The Neighborhood Has Its Own Rules: Latinos and African Americans in South Los Angeles

The Neighborhood Has Its Own Rules: Latinos and African Americans in South Los Angeles

by Cid Martinez
The Neighborhood Has Its Own Rules: Latinos and African Americans in South Los Angeles

The Neighborhood Has Its Own Rules: Latinos and African Americans in South Los Angeles

by Cid Martinez

eBook

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Overview

South Los Angeles is often seen as ground zero for inter-racial conflict and violence in the United States. Since the 1940s, South LA has been predominantly a low-income African American neighborhood, and yet since the early 1990s Latino immigrants—mostly from Mexico and many undocumented—have moved in record numbers to the area. Given that more than a quarter million people live in South LA and that poverty rates exceed 30 percent, inter-racial conflict and violence surprises no one. The real question is: why hasn't there been more? Through vivid stories and interviews, The Neighborhood Has Its Own Rules provides an answer to this question.
Based on in-depth ethnographic field work collected when the author, Cid Martinez, lived and worked in schools in South Central, this study reveals the day-to-day ways in which vibrant social institutions in South LA— its churches, its local politicians, and even its gangs—have reduced conflict and kept violence to a level that is manageable for its residents. Martinez argues that inter-racial conflict has not been managed through any coalition between different groups, but rather that these institutions have allowed established African Americans and newcomer Latinos to co-exist through avoidance—an under-appreciated strategy for managing conflict that plays a crucial role in America's low-income communities. Ultimately, this book proposes a different understanding of how neighborhood institutions are able to mitigate conflict and violence through several community dimensions of informal social controls.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780814762769
Publisher: New York University Press
Publication date: 07/19/2016
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 272
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Cid Martinez is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of San Diego. He is the author of The Neighborhood Has Its Own Rules: Latinos and African Americans in South Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Managed Violence 1

1 Neighborhood Councils: City Hall Competes with the Street for Legitimacy 21

2 Alternative Governance: Latino and African American Interrelations outside of City Hall 53

3 Neighborhood Institutions: Safety from Violence, and the Catholic Church 87

4 Faith Is the Opposite of Fear: The Catholic Church as Alternative Governance 117

5 Street Justice: Gangs, the Informal Economy, and Neighborhood Residents 145

6 Responding to Violence, Keeping the Peace: Interracial Relations between Black and Latino Youth Gangs (co-authored with Dominic Rivera) 173

Conclusion: Revisiting Alternative Governance 219

Notes 239

References 241

Index 245

About the Author 257

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