing in relationship to these social movements? Are you a voice for the movement, a strategy platform, a place where activists can communicate? How do you actually work this out in practice?

KL: We have a website, we have campaigns, we have videos, and we have our flagship hardcopy magazine. We now have a virtual Spanish edition. We were the people who catalyzed Occupy Wall Street and we certainly want to keep our finger in the pie. For the hardcopy magazine, we have a feeling the Internet is washing over hard copy magazines. They are going out of business because they’re doing the same old thing, and that doesn’t work anymore. We’re excited at Adbusters because we have creative directors and artists asking: “OK, what does the magazine of the future look like?” After three-quarters of all magazines have fallen by the wayside, what will the magazine of the future do—beyond what the Internet does so well? We’re trying to create an aesthetic of the future, a style, form and feel that takes the old text-driven, whiny magazine of the last 20 years and turns it into a dynamic and inspirational magazine of spiritual insurrection. It’s a powerful question to ask, and we’re trying to find answers.

GM: A print magazine has been central to Adbusters’ identity. Hasn’t the printed visual image been one of your hallmarks?

KL: So far what we’re doing is trying to create this “flow” model of the magazine of the future, where the issue from cover to cover moves through a mind journey, a kind of a comic book flow of information where the whole issue is one big mind bomb—taking you through various permutations and leaving you at the other side—almost like a really good novel.

GM: In your view, the Internet can’t do that?

KL: The Internet’s good at giving you discrete, exciting little bumps, but you don’t want to read anything longer than about 100 words; there’s no real coherence, and the excitement comes from being in fresh new places all the time. But a good movie or magazine of the future will have the strange kind of effect where you get into it. You’re lost in a seamless flow of profound thoughts, and you come out the other end transformed in some way. This is something the Internet will never do.

Coming up with a new magazine aesthetic is one thing, but if you think about it in a broader context, this whole Occupy movement asks the question: “What does revolution mean in our era?” The ultimate task, really, is to change the style of the flow, of the aesthetic of our lives, of television, of magazines. Aesthetics is the deepest meaning of what we all live in, and for the last 50 years we’ve been living in a kind of commercial, corporate advertising aesthetic where everything is slick and poppy and clean and nothing really profound is ever allowed. If you ask me what revolution is really all about, I would say it’s about changing the aesthetic of how we live, of how we get our information, of how we eat — the aesthetic of how we basically exist. To me, that’s the most profound thing we can do.

GM: Where does this new art and aesthetic sensibility come from? Is your staff working on the idea of a new aesthetics?

KL: We have a staff of 10 full time people who meet, talk, and do all the things necessary to keep a website, our campaigns, and the magazine going. Our creative director is in São Paolo, Brazil, our editor Micah White lives in Berkeley, and then we have almost 100,000 people around the world who’ve joined our culture jammers network on our website. These are people who are continually communicating with us; some send in artwork, some send photographs, some send in information about a campaign that’s unfolding in their city — it’s a global network. When we launched Occupy Wall Street it wasn’t just some little thing we cooked up in our office here in Vancouver, Canada. It was actually a global brainstorm of thousands of people who suddenly woke up to the fact that quite apart from a regime change in Tunisia, or Egypt, we also need a regime change in America, and the idea of occupying the iconic heart of capitalism, Wall Street, came out of that. We may have a small core staff, but in some sense we are plugged into the whole world.

GM: Adbusters has recently called for the formation of new political parties and alliances in the wake of Occupy Wall Street. What are your thoughts on the future prospects of that movement?

KL: The occupation of Wall Street and other spaces around the world was a kind of magical moment that lasted for many months; young people met and rubbed shoulders and got politicized and they had a political awakening that reminds me very much of the political awakening I had back in 1968. I think the new phase will be an “Occupy Main Street” sort of thing, where people are involved in various projects, like getting the Robin Hood Tax implemented, or fighting for campaign finance reform, or winning the long, hard fight for a binding agreement on climate change. And I predict that in the U.S. after this November people will begin to see that one of the reasons for America’s decline is the two-party system itself. One of the tantalizing fruits of the Occupy movement will be the birth of a new party that finally starts to engage the radical transformations that are necessary if we’re to survive into a viable future.

An even deeper global project is overthrowing the neoclassical economics paradigm that still rules in every university around the world. I’ve just collaborated on a book called Meme Wars — The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics. It calls for university students around the world to rise up against their neoclassical professors, start needling them and holding teach-ins to begin this paradigm shift to what some are calling “ecological economics” and others are calling “bionomics”— we haven’t got a really good name for it yet. A paradigm shift in the theoretical foundations of capitalism is in order now.

GM: I understand you’ve recently turned 70. I’m curious what culture jammers do in their golden years. Do you have any thoughts of retiring, or are you going to be at this for a while?

KL: I’ll tell you what aging people like me do: they dream of revolution. The biggest transformative moment in my life, an epiphany, was in the aftermath of 1968 when a revolt in the Latin quarter of Paris suddenly gave birth to an explosion in hundreds of campuses and cities around the world. I learned in my 20s that a global revolution is possible. And 40-plus years later, a little revolt in Wall Street’s Zuccotti Park is uncannily similar, giving birth to another explosion of worldwide revolutionary fervor. My dream, even in my 70s, is to build on that, and to finally pull off this thing we weren’t quite able to pull off in 1968.

by Amanda Lanzone

Fans complained that replacement referees took too long to announce basic penalties, that they didn’t know which way to face to address the crowd, and that they couldn’t keep up with the pace of the game. But fans rarely complain about the home-team advantage that regular referees give teams, according to economist Tobias Moskowitz and sports journalist L. Jon Wertheim in their 2011 book, Scorecasting.

In a 2000 article in the European Journal of Social Psychology, social psychologists Michael Lupfer, Kelly Weeks and colleagues showed that most people judge fairness on the basis of consistency and predictability. Even though fans prefer good decisions, they may see bad or incorrect decisions as fair if referees are consistent. Fans get less upset when referees favor the home team because that’s something every home team counts on.

When fans saw replacement referees’ decision-making as inconsistent, unreliable, and biased, it made them feel cheated. For the duration of the lockout, their anger resonated throughout Twitter and Facebook. A controversial, last-second touchdown call that gave Seattle a win over Green Bay led to particularly scathing comments about the referees. One meme, for example, pictured Stevie Wonder next to the caption “Roses are Black, Violets are Black, Everything is Black, Touchdown Seahaws.”

Once the lockout ended last September, fans finally went back to the time-honored tradition of calling the referees blind–every other game.

Right-wing pundits blame greedy borrowers, arguing that they took out loans on homes they couldn’t afford, and federal policy, which “required” banks to give loans to unqualified inner city residents in order to counteract years of redlining. But research by the Federal Reserve, and others, shows that such loans were typically home equity loans, given to homeowners in which their home acts as collateral.

