The community of choice for this particular photo essay is the community of Hillbrow. Hillbrow best represents the idea of a 21st Century urban community firstly because geographically, it exists in the urban metropolitan area of Johannesburg. According to Reid, 2008) urban communities are characterised by a heterogeneous dense population, economic opportunities and active politics. Hillbrow is a community which is typically (especially in media forums) characterised by dilapidated buildings, excessive violence, homelessness, poverty, prostitution and a high prevalence of drugs (Onaele, 2014; Pooe, 2016). All these descriptions show that the community can be understood and analysed in both the relational and geographical sense. Geographically, …show more content…
The community is characterised by an overpopulation consisting of diverse identities such as nationalities, gender, race, age and socioeconomic status (Morris, 1999 Using the ecological model, it can be said that at the microsystem, the interpersonal relations are generally not a good representation of a sense of community because there are excessive levels of crime that community members exert on each other (Harrison, Gotz, Todes & Wray, 2014). Picture 2: A community that lives together, stays together, but for how …show more content…
This is an indicator that people experience the community as a geographical and relational space in which they belong to or as something that fulfils some sort of existential goals for them. The Hillbrow community is embedded in dominant cultural narratives which tend to be negatively skewed is this can be seen as a form of discursive violence that has been constructed by both structural and local factors. For example, in media, such as in newspapers and academic literature, Hillbrow is always depicted as an area infested with drugs, foreign drug dealers, immorality, prostitution and unemployment (Oneale, 2014). Popular movies such as Jerusalem have only chosen to depict the uninviting issues of the community such as the theft, rape and drugs (Morris, 1999). Using Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological model, the constructions of dominant cultural narratives affect the community of Hillbrow at various levels. The microsystem consists of the individuals which are members of the Hillborw community and all the interpersonal interactions that are reciprocal (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). The dominant cultural narratives centred on the negativity of Hillbrow have been psychologically internalised by members of the community and this has resulted in them
Sampson, R. J., Raudenbush, S., & Earls, F. (1997). Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy.
...g, Critical, Peacemaking, Life Course and Strain theories could also be used to explain crime in these neighborhoods. According to Emile Durkheim, mores are different depending on the type of community. On a spectrum, from organic or the lower socio-economic neighborhood to mechanical or the well-structured community in this case Chestnut Hill. In a mechanical society, there is greater cohesion, sharing common values or goals. As could be expected, crime is predicted to be higher in more organic the community is.
This documentary Lockdown: Gang vs. Family by Gail Mitchell (2007) was a good way to prove the sociological theories that were mentioned in this paper. After reading more about the theories, I applied them to my life and my peer’s lives and it could be a proven fact for everyone and not just criminals. It is just more applicable
The theory directly links the type community with the crime rates it has. Social Disorganization Theory was developed by Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay in the Chicago School in 1942. They discovered that crime rates were not even across all communities. Despite changes in population Shaw and Mckay noticed that the crime was concentrated and stable among certain areas. Communities who were economically deprived, had high crime rates and increased population turnover were the cities that they considered to be socially disorganized. According to Regoeczi and Jarvis (2013), Extensions and revisions of this theory have included more explicit discussions of the intervening processes between such structural factors as economic deprivation and residential instability and crime rates. A persons physical and social environments are partly responsible for the decisions that they make. Shaw and Mckay did not directly correlate low income neighborhoods with crime, bust instead low income neighborhoods had higher turnover rates and the people who would move into the neighborhood were usually immigrants which then resulted in racial heterogeneity. Aspects of a person’s neighborhood can be looked at and used to predict whether there will be higher crime rates in the neighborhood. This theory is used to help law enforcement predict where the higher crime will be and therefore allow them to prevent
Yero, A., Othman, J., Samah, B., D'Silva, J., & Sulaiman, A. (2012). Re-visiting concept and theories of community policing. International Journal Of Academic Research, 4(4), 51-55. doi:10.7813/2075-4124.2012/4-4/B.7
Crime has always been a hot topic in sociology. There are many different reasons for people to commit criminal acts. There is no way to pinpoint the source of crime. I am going to show the relationship between race and crime. More specifically, I will be discussing the higher chances of minorities being involved in the criminal justice system than the majority population, discrimination, racial profiling and the environment criminals live in.
