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Chapter 7 - Settling the Score in a Zero-Sum Game

Understanding Revenge among Urban Male Youth Overexposed to Gun Violence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2021

By
Deanna L. Wilkinson
Edited by
Holly Recchia  and
Cecilia Wainryb
Holly Recchia
Affiliation:
Concordia University, Montréal
Cecilia Wainryb
Affiliation:
University of Utah
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Summary

Adolescent development is strained by exposure to community violence, especially when shootings and killings happen in public spaces such as the street or popular locations where young people hangout. This chapter examines revenge violence from a situational-transactional framework by focusing on accounts of marginalized urban youth overly exposed to gun violence. Revenge-sparked events are linked to a prior negative interaction. The aftermath of the prior incident can proceed in somewhat predictable ways with participants assessing damage, stewing about the conflict, planning revenge, casting co-offenders, brewing on the issue until the right opportunity comes up, and initiating the revenge incident. Four main themes emerge to illustrate how scripts favorable to seeking revenge or anticipating revenge are internalized by young men living in unsafe urban neighborhoods. Insights about the transactional dynamic of retaliatory violence should be used in formulating holistic community-based solutions, individual-level outreach interventions, and practitioner efforts to reduce urban violence.

Keywords

Revengeyouth violencevictimizationgroup safetysituational-transactional dynamicsconflict resolutionquantity of lawecology of dangerqualitative methods
Type
Chapter
Information
Revenge across Childhood and Adolescence , pp. 161 - 186
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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