Predatory lenders used aggressive marketing tactics to entrap unwary buyers with high fees and interest rates, variable rates, prepayment penalties, and other costly provisions. Lenders also often falsified information to get families to borrow more money than they needed, or could afford to pay back. The Department of Justice recently found that Wells Fargo Bank, for example, targeted black communities with these kinds of “ghetto loans.”

Missing from debates about the roots of the crisis is the role played by housing investors. Sociologist Gregory Squires and urban affairs scholar John Gilderbloom, researching foreclosure activity in Louisville, Kentucky, found that among people who live in the houses they own, race had little to do with foreclosures. Race was, however, a significant predictor of foreclosures of investor-owned properties that were rented out to others—particularly among suburban whites renting out properties in predominantly black inner-city areas.

The foreclosure crisis, in other words, has little to do with the risky behavior of homeowners—or their race.

Measuring Family Ties

The measurement of family relationships, living arrangements, and marital status has a long history at the U.S. Census Bureau. Over time, the census categories have changed to reflect changes in U.S. society and laws that define the institution of marriage and other legal and non-legal relationship statuses. In fact, how the census measures marital status has evolved for more than a century. In 1880, the categories consisted only of single, married and widowed/divorced. By 1890, widowed and divorced each became its own category and in 1950, the category of separated was added. For the relationship item, instructions for enumerating roommates, boarders, and lodgers go back to the nineteenth century. In 1980, the form added a combined partner/roommate category, and in the 1990 Census, the category of unmarried partner was included for the first time.

Recently, challenges in accurately measuring relationships have involved the growing recognition of same-sex couples. Unlike other countries such as Britain and Canada, U.S. laws recognizing same-sex couples vary. At the federal level, there is no legal recognition while state laws range from no legal recognition to full marriage equality. Passage of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996 had ramifications for how federal statistical agencies count same-sex couples. DOMA requires the federal government to define marriage as a legal union exclusively between one man and one woman. Partly in response to DOMA, for Census 2000, an edit procedure was introduced whereby same-sex couples who checked husband or wife were automatically reallocated as unmarried partners.

When the Census Bureau announced in 2008 that the same edit procedure would be used in the 2010 Census, gay advocacy groups took notice. A coalition of many different lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) groups formed a census advocacy campaign known as Our Families Count. Groups lobbied for the Census Bureau to tabulate same-sex couples as they had originally reported on their census forms. In 2009, the Census Bureau announced that, while the Census 2010 tabulations would still reflect the unmarried partner re-edit classification, the agency would produce state-by-state counts of same-sex couples who identified themselves as spouses.

Because the laws governing same-sex marriage are fragmented and constantly evolving, the federal statistical system faces an enormous challenge to accurately reflect today’s increasingly complex relationship configurations. Given that approximately 42 percent of the U.S. population now resides in an area where some form of same-sex couple recognition is legal, statistical agencies must find a way to adapt their current measures.

Asking Questions About The Questions

To understand how gay and lesbian couples think about and report their relationships on official forms, the Census Bureau sponsored a two-part qualitative research project as part of a federal inter-agency task force. Using focus groups, we first explored the nomenclature of the current relationship and marital status questions — how do gay couples interpret them, what terms are used by this subpopulation, and under what circumstances? This enabled us to develop alternative questions that were then evaluated during one-on-one “think-aloud” interviews. This is how the Census Bureau “cognitively tests” the understanding of questions.

Between January and March 2010, investigators conducted a total of 18 focus groups across seven geographically diverse locations ranging from cities like Boston to rural areas in Georgia. Fourteen groups consisted of individuals in same-sex relationships with members recruited according to relationship status (legally married, in a domestic partnership or civil union, or had no legally recognized status). In addition, four groups consisted of persons in opposite-sex relationships who were not legally married. Members of all groups were cohabiting with their partners.

We first asked participants to describe how they usually introduced their “better halves.” This was followed by a request to complete a form containing the 2010 American Community Survey items of name, relationship to householder, gender, age, and date of birth followed by the marital status question (see questionnaire on next page). Moderators then led a discussion of how participants answered the questions and why. Moderators focused on whether answers were predicated on current legal relationship status, existing laws in their states of residence, whether participants interpreted the questions to be asking about a legal status or something else, and what alternative terms or categories they expected to see on the forms.

Listening to People Think

Following the focus groups, we crafted two new versions of the relationship and marital status items. We tested these items using “think-aloud” interview techniques where respondents read questions aloud and verbalize their thought processes as they formulate answers. Forty interviews were conducted in four different cities between March and April 2011. Locales ranged from Washington, D.C. to Charlotte, North Carolina and represented a variety of state laws regarding same-sex partner recognition. Participants were all from cohabiting couples — 15 were straight and the other 25 were gay and lesbian. As in the focus groups, we recruited participants with a wide range of legal statuses ranging from married same-sex couples, same (and opposite-sex) domestic partners, to couples with no legal recognition.

The questionnaire above illustrates the two versions randomly assigned to participants. After completing the randomly-assigned version, participants completed the alternative version followed by a debriefing that also determined which, if any, version they preferred.

We found that gay and straight participants often use the same terms upon introduction. Most often among these were: wife, husband, partner, boyfriend and girlfriend. The term partner was more often ascribed to gay and lesbian relationships (especially by opposite-sex couple groups). We also found that, particularly for gays and lesbians, participants’ use of terms was not static but was conditional upon assessment of the setting. For examples, a gay male from rural Georgia responded, “How would I introduce my partner? It depends on the setting. If it’s this setting, I would say ‘my partner [name].’ If it’s outside, ‘my good friend [name] or ‘uncle.’” So, a “wife” among friends is a “roommate” when the cable repairman comes to the house. Likewise “single” on a flex insurance health plan becomes “married” on a census form.

However, upon probing we found that most participants viewed the census questions through a legal prism, believing it to be measuring state-sanctioned legally recognized relationships. Consequently, most answers aligned with legal couple statuses. Persons in same-sex couples without legal recognition residing in areas that did not recognize gay marriage indicated willingness to select ”unmarried partner” because it was both legally accurate and the word ”partner” was viewed as an adequate descriptor for their relationship. We also found that a legal marriage trumped local laws, at least for participants who had a legal marriage performed somewhere (inside or outside the United States). A lesbian from rural Georgia stated, “Oh, I would check off [wife], absolutely. I don’t care if it would make everybody pissed off, and I really don’t care if it wouldn’t be recognized where I’m at. I don’t care if I was in Antarctica, I would say wife, absolutely.” And a gay male from Ft. Lauderdale commented, “I would still check husband or wife. As far as I’m concerned, I’m legally married, I don’t care what the federal government thinks.”

