Stress and street life: Black women, urban inequality, and coping in a small violent city
Description
TitleStress and street life: Black women, urban inequality, and coping in a small violent city
Date Created2020
Other Date2020-10 (degree)
Extent1 online resource (xii, 358 pages)
DescriptionThis dissertation examines how direct and vicarious victimization shape the bereavement, coping strategies and quality of life outcomes of low-income, street-identified Black women and girls ages 16 to 54 in two small, high-crime neighborhoods in Wilmington, Delaware. “Street life” or a “street identity” are phenomenological concepts that refer to a set of ideologies, behaviors, and spaces in low-income communities of color that are organized by personal, social and economic survival. I employ a mixed-method, cross-sectional approach which includes data from (a) 277 community-based surveys; (b) 50 in-depth interviews; (c) 22 months of ethnographic field observations; (d) 377 photos and images gathered from social media; and (e) 80 documents (newspaper articles and public records). This approach also includes a methodological framework called Street Participatory Action Research (Street PAR), which actively engages community members and the “researched” population into the entire research process.
In this study, I explore how experiencing, witnessing, and hearing about multiple forms of victimization, particularly firearm-related homicide and shootings, influences the subjective psychological wellbeing of this sample of women and girls, along with the perceived social cohesion, aesthetic quality, and safety of their neighborhoods. I develop a conceptual model to illuminate how victimization and violent death traverse through individuals and broader social networks in a small city context, and ultimately have significant implications for the lived experiences of street-identified Black women and girls. I theorize about how street-identified Black women and girls conceptualize violence and violent Black death as contextual worldviews or orientations that are steeped in their racialized, gendered, and cultural identities.
Findings provide significant evidence for how the women’s accumulated experiences with victimization influence their overall attitudes towards their community, including more negative perceptions about group connectedness and solidarity, safety, aesthetic quality, walking environment, and availability of healthy foods. The cumulative nature of violence ricochets beyond a direct victim and seeps into the material lives of the wider community, and the gradation of violent encounters structure how street-identified Black women and girls understand their neighborhoods and social world. Black female homicide survivors, or women who vicariously experience the loss of a loved one to homicide, endure a disproportionate level of traumatic, often-repeated exposure to grief and mourning due to violent Black death. I examine how this unique standpoint in oppressed communities is an uneven burden of loss that exposes them to violent harm while equipping them with a skillset to survive and thrive in adverse contexts.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Genretheses, ETD doctoral
LanguageEnglish
CollectionSchool of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
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