The Southern Violence Construct: A Review of Arguments, Evidence, and the Normative Context Review Article 6 Justice Quarterly 1989

6 Just. Q. 481 (1989)
The Southern Violence Construct: A Review of Arguments, Evidence, and the Normative Context

handle is hein.journals/jquart6 and id is 491 raw text is: THE SOUTHERN VIOLENCE CONSTRUCT:
A REVIEW OF ARGUMENTS, EVIDENCE,
AND THE NORMATIVE CONTEXT*
F. FREDERICK HAWLEY
Louisiana State University in Shreveport
STEVEN F. MESSNER
State University of New York at Albany
The problem of violence in the South has attracted an unusual amount
of interest from historians, sociologists, and criminologists. The notion
that the South is an inherently violent milieu and that Southerners are
culturally violent people persists despite inconclusive and ambiguous re-
search. In this essay we review the core arguments associated with the
Southern violence construct (SVC) and the evidence, both qualitative and
quantitative, pertaining to it. We also try to locate the controversy sur-
rounding Southern violence within a larger normative context. Finally, we
offer some suggestions for future work on this topic.
In the continuing effort to make some sense of the problem of
interpersonal violence in the United States, social scientists and
other professionals have proposed a variety of constructs about its
etiology and nostrums for its alleviation. One of the most histori-
cally persistent and widely shared notions is that violent crime is a
subcultural or cultural phenomenon. This construct, or subculture
of violence thesis, has been applied to explain high rates of violent
crime among certain sociodemographic groups (primarily young
black males) and in specified geographical regions (especially the
South). The cultural approach to the explanation of criminal vio-
lence continues to enjoy wide currency in academe. Indeed, the
thesis of a distinctively Southern culture of violence receives spe-
cial prominence in the recently published Encyclopedia of South-
am Culture (Wilson and Ferris 1989).
* We approached this collaborative project with slightly different viewpoints
on the intellectual controversy under consideration and with somewhat different
orientations towards criminological inquiry in general. The manuscript that follows
is thus the result of compromise and negotiation. Although a few minor points of
disagreement may remain between us, we are pleasantly surprised at the degree of
consensus that we attained. Moreover, the experience of struggling to reconcile di-
vergent perspectives has been highly rewarding for both of us. We hope that the
result of our labors will be useful to others interested in the ongoing debate over
regional cultures and criminal violence.

JUSTICE QUARTERLY, Vol. 6 No. 4, December 1989
@ 1989 Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences

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