Encountering Resistance and Confusion

This is not to suggest that all same-sex couples were perfectly happy with the current options, particularly marital status. Participants from same-sex couples who lived in areas where marriage was not allowed and had no legal partnership status viewed the options as “marriage-centric” and without categories to describe their situations. Most marked “never married” and a few marked “divorced.” Gay and lesbian participants who had been divorced from a previous heterosexual marriage felt frustrated that their marital status would be defined by a long-ago relationship unimportant compared to their current relationship.

Likewise, same-sex couples in registered domestic partnerships and civil unions expressed an undercurrent of dissatisfaction because the current options do not allow them to acknowledge the legally recognized component of their union. Overall, many did not feel any of the options adequately reflected their current lives, and felt personally discounted as expressed by comments such as this one, “I can’t answer…this would be blank. I couldn’t answer it because ‘now married‘ would be false in every sense… And ‘never married’ is utterly false to my heart. So I consider this unanswerable. This is one of those forms where no appropriate answer is provided.” Or this one, “If you want accurate information then give me the choice to give you that information. If you’re failing to get that information then the census is not going to be correct to begin with, it’s going to be skewed.”

When presented with the revised questions, respondents were pleased to see the changes that attempted to accommodate their situations: moving unmarried partner to the second response category and disaggregating same-sex and opposite-sex couples. But, we had a concern as to whether there would be sensitivity issues among respondents in opposite-sex couples with the question that disaggregated response categories for same-sex and opposite-sex couples. In particular, we took notice of interviews conducted in Charlotte, North Carolina to gauge this reaction.

One straight white female expressed this view: “This [version] actually might, would offend me a little bit, because I think it’s…I feel like we’re kind of just lowering the standards…[as in] ‘Okay we’ve got to conform to everyone, we want to be politically correct.’ And that just really gets on my nerves, honestly… you know in a different part of the country, you might not be hearing this, but, that’s how I feel about it.” Another straight female stated, “[That version] tries too hard…it’s making a point. [That version means] ‘we’re gonna put it out there…that we’re including everybody’ (emphasis added). But I get that…it’s fine…we’re in America.” However, when pressed directly, neither indicated this opinion would lead them to discard the survey or otherwise not participate. Or, as one put it, “I wouldn’t write my Congressman. I wouldn’t go on Facebook about it…it’s not that deep.” Of course, this is a hypothetical judgment given in the context of a think-aloud interview, so we can only surmise their actual behavior.

The inclusion of the category “In a registered domestic partnership or civil union” in the marital status question revealed a general lack of understanding about the concept among both gay and straight respondents and regardless of legal status. Only a few people said they were unfamiliar with either domestic partnerships or civil unions, but confusion abounded about what they were. One common misunderstanding was equating this concept to gay marriage. “In California you can do a domestic partnership, which is a same-sex marriage.” Another misunderstanding equated it to common-law marriage as in this comment: “It seems like domestic partnership may be you’ve been living together for awhile. I think, legally after five years in North Carolina it’s considered…I can’t think of the term.” Or this one, a civil union is “two people that have lived together for at least seven years.” For these reasons, we recommend a separate question as a means of measuring domestic partnerships/civil unions.

Catching Up to the Future

The social and legal landscape for same-sex couples has changed dramatically since Massachusetts first recognized same-sex marriage. Since then, other states have passed similar legislation as well as civil unions and domestic partnerships for gay and lesbian couples. In this respect, federal agencies have not kept up with the times, and new measures must be constructed to reflect recognition that, in some cases, is intended to confer the same rights and responsibilities as marriage.

In reality, designing a one-size-fits-all federal form when the legal reality of same-sex partner recognition is fragmented poses a challenge for questionnaire designers. However, accurately counting gay and lesbian couples is paramount since legislative bodies, courts, and voters are making decisions that affect the day-to-day lives of this population. Will they receive partner health insurance, Social Security, or pension benefits like their straight couple counterparts? Will they be allowed to adopt children or visit their partners in the hospital?

With the qualitative testing complete, federal agencies should follow best practices and quantitatively test the new questions in an environment that closely resembles a large-scale production survey. Only then can we be certain the data are valid and reliable. Ultimately, the Census Bureau and other statistical agencies must be responsive to social changes so our vital statistics accurately mirror and help support America’s diverse population.

They start off all “slugs and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails”—cute!— but then they hit puberty and become lazy, sexual, carefree, violent, detached, and irresponsible. They become scary. We fear teenage boys, in part because they are in-between—neither children, nor adults—and they seem to be beyond our control.

We’re not only afraid of what they are now, we’re also afraid of what they will become. Boys require special attention in school, many argue, because they’re not performing as well as girls at all levels of schooling. What kind of a world will we have when these underperforming boys become underperforming men? Some, like journalist Hanna Rosin, have already passed judgment and declared “The End of Men.” She finds that women now wear the pants in the American postindustrial, knowledge-based economy. While the trend is in that direction, it is not yet actually the case, as sociologist Philip Cohen has pointed out in the Atlantic Monthly and on his blog, Family Inequality. But facts have a way of getting lost in the face of interesting-sounding arguments, even when they’re not true.

In this Viewpoints, we’ve gathered five experts who’ve spent a great deal of time interviewing and studying teenage boys’ relationships, often with surprising results that debunk conventional wisdom. Niobe Way finds that boys, counter to stereotypes, want and need close friendships, but may avoid shows of intimacy because of pressures not to be “girly” or “gay.” C.J. Pascoe notes how similar pressures lead to bullying behavior. She argues that bullying that appears homophobic is actually targeted at not-masculine-enough boys, and, interestingly, plays an important role in heterosexual boys’ friendships. In contrast to Way and Pascoe, Mark McCormack finds British boys to be emotionally healthy and engaging in deep friendship ties. He attributes these expressions of intimacy to the relatively lower rates of homophobia in Britain, as compared with the United States where similar behavior would earn boys the label of fag. Amy Schalet offers a comparative focus on the sexual and romantic socialization of boys in the United States and the Netherlands. She finds that Dutch culture supports youthful romance and sex as healthy and something to be celebrated, whereas American culture treats sex among teens as inappropriate. Lastly, Freeden Oeur looks at relationships among poor black teenage boys in an all-black high school where black adult administrators consciously cultivate a sense of manhood based on work and fatherhood.