We’ve gone over many sociological concepts in class, but the three that I believe apply the most to this film are socialization, deviance, and resocialization. “What sort of world is it at
This theory however as some have argued has emerged from social disorganisation theory, which sees the causes of crime as a matter of macro level disadvantage. Macro level disadvantage are the following: low socioeconomic status, ethnic or racial heterogeneity, these things they believe are the reasons for crime due to the knock on effect these factors have on the community network and schools. Consequently, if th...
Sally Engle Merry’s “Urban Danger: Life in a Neighborhood of Strangers” explores the urban danger associated with living in a neighborhood with “strangers.” The ethnographic study centralizes around a multiethnic housing project in a neighborhood with high crime; Dover Square Project. She emphasizes the relevance of social groups and the impact it maintains in promoting the idea of danger in urbanities. Merry focuses her attention on the impression the residents’ have, which is “that they live in a world of dangerous and unpredictable strangers” and the contrasting reality. Throughout the article, she clarifies this misconception and explores how the boundaries between the ethnic groups promote anonymity, which then in response fosters opportunities for
Why are some neighborhoods more prone to experience violent episodes than others? What is the extent and in what sociologically measurable ways do communities contribute to the causation and prevention of crime in their neighborhoods? Are neighborhood-level predictors adequate to explain differences in violent crime rates in the respective communities? These are some of the questions addressed by this statistically intense paper published in Science 1997, by Sampson, Raudenbush and Earls.
Donald Black breaks social life into several variables, such as stratification, morphology, culture, organization and social control. All these aspects are quantitative variables in time, space and across the settings. In contemporary social life they intertwine between each other and relate to law and deviant behavior.
Therefore, the community has informal social control, or the connection between social organization and crime. Some of the helpful factors to a community can be informal surveillance, movement-governing rules, and direct intervention. They also contain unity, structure, and integration. All of these qualities are proven to improve crime rate. Socially disorganized communities lack those qualities. According to our lecture, “characteristics such as poverty, residential mobility, and racial/ethnic heterogeneity contribute to social disorganization.” A major example would be when a community has weak social ties. This can be caused from a lack of resources needed to help others, such as single-parent families or poor families. These weak social ties cause social disorganization, which then leads higher levels of crime. According to Seigel, Social disorganization theory concentrates on the circumstances in the inner city that affect crimes. These circumstances include the deterioration of the neighborhoods, the lack of social control, gangs and other groups who violate the law, and the opposing social values within these neighborhoods (Siegel,
Eshun, K. and R. Gray (2011) 'The Militant Image: A Ciné‐Geography', Third Text, 25 (1), p. 1-12.
What is street crime? According to McDonald and Balkin (1983) define street crime as “personal contact criminal victimization (p.419)”. As we read this article it argues from different viewpoint that street justice can be explained from different theoretical perspectives. There are three theoretical perspectives that examines the role of justice as a means of informal social control and as a reactionary process to dynamics of social strain and subcultural demands. This theoretical analysis is then applied to concepts of justice, including retributive, distributive, restorative, and procedural. The derived street justice paradigm incorporates these various forms of justice as they are linked with cultural imperatives associated with street culture and
I was attracted to Johannesburg by the many success opportunities available in the city. This is the main reason as to why I hailed from northern KwaZulu-Natal to the city, to make a success of my life through the high class education I was to get at Wits University, one of the top universities in the country. From an early age I have perceived Johannesburg as the city of riches, and where dreams come true. In the short story, Welcome To Our Hillbrow the main character Refentse came to Johannesburg soon after he matriculated to further his studies at Wits University. “By the time you left Tiragalong High School to the University of the Witwatersrand, at the dawn of 1991”(Phaswane Mpe, [42]) Refentse hailed from rural Tiragalong with the hope for an opportunity to a brighter future. The act of the main character in the story fully supports my argument when I relate Johannesburg to success opportunities and high class education.