Chris Richardson - Habitus of the Hood

Habitus of the Hood

Edited by Chris Richardson and Hans A. Skott-Myhre

intellect Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA

First published in the UK in 2012 by

Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK

First published in the USA in 2012 by

Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA

Copyright 2012 Intellect Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover designer: Holly Rose

Copy-editor: MPS Ltd

Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. Yorkshire

Production manager: Tim Mitchell

ISBN 978-1-84150-479-7/EISBN 978-1-84150-690-6

Printed and bound by Hobbs, UK.

Chris Richardson and Hans A. Skott-Myhre

Chris Richardson and Hans A. Skott-Myhre

Hans A. Skott-Myhre

Stephen L. Muzzatti

Erin Morton and Sarah E.K. Smith

Sarah Baker, Andy Bennett, and Patricia Wise

Chapter 6: Habitus and Rethinking the Discourse of Youth Gangs, Crime, Violence,
and Ghetto Communities

Tamari Kitossa

Pamela Hollander and Justin Hollander

Donna J. Nicol and Jennifer A. Yee

Chris Richardson and Hans A. Skott-Myhre

Chris Richardson

Thomas R. Britt

Katie Sciurba

Andrew deWaard

Nicola Mann

David Drissel

Introduction

Chris Richardson and Hans A. Skott-Myhre

T he hood embodies both the utopian and dystopian aspects of low-income urban areas. It represents an awareness of community, an enclosed space in which residents are united in their daily struggles. It also signifies an isolated, marginalized, and often-criminalized space that appears frequently in popular media representations, legal discourses, and public discussions. The popularity of the word hood, here slang for neighborhood, is generally associated with the emergence of hip-hop culture in the 1980s. The word also became highly visible after a series of hood films were produced in the early 1990s. The most popular of these films were John Singletons Boyz N the Hood (1991), Ernest Dickersons Juice (1992), and the Hughes brothers Menace II Society (1993). Today, however, the hood signifies much more than the young, predominantly black subculture in North America from which it originated. The chapters in this collection demonstrate that the hood has now expanded to Europe, Australasia, and many spaces in between, incorporating a plurality of ethnicities and subcultures as global capital and new media technologies collapse previous notions of time and space.

The concept of the hood can be both liberating and limiting. Residents associate certain life possibilities with their surroundings, which they internalize and act upon. This conception has both real and symbolic consequences for individuals inside as well as outside the hood. It pushes people in certain directions and creates values, practices, and judgments that are often shared within similar communities. As the saying goes, you can take me out of the hood but you cant take the hood out of me. This internalizing of ones environment, its implications, and its representations, are what we seek to interrogate in the following chapters.

We argue that Bourdieus (2007 [1977]) notion of habitus, a system of durable, transposable dispositions that form principles which generate and organize practices and representations (p. 72), is a valuable theoretical tool for analyzing the hood. While the term habitus, a Latin word meaning habitude, mode of life, or general appearance, may be as old as the ancient philosophers, we use the term as promoted by Bourdieu, particularly in Outline of a Theory of Practice (2007). In this book, we also expand Bourdieus concept through a reading of Robin Coopers (2005) dwelling place, which she explains as a kind of knowing ones way about... [that] implies a freedom to move in some domain or other, which is more akin to sure-footedness (p. 304). In addition, Cornel West (1999a) provides a useful distinction between hood and neighborhood, which he argues represents the difference between extreme individualism and collective identity. Finally, we approach the hood as a concept la Deleuze and Guattari (1994), as a space that is perpetually becoming, a space constituted by revolutions and societies of friends, societies of resistance; because to create is to resist; pure becomings, pure events on a plane of immanence (p. 110).

This collection explores how the hood is conceived within the lived experiences of residents and within mediated representations in popular culture.). As Hagedorn (2007) argues, the elements of crime that were once considered part of the twentieth-century North American hood now inhabit the global city. In other words, confining the hood to cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles is no longer accurate. One telling example of this change is evident in Wacquants (2008) introduction to his recent study of urban marginality. He begins by pointing out the similarities and differences between what can roughly translate as the global hood the American ghetto, the French banlieue, the Italian quartieri periferici, the Swedish problemomrade, the Brazilian favela, and the Argentinian villa miseria. Evidently, while the hood may continue to hold distinctly American connotations, there is something in virtually every country on the globe that knows marginality, poverty, and stigma. We intend to address this expanded definition of the hood through our exploration of the hood as habitus.

Before turning to these studies, we would first like to explore what is at stake. How is the hood related to Bourdieus concept of habitus? Is there a clear difference between neighborhood and hood? Is the hood a spectacle or a dwelling place? In the following chapters, we reflect upon what these questions imply, how we might negotiate them, and the importance of such intellectual work. At a time when inquiries such as these can very easily be pushed aside by more prestigious or empirical work (often by individuals and institutions with no connection to hoods in their communities and who remain dismissive of such research tout court), this exploration is incredibly important. The publication of this book broadens the intellectual scope of previous arguments in the fields of cultural studies, sociology, critical pedagogy, and child and youth work. Perhaps, more importantly, it recognizes a situation that has been increasing in scope and severity over the last few decades. As transnational corporations and capital markets struggle to extend their reach and the middle classes that formed in the late twentieth century quickly dissolve, the hoods are becoming more populated (see Hollander & Hollander, ), residents are growing more desperate, and youth are becoming increasingly frustrated. We feel this exploration could not be more important, necessary, and timely.

The forging of a relationship between individuals and their environments is an important and complex part of socialization. The experiences and attitudes one witnesses first-hand at home, on the streets, and in schools shape practices and beliefs that are likely to be repeated in the future. Bourdieu (1984) writes of this connection as a relationship between the two capacities which define the habitus, the capacity to produce classifiable practices and works, and the capacity to differentiate and appreciate these practices and products (p. 170). In essence, habitus is a cyclical but alterable series of behaviors that determines how individuals see and act within their environments. Bourdieu notes that the eye is a product of history reproduced by education (p. 3). In other words, the way we see the world is learned. And we learn to see by participating and interacting within our communities. We might say, then, that habitus (re)creates the social spaces that we call hoods by teaching insiders and outsiders how to see it, classify it, work within it, and understand it.