1. Boys as Human, by Niobe Way
2. Homophobia in Boys’ Friendships, by C.J. Pascoe
3. Embracing Intimacy, by Mark McCormack
4. Love Wanting, by Amy Schalet
5. Time to Bloom, by Freeden Oeur

Boys as Human

by Niobe Way

The popular stereotype is that boys are emotionally illiterate and shallow, they don’t want intimate relationships or close friendships. In my research with boys over the past two decades, however, I have discovered that not only are these stereotypes false, they are actively hurting boys and leading them to engage in self destructive behaviors. The African American, Latino, Asian American and white teenage boys in my studies indicate that what they want and need most are close relationships — friendships, in particular — in which they can share their “deep secrets.” These friendships, they tell us, are critical for their mental health. But, according to the boys, they live in a culture that considers such intimacy “girly” and “gay” and thus they are discouraged from having the very relationships that are critical for their wellbeing.

During early and middle adolescence most boys, according to my research, do have close male friendships in which they can share their “deep secrets.” It is only in late adolescence—a time when, according to national data, suicides and violence among boys soar — that boys disconnect from other boys. The boys in my studies begin, in late adolescence, to use the phrase “no homo” when discussing their male friendships, expressing the fear that if they seek out close friendships, they will be perceived as “gay” or “girly.” As a consequence, they pull away from their male peers and experience sadness over the loss of their formerly close friends.

Michael, a participant in one of our studies, told his interviewer that friendships are important because, “if you don’t have friends, you have no one to tell your secrets to. Then it’s like, I always think bad stuff in my brain ‘cause like no one’s helping me and I just need to keep all the secrets to myself.” Asked why friends are important, Danny said to his interviewer, “you need someone to talk to, like you have problems with something, you go talk to him. You know, if you keep it all to yourself, you will go crazy. Try to take it out on someone else.” Kai implicitly concurred in his interview: “without friends you will go crazy or mad or you’ll be lonely all of the time, be depressed…You would go wacko.” Asked by the interviewer why his friends are important, Justin said, “‘cause you need a friend or else, you would be depressed, you won’t be happy, you would try to kill yourself, ‘cause then you’ll be all alone and no one to talk to.” Faced with the prospect of having no close friends, Anthony said to his interviewer, “who you gonna talk to? Might as well be dead or something. I don’t mean to put it in a negative way, but I am just saying—it’s like not a good feeling to be alone.”

Over the past three decades, studies, such as those done by epidemiologists Wilkinson and Pickett, have found that adults without close friendships are more likely to experience poor mental and physical health and live shorter lives than those with close friendships. Despite the growing body of data that underscores the importance of close friendships for everyone, harmful stereotypes that ignore boys’ social and emotional needs and capacities abound. According to the boys themselves, these stereotypes significantly contribute to their isolation, loneliness, and depression. As they get older, boys get stripped of their humanity. They learn that they are not supposed to have hearts, except in relation to a girl, and then it should be a stoic heart and not too vulnerable.

We must allow boys to be boys in the most human sense of the word, nurture their natural emotional and social capacities, and foster their close friendships. We need to make relational and emotionally literacy an inherent part of being human, rather than only a “girl thing” or a “gay thing.” The boys and young men in my studies know that what makes us human is our ability to deeply connect with each other. We must figure out how to help boys and young men strengthen rather than lose these critical life skills. Only then we will be able to address the psychological and sociological roots of this crisis of connection and the negative consequences associated with it.

Homophobia in Boys’ Friendships

by C.J. Pascoe

According to media reports, we are in the midst of a bullying epidemic whose primary victims are gay kids. But young people’s homophobia is more complex than such popular views suggest. Much of it is perpetuated by and directed at straight-identified boys. As the school resource website Teach Safe Schools, documents, 80 percent of those on the receiving end of homophobic epithets identify as heterosexual. While GLBQ youth are certainly harassed in school settings, these homophobic insults also play a complex role in heterosexual boys’ friendships.

Homophobic insults, talk, and jokes — or what I call “fag discourse”— permeates boys’ relationships. Different behaviors or attitudes, such as being too touchy, too emotional, dancing, and caring too much about clothing, can trigger this “fag discourse.” Boys try fervently to escape the label of “fag” by avoiding these behaviors or directing the epithet toward someone else. “Fag” is likely to be the most serious insult one boy can level at another. As Jeremy, a high school junior, remarked, “To call someone gay or fag is like the lowest thing you can call someone. Because that’s like saying that you’re nothing.”

For many boys, calling someone a “fag” does not necessarily mean that they are gay. As J.L., a high school sophomore, explained, “Fag, seriously, it has nothing to do with sexual preference at all. You could just be calling somebody an idiot, you know?” Furthermore young men who engage in fag discourse often simultaneously support the civil rights of actual gay men, and condemn those who would harass them. Jabes, a senior, said, “I actually say fag quite a lot, except for when I’m in the company of an actual homosexual person. Then I try not to say it at all. But when I’m just hanging out with my friends I’ll be like, ‘Shut up, I don’t want to hear you any more you stupid fag.’” Simple homophobia is too crude a concept for characterizing what is going here, because these insults seem to coexist with rising support for gay rights.

If these epithets are simultaneously reducing boys to “nothing,” and are not necessarily about homosexuality, what are these boys talking about? The answer lies in high school senior David’s statement: “Being gay is just a lifestyle. It’s someone you choose to sleep with. You can still throw a football around and be gay.” In other words, a gay man can still be masculine. What boys are doing as they lob these epithets is reminding one other that to be acceptably masculine is to be dominant, powerful, and unemotional. Violating those expectations can trigger a round of “fag discourse.”

Thus, homophobia in boys’ friendships is not only about some global fear of same-sex desire (though certainly, for all of the protestations about equality, fear, disgust, or loathing of same-sex desire between men still exists), it is also a way in which boys define themselves and others as masculine. When we call these interactions between boys homophobic bullying and ignore the messages about masculinity in these insults, we risk divorcing these interactions from the way they perpetuate restrictive and sexist definitions of manhood. We also fail to appreciate how boys carve out moments of intimacy, and that complexity, beauty and complicated ideas about masculinity lay at the heart of many of their friendships.

Embracing Intimacy

by Mark McCormack

When we think of boys’ friendships, we tend to think of rough and tumble physical energy. But research conducted over the past three decades warns that rough and tumble play often leads to aggression and violence, and that shallow friendships have resulted in boys being emotionally stunted. Another pernicious element of boys’ friendships has been virulent homophobia. Given the cultural conflation of masculinity with heterosexuality, where acting feminine is perceived as being gay, boys go to great lengths to act “manly” and avoid homosexual suspicion. Homophobia prevents boys from expressing emotion, and makes them keep considerable physical distance from each other.

In the three government-run schools I studied, heterosexual male students — aged 16 to 18 — espoused pro-gay attitudes and condemned homophobia. They often had openly gay friends; some criticized their schools for their lack of openly gay role models. This inclusive culture has led teenage boys to redefine masculinity; as a result, their understanding of friendship is quite different than what one might expect.

