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Female-Female Non-Partner Assault: A Political-Economic Theory of Street Codes and Female-Gendered Culture in the Contemporary African-American Inner City

Drexel University, Pennsylvania, USA, dbw23{at}drexel.edu

Nancy Hirschinger-Blank

Widener University, Pennsylvania, USA

Jeane A. Grisso

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, New Jersey, USA

In this article we present a theory of the prevalence of female-female non-partner violence in the African-American inner city. We employ `ghetto' (economic) and `internal colony' (political) models to illuminate dimensions of the African-American inner city which we view as proximal determinants of female-female interpersonal violence. These cultural and structural elements include conflict within the separate female-gendered cultural milieu centered in the female-headed household system, and the `rule of force' imposed by agencies of social control as the cultural model for dominance, oppression, and interpersonal violence. Verbatim accounts provided by respondents injured in female-female violent interactions are offered as illustrations of the theory.

Key Words: African-American • female-female • ghetto • internal colony • interpersonal violence

Critical Sociology, Vol. 34, No. 2, 271-290 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0896920507085521


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