An ethnographic adolescent life-course of social capital within urban communities, schools and families and the effects on serious youth violence among young at-risk African-American males

Although the criminological literature has thoroughly documented that youth violence among African-American males constitutes a significant proportion of all youth violence, there has been a critical gap in the literature that has failed to examine why only a small proportion of poor, at-risk young African-American males engage in serious violence and why the vast majority do not. The emergence of social capital as a valuable theoretical tool in criminology can greatly increase our ability to understand how impoverished young, inner-city African-American males and their families create the necessary social capital to foster resilience and pro-social behavior. To date, there have been few studies in criminology that have examined the relationship between social capital and serious and chronic violence among poor, at-risk African-American male youth. Furthermore, criminologists know relatively little about how at-risk African-American males utilize social capital within their immediate environment to either, persist, refrain or desist from involvement in chronic and serious violence over the adolescent life-course.; This dissertation devotes particular attention to those special features within the social context and environments of at-risk early adolescent African-American males, specifically, how families, schools and communities contribute to creating bonds of resilience to serious youth violence. Although, no single study can fully explain how the heterogeneity and variation of social capital within families and communities can account for desistance in violence or in the creation of pathways that contribute to fostering serious violent behavior among this target population, this dissertation attempts to systematically approach these issues using the concept of social capital as a theoretical tool for exploration and analysis.