The male students at these schools were proud of their close friendships and frequently demonstrated that publicly. For example, Jack had been away for the weekend and upon seeing his best friend Tim, he shouted, “Timmo, where were you all weekend, I missed ya!”, and exuberantly kissed Tim on the top of his head. Then they talked about their weekend in a style best described as gossiping.

More frequent than this kind of boisterous demonstration of friendship, though, were the touching behaviors that occurred during quiet conversations. Here, boys used physical touch as a sign of friendship. Ben and Eli, for example, stood in a corner of the common room, casually holding hands as they spoke, their fingers gently touching one another. Halfway through the exchange, Ben changed his embrace, placing an arm around Eli’s waist and a hand on his stomach. This kind of behavior was commonplace among the majority of boys; hugging was a routine form of greeting in these schools.

The boys also valued emotional support. Tim said, “I talk to my best friends about everything, if I’ve got girlfriend trouble, or when I’m upset or stressed. It’s really important for me to be able to do that.” Boys also openly recognized the closeness of their friendships, sometimes addressing each other as “boyfriend” or “lover” as a way of demonstrating emotional intimacy. Phil said, “Yeah, I call him boyfriend and stuff, but that’s just a way of saying he’s my best mate.” Similarly, Dave commented, “I’ll sometimes call my best mates ‘lover’ or something similar. It’s just a way of saying, ‘I love you,’ really.”

The friendships and social dynamics of the boys from my research are also evident in popular culture. Youth TV shows in the UK, such as Skins and Hollyoaks, show similar displays of physical and emotional intimacy between boys, and the latest boy band sensation, One Direction, models this new youth masculinity. While there are variations according to class, ethnicity, geography and other factors, the friendships I documented signify that a profound social change is occurring. Teenage boys are embracing once feminized traits of emotional openness and physical intimacy, rejecting the homophobia and violence that once characterized male friendship. This is directly related to a decline in homophobia, and boys no longer caring if they are socially perceived as gay. This has enabled them to redefine masculinity and friendship for their generation. It is something we should celebrate.

Love Wanting

by Amy Schalet

Michael, a high-school senior, is not a fan of commitment. His ideal is “more than one girl, basically.” Proud of his own sexual experience, he’s excited that his current girlfriend is a virgin: “It’s cool to be the first one…it probably feels better too.”

Tall, athletic and a “little rowdy,” Michael would appear to epitomize the American teenage male.

Except that he doesn’t. In my research on attitudes and experiences of sex and romance among high-school aged white middle-class American and Dutch boys, I found most American boys, like Dutch boys, want more than just sex; they want meaningful intimate relationships.

Boys in the United States and the Netherlands face very different cultural environments in which to make sense of their romantic feelings. For Dutch boys, falling in love is normal— something everyone experiences while growing up. In the Netherlands, the notion that everyone falls in love is so taken for granted that in a 2005 national survey on youth and sex, researchers thought nothing of asking boys, ages 12 to 14, whether they’d been in love — finding that 90 percent said yes.

But in the United States, even if most boys do want romantic relationships, their romantic stirrings are culturally coded as feminine. Boys are seen as motivated by “raging hormones,” not by a desire for intimacy. As one American father puts it, “teenage boys want to get laid at all times at any cost.”

The popular stereotype of boys as acting only from hormones eclipses their desire for emotional intimacy as a normal part of maturation and masculinity. When boys do want or feel love, they think they’re alone. Sixteen-year-old Jesse says his first priority in life is being in love with his girlfriend and “giving her everything I can.” But he imagines these feelings make him very different from “most teenage boys” who “are pretty much in it for the sex.”

To counteract stereotypes about them, American boys sometimes distance themselves not only from other boys, but also from their own sexual desires. Patrick, for instance, says, “if you really care about someone, you don’t really care if you have sex or not,” echoing a theme from American sex education curricula that teach youth to separate love from lust.

Unlike American culture and sex education, Dutch sex education curricula, with titles like “Long Live Love,” encourage boys to view love and lust as intertwined. The Dutch boys I interviewed readily acknowledged being interested in sex, but they also connected physical pleasure closely to emotions and relationships. About the excitement he felt going through puberty, Gert-Jan says: “It also has to do with having feelings for someone…You’re really in love.”

It’s not just in school that cultures diverge, it’s also at home. American boys are typically taught to view their sexuality as something symbolizing and threatening their freedom—for instance with an unintended pregnancy. While boys may receive tacit approval to pursue sexual interests away from home, most parents draw firm boundaries between the family and the exploration of sexuality, and rarely permit high-school aged boys to spend the night with their romantic partners at home.

Dutch culture, by contrast, places a premium on “gezelligheid” or “cozy togetherness,” which validates their enjoyment of platonic and sexual relationships. In the Netherlands, teen boys and girls are typically allowed to have sleepovers in their parents’ house. This interweaving of sexuality and domestic life teaches boys that physical pleasure and emotional intimacy— familial and romantic — are not at odds. As eighteen-year-old Ben says about his girlfriend sleeping over in his room, “if my mother thinks it’s gezellig, then why not?”

Still, Dutch masculinity does constrain boys in some familiar respects. For instance, national surveys of youth show that Dutch boys face, and engage in, more strictures against same-sex sexual behavior than do Dutch girls. But Dutch boys receive more support at school and home to integrate different aspects of themselves that American boys are often encouraged to separate — love, lust, participation in family life and sexual exploration.

Much of the debate around teenagers and sexuality in the United States focuses on what we should teach them about their bodies. Access to accurate information about anatomy, pleasure, and contraception — the usual hot-button topics — is critical. But just as important are the conversations about intimacy and emotions, and the question of how we can define and model manhood so those on its cusp might feel more empowered and equipped to love.

Time to Bloom

by Freeden Oeur

In the United States today, single-sex classrooms and schools are increasingly making their way into public schools. Nationally, about 560 K-12 public schools offer some single-sex academic classrooms, and about 80 more are entirely separated by sex.

Perry administrators believe that a school where black men care for black boys can be empowering. At Perry High, some of the boys assumed that being “put with other boys,” as seventh grader Lenny told me, meant they were in trouble. Mass incarceration of African Americans led these boys to fear all-male institutions — prisons, along with the city’s disciplinary schools, where boys who commit major offenses are sent. Administrators and teachers focused on earning the trust of their students, and on strengthening relationships among men and boys.

A common stereotype of young black men is that they resist authority. But at Perry High, many boys were open to having close relationships with men, especially if the men first opened up to them. The boys believed they needed those relationships in order to thrive in school. Referring to the adults in the building, Dante, a 12th grader, told me: “We need you. You don’t need us.” The youngest boys, from 12 to 14 years old, particularly doted on male teachers, shadowing them throughout the building and sticking around after school just to hang out. Groups of young boys were eager to connect with teachers who were willing to teach them a new hobby like playing the guitar, or spoken word poetry.

