Why neighborhoods matter: Structural and cultural influences on adolescents in poor communities

This study investigates the social and cultural processes underlying the effects of neighborhood context on adolescent outcomes relating to education and teenage pregnancy. It relies on quantitative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and qualitative data from in-depth interviews with adolescents and their parents in three Boston neighborhoods. I emphasize two previously understudied mechanisms of neighborhood effects, the level and organization of violence and cultural heterogeneity.; The level and organization of violence in disadvantaged communities structures adolescents' relationships with same sex peers. Ongoing cross-neighborhood conflict heightens the salience of neighborhood as a form of identity, leads young men to favor friendships with neighborhood peers, and strengthens the bonds of those friendships. It also produces cross-age relationships, as younger adolescents look to older adolescents and young men for protection and guidance in navigating the streets. These crossage relationships serve as important conduits for the transmission of cultural models in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Especially for younger adolescents, these older adolescents introduce young people to behavioral models that the wider society views as age inappropriate.; Previous accounts of culture in disadvantaged neighborhoods emphasize the isolation of residents from mainstream or middle class cultural models and the development of an "oppositional" subculture into which adolescents are socialized. Drawing on theoretical concepts from the sociology of culture, this study shows that, in contrast to the canonical account, adolescents in disadvantaged neighborhoods are confronted with a mix of competing and conflicting cultural models, both mainstream and oppositional. This cultural heterogeneity has consequences for adolescent outcomes. In neighborhoods with greater cultural heterogeneity, there is a much weaker relationship between an adolescent's own cultural models (goals, frames, and scripts) and his or her later behavior.