Mr. Westbrook, an administrator, remarked, “I see a lot of kids, especially the younger kids, who really cling onto certain adults for attention, and you become that surrogate father that so many of them are looking for.” Male staff members used this as an opportunity to share visions of responsible adulthood. Gerald, an eighth grader, observed that what it meant to be a man was “to have a job and to be able to do important stuff like taking care of a family.”

To instill a sense of responsible adulthood, a new mentoring program matched male adult professionals in the community with ninth graders. The organizers targeted this group because of the high dropout rates among black boys after ninth grade. At a meeting of mentors and mentees, Raymond spoke eloquently about how the program had impacted him and his peers. Usually when male visitors came to the school, they aggressively relayed the message that the boys should avoid heading down a “dead-end street,” he said. But Raymond appreciated that the mentors were not trying to scare the boys. Instead, they helped the boys to create positive visions of themselves: going to college or vocational school, contributing to the community instead of being a threat to it. Speaking directly to the male mentors in the room, he asked for their continued guidance and patience. “We’re still learning how to be men and we need your help,” he said. “Give us some time to bloom.”

The mix of boys, encompassing six grades, meant that younger and older boys had opportunities to interact that they may not have had outside of school. The older boys felt the need to respond to seventh and eighth graders who were aching for male guidance. The younger boys tried to “play off,” or imitate, older boys. Just as they did with male teachers, groups of young boys followed boys much older than them around the school. The older students took the younger students under their wing, looking after them as though they were their own siblings.

At this unique all-boys public school, rather than forge relationships of fear, older boys and men took responsibility for and invested in the lives of the younger boys. In this environment, young black boys are able to envision themselves, in turn, as responsible men who will one day hold steady jobs and care for boys who need them. Should more of these single-sex schools open, we’re likely to find that it’s for reasons that go beyond that of gender equity, reasons such as the opportunity to foster caring, mentoring relationships.

Few kids his age know the names and shapes of weapons circulating in the neighborhood, but Jonathan (a pseudonym) can easily distinguish between a 45mm, 9mm, and a 22mm. When his uncle “goes out and steals around” at a nearby shantytown, Jonathan is often his lookout. At school, he spends his days listening to music on his cell phone, horsing around, and drawing; weapons are among his favorite subjects. At the end of the year, he will receive his elementary school diploma — despite the fact that his reading and writing skills are only at a fourth grade level.

Jonathan lives with his four brothers and his mother in a makeshift house with exposed brick walls and tin roofing, where he shares a small bedroom with his brothers. His house is located 20 blocks from the school in one of the most destitute areas of Ingeniero Budge, a low-income neighborhood in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area. Teresa, Jonathan’s mother, commutes an hour and and a half each way to work downtown, six days a week. She leaves the house before Jonathan wakes up for school in the morning, returning around nine o’clock at night, shortly before Jonathan goes to bed. Her salary as a maid, plus a meager sum provided by the state, is barely enough to make ends meet.

Children’s drawings of what they like (“me gusta”) and do not like (“no me gusta”) about their neighborhood.
Courtesy of Javier Auyero.

“She cooks for him, she does the laundry for him, and he’s a bum,” says a neighbor. “He says that he works as a cab driver, but he does nothing.” One day Teresa ran him out of the house with a big knife. “It’s better if he doesn’t come back,” says Jonathan.

When Jonathan’s turbulent world enters the schoolroom, his teacher is often forced to deescalate tensions between him and his peers. He has been known to threaten his classmates with the threat, “I’ll shoot at you,” or “I’ll shoot in the head,” pointing an imaginary gun at them. His uncle was recently murdered, and he believes a similar fate awaits him. One day, as his teacher ended class, he bragged out loud: “Miss, one day you’ll see me on TV. I’ll rob a bank and they will shoot at me. The police will kill me.”

An elementary school student’s depiction of a young thief carrying a 22-mm gun.
Courtesy of Javier Auyero.

The daily violence that takes place in favelas, villas, barrios, and comunas — what sociologist Loïc Wacquant calls “territories of urban relegation” (urban areas characterized by multiple forms of deprivation) have been well documented. However, we know little about the ways violence is experienced by the children, adolescents, and young adults who are most affected by it, both as victims and as perpetrators. In the United States, the harmful psychological impact of chronic exposure to violence on children and adolescents is well known. Most experts agree that such exposure can have serious developmental consequences, such as anxiety, depression, impaired intellectual development, and behavioral problems. But others contend that children who constantly witness or experience different forms of interpersonal aggression become desensitized to it.

For two and a half years, I have been conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Ingeniero Budge to understand what happens when children and adolescents encounter violence as victims or witnesses. (Fernanda Berti, my collaborator works as an elementary school teacher in the neighborhood.) What we have found is that though they experience violence on a daily basis, young people remain highly sensitized to it.

Growing Up With Violence

Ingeniero Budge (pop. 170,000) sits in the southern region of metropolitan Buenos Aires, in the municipality of Lomas de Zamora. Located adjacent to the banks of the highly polluted Riachuelo River, this poverty-stricken area, like many informal settlements in Latin America, is characterized by extreme levels of infrastructural deprivation: unpaved streets, open-air sewers, random garbage collection, polluted drinking water, and poor lighting.

In Ingeniero Budge, evidence of deprivation is everywhere.
Courtesy of Javier Auyero.

During more than two years of fieldwork with third, fourth, and sixth graders, aged 8 to 13, shoot-outs, armed robberies, and street fights were routine topics of conversation. Hardly a week went by without one or more of the 60 children describing episodes involving violence. Trivial occasions inside the classroom, such as the mention of a relative’s birthday, often became opportunities to talk about the latest violent episode in the neighborhood. One day Marita, age nine, asked Fernanda if she knew Naria’s father. When she told her that didn’t, Marita replied, “He is in heaven. He was shot in the head.”

Eleven-year-old Estrella spoke about how her neighbor Carlitos had just turned 17. A friend came to pick him up to hang out in the neighborhood, she said. Carlitos didn’t want to go, because it was his birthday. But his friend persuaded him, and off they went. Estrella said she thinks they were armed. Carlitos was killed. After he died, his friends carried him in a procession around the block. “I went to the funeral. His eyes were still open,” said Estrella, describing how “the bullet came into his chest, and made a tiny little hole there.” The bullet went out through his back, she said. “The hole there was huge.”

Encounters with violence also pervade classroom activities. In an in-class exercise, students were asked to depict the positive and negative aspects of their neighborhood. A third-grade student portrayed his barrio as defined by “se tiran tiro” (“they shoot at each other”) and the lone presence of a police car. A year later, two fourth graders and two sixth graders depicted their neighborhood in similar terms. Most of them say they like playing soccer, and dislike “the gunshots” and “the fights.” They see themselves, many of the drawings suggest, as growing up in the crossfire.

Sixth-grade students discuss a series of short stories about “urban legends” that include ghosts, monsters, and other frightening creatures. “So…what are you all afraid of?” Fernanda asks the class. Usually reticent to speak up, the students grab the opportunity to talk about what really matters to them. The question sparks an hour-long conversation about their fears. They say that they are terrified of certain noises. Out of the seven sounds they ask the teacher to write on the blackboard, five concern crime and inter-personal violence: Steps on the roof. Rats. Shots. Screams when someone is robbed. A pistol’s trigger and barrel. Storms. One says: “When cars are stolen, they burn them and they explode.”

Shoot-outs, fights, injuries (“Does your dad have a bullet scar on the leg? My dad has two, but they have already healed”), and deaths are an ordinary presence in children’s and adolescents’ lives (“Every night, they shoot at each other… it’s hard to sleep”). Violence permeates their talk about past and future events, and is part of their everyday worlds.

“They Beat His Face To A Pulp”

“The King of Spain was deposed by Napoleon Bonaparte, and was jailed in France,” Fernanda reads out loud from the social science textbook. “Teacher, teacher,” Carlos, age nine, interrupts, “my uncle is also in jail. I think he is in for robbery.” Another student, Matu, also nine, adds: “Right around my house, there’s one guy who is a thief, but never went to jail… he has a new car.” Suddenly, a lesson on the May Revolution becomes a collective report on the latest events in the neighborhood. Ten-year-old Johnny asks: “Do you know that Savalita was killed? Seven shots.” Some dealers, he says, “wanted to steal his motorcycle.” Tatiana, age nine, corrects him: “No, it wasn’t like that. Savalita was the one who wanted the motorcycle. He tried to steal it from a drug dealer. Word, I knew him!”

This young man was killed when he tried to rob a local store outside of Buenos Aires.
Photo by Agustín Burbano de Lara V.

One day, the mother of Julio, age eight, called the school to talk to her son. Julio told the teacher, “My dad had been drinking and he beat the shit out of her. My dad is a slacker, he doesn’t have a job. My mom gives him money and he spends it on wine. On Saturday, my mom asked him to turn the music down and he slapped her in the face, and then he grabbed her hair and dragged her through the house. He also destroyed everything in the house.” When Julio’s mother came to school, she confirmed this and asked the teacher to observe Julio to make sure his dad was not beating him. She also asked her son, Julio, to take good care of his sister because she was afraid her dad will sexually abuse her.

Girls in the neighborhood are more likely than boys to endure sexual violence, reflecting larger patterns. Referring to the presence of “violines” (those who violan, or rapists), Noelia, age nine, tells the teacher that her cousin was “almost raped yesterday” a few blocks away from school, and that neighbors went to the home of the suspected rapist and “kicked their door down.” “What are ‘violins’?” Fernanda innocently asked the class. “Those who make you babies,” eight-year-old Josiana answered matter-of-factly.

Sexual assault is sometimes followed by vigilante violence. For example, Mabel explains the origins of the bullet that is lodged in the leg of her 10-year-old daughter, Melanie. “That son of a bitch wanted to rape her,” she said. “We have a big family, so we had asked a neighbor to roast some meat for us,” she said. “This is a neighbor I’ve known all my life. My brother-in-law brought home some of the food, but some was missing so I sent Melanie and my niece to pick it up.” When they got to the neighbor’s house, he was drunk and had a knife in his hand. He wanted to rape them.

“He told Melanie and my niece that if they didn’t suck his dick, he was going to kill one, and then rape and kill the other one.” Luckily, they were able to push him aside, perhaps because he was drunk, and they escaped. They ran home and told their relatives what had just happened. Mabel’s husband, brothers-in-law, brother and some other neighbors went to the threatening neighbor’s house and “beat the shit out of him (lo recagaron a palos),” she said. “They beat his face to a pulp, he was full of blood. They left him there, lying on the floor, and came back home.” After dinner, around midnight, Mabel recalled, he came to their house, and shot at Melanie. “Luckily, the bullet hit her in the leg. All the men in my house went back to his house and beat the shit out of him again.” Fortunately, Melanie was never raped.

Over the course of our fieldwork, we heard dozens of stories of the rape, or attempted rape, of girls by acquaintances or family members. In most cases, the rapists were uncles or step-fathers. The students report these stories, as do their mothers. In individual interviews, mothers articulate their fears: “I can’t let her go alone. What if they rape her? It’s frightening.” Despite this very real threat, few trust the police to address such cases. They believe they are too slow to react to sexual violence. Some say “the police always come late, to collect the body if someone was killed, or to stitch you up if you were raped.” Others say the police are complicit, and rumors of what one neighbor calls “the blowjob police,” cops who demand sexual favors from neighborhood adolescents, run rampant.

Habituating to Violence

Victor told Fernanda that a little kid was killed close to his home the day before: “They were a band of thugs (chorros), or maybe dealers (transas),” he said. Estrella interrupted, saying that she heard the shooting. Minutes before it happened, she was hanging out on the sidewalk. When the teacher urged them to be careful, Victor and Estrella replied in unison: “We are used to it.”

The recurring incidence of different types of violence makes the neighborhood a hostile, dangerous place for children and adolescents. But are they habituated to the violence that engulfs their homes, streets, and schools?

If by habituation, or desensitization, we mean that children and adolescents are less likely to become aware of incidents of violence, then our research, which shows that children talk almost compulsively about the latest shoot-out, murder, or sexual assault, proves that they are far from habituated. They expressed fears that show they are highly sensitive to the violence that envelops their neighborhood. However, if by habituation we simply mean familiarization — as in “we are used to it,” then we should take these children’s words at face value. Violence has become a normal presence in their lives.

The accumulation of what community psychologists call “stressors” wreaks havoc on children. As anthropologist Jill Korbin so aptly puts it: “Children can sustain broken bones with no lasting-effects. They cannot easily recover from broken spirits, when their bones are broken purposively out of malevolence or disregard.” Exposure to chronic community violence also contributes to the learning of aggression. For example, children and adolescents may learn things such as how to use weapons such as a knife or a gun, or their bare hands, to stop or initiate a physical attack, where and how to acquire a gun, and how to distinguish between their different calibers.

Understanding and explaining the violence that puts residents of poor urban areas in harm’s way requires objective measures like counting bodies and injuries. But we also need to understand how constant exposure to violence shapes individuals’ lives and worldviews. That means listening to those who suffer most — such as the children and adolescents who live in places like Ingeniero Budge.

Recommended Resources

Alarcón, Cristian. Cuando Me Muera Quiero Que Me Toquen Cumbia: Vidas de Pibes Chorros (Norma, 1999). A wonderfully written non-fiction narrative on daily violence in poor neighborhoods in Buenos Aires.

Friday, Jennifer. “The Psychological Impact of Violence in Under-served Communities,” Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved (1995), 6(4):403-409. A comprehensive review of the effects of chronic exposure to violence.

Guerra, Nancy, Rowell Huesmann, and Anja Spindler. “Community Violence Exposure, Social Cognition and Aggression Among Urban Elementary School Children,” Child Development (2003), 74(5):1561-1576. An article documenting the harmful impacts of repeated exposure to community violence on children’s schemas of perception and appreciation.

Imbusch, Peter, Michel Misse, and Fernando Carrión. “Violence Research in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Literature Review,” International Journal of Conflict and Violence (2011), 5(1):87-154. A recent, thorough review of diverse forms of violence in contemporary Latin America.

Korbin, Jill. “Children, Childhoods, and Violence,” Annual Review of Anthropology (2003), 32:431-46. A review of different types of violence to which children around the world are subjected.

Rodgers, Dennis, Jo Beall, and Ravi Kanbur (eds.). Latin American Urban Development into the 21st Century: Towards a Renewed Perspective on the City (Palgrave, 2013). A book on past, present, and future urban research agendas in Latin America.

Its narrow streets are lined with the hemlock forests that cover much of the state. Its residents are neither poor nor rich, and if it once had the raw and rustic aesthetic that Andrew Wyeth depicted in his famous paintings of the Maine countryside, it has since transitioned to the convenience of vinyl siding and blacktop driveways. In almost every way, Buxton is rural America. So it comes as quite a surprise that one of its many gable-roofed homes houses Watt Samaki, Maine’s one and only Cambodian Buddhist temple.

On a visit to the temple, I found Bak Him, an aging monk, digging a giant hole in the wooded area of the temple’s backyard. Never breaking from his work, Bak greeted me with a smile, then explained, in broken English, what he was doing. Move rock stones, dig pond, and parking were a few of the words I was able to make out. Saying little more, Bak continued to work using only his hands, a shovel, and a wheelbarrow to lift and pile stones that weighed several hundred pounds. After several hours, Bak’s pace began to slow. As sweat began to drip from his nose on a frosty October evening, he grinned at me and glanced towards my car. It was time for me to go.

Fleeing the Khmer Rouge, Bak Him escaped first to Thailand and the Philippines, and then arrived in the United States in 1986. For twenty years he lived with his family in Portland, Maine, spending much of his time volunteering in the community’s public garden. I met Bak in 2006, shortly after he’d become a monk and moved to the temple in Buxton. He had left his wife and the comforts of their family home in order to serve his community at the late age of 72.

I learned that Bak’s physical toil was part of his fellow Cambodians’ long and persistent efforts to integrate into the life of Buxton. At a recent town hall meeting, the Cambodian community had been ordered to construct a sizeable parking lot for their temple and a runoff pond for environmental purposes. Failure to comply would make subsequent gatherings illegal and subject the community to steep fines. In fact, the Cambodian community had been struggling for decades to establish a temple in the forest, like those of their homeland. Local Buxton residents—complaining about noise, parking, buildings codes and so on—had successfully petitioned to keep them out, forcing the community, for many years, to meet in a makeshift temple located in a small home in Portland. Exercising great patience, members of the Cambodian community remained confident that resistance would subside once Buxton residents became more familiar with Buddhism. Finally in 2008, the Buxton Planning Board approved the temple’s revised plans.

While distant policymakers may develop refugee policies, the conditions for successful integration are forged at the local level. The social cohesion that both refugees and locals seek comes only with the development of empathic relationships. Successful integration may be facilitated by an elderly Buddhist monk’s willingness to spend his days unearthing heavy stones, but it also requires host communities to keep their minds open and their hearts compassionate. This photographic portrait of Bak Him’s quiet labor in the woods of Maine is a call for mutual cooperation as the way forward in our increasingly connected world.

Photo by Maïté Abram

Three members of the band, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alvokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, were subsequently arrested, charged with hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, and held in custody until they were sentenced to two years in prison. In October, the court released Samutsevich. “We won’t stay silent,” vowed Tolokonnikova and Alvokhina.

By sparking international outrage and eliciting support from human rights groups and heads of state, Pussy Riot did exactly what many punk bands have done—sparked protest.

Sociologists Ryan Moore and Michael Roberts, in a 2009 article in Mobilization, “Do-It-Yourself Mobilization: Punk and Social Movements,” described punk music as a potent medium of protest. In 1976, punk bands participated in “Rock Against Racism,” a campaign that steered British youth away from white nationalist groups. The 1980s saw hardcore bands like Minor Threat and Fire Party organize protests against the Reagan administration’s foreign policy agenda and apartheid. Since the 1990s, bands such as Los Crudos and Limp Wrist have bridged punk and activist communities.

Pussy Riot models themselves after 1990s feminist punk movement Riot Grrrl, finding inspiration in its impudence, politically charged lyrics, and outspoken feminism. Writer Sara Marcus, in a 2010 book, Girls to the Front, sees Riot Grrrl as a prophetic feminist movement that urged young women to confront sexism when they saw it. But Marcus laments that since the demise of Riot Grrrl, no movement has confronted sexism as powerfully.

That’s why Kathleen Hanna, formerly of the band Bikini Kill, is encouraged by the work of Pussy Riot. “It would be really cool,” says Hanna, “if it reinvigorated feminists from all over the world.”

But which achievement gap are they talking about today?

A 2011 study by sociologist Sean F. Reardon suggests that while the racial achievement gap has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the income-based achievement gap is now double its size. In many states, proficiency gaps of 25 points or more separate students from lowincome families and others.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB), introduced in 2001, tries to close achievement gaps among traditionally disadvantaged groups by creating a system of sanctions for schools failing to make adequate yearly progress on standardized tests. Despite these efforts, in 2009 U.S. students ranked 14th in literacy, 25th in math, and 17th in science in the Programme for International Student Assessment, giving fuel to President Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top” initiative and ongoing reforms to NCLB.

In a recent book, education researchers Thomas B. Timar and Julie Maxwell-Jolly offer strategies for alleviating achievement gaps: improving school and teacher quality, adopting evidence-based instructional strategies, and partnering with families and communities (Narrowing the Achievement Gap: Perspectives and Strategies for Challenging Times, 2012). But as patterns of inequality change, what the achievement gap actually measures is bound to be a subject of debate, as is the question of whether test scores are the most meaningful educational outcome social scientists can measure.