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Article

Journal of Interpersonal Violence 26(5) 899 –929

© The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: http://www. sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/0886260510365867 http://jiv.sagepub.com

Reconsidering the Culture and Violence Connection: Strategies of Action in the Rural South

Matthew R. Lee1 and Graham C. Ousey2

Abstract

Crime scholars have long conceptualized culture as a set of values that violence is used to defend or reinforce (i.e., honor). This analysis moves beyond this framework by conceptualizing culture as a toolkit providing strategies of action that individuals use to negotiate social situations. Qualitative data obtained from participant responses to vignettes describing potential conflict situations are analyzed to explore the merit of the cultural toolkit framework as it pertains to the “southern culture of violence” thesis. Contrary to the traditional culture as values model, these data indicate that interpersonal violence is a situationally viable response for diverse groups of people, including males and females, Blacks and Whites, the young and the older. The interplay between culture and social structure is also apparent. Although culture provides individuals with a toolkit, structural factors provide situations in which individuals must decide which cultural tools are most appropriately used. Violence is most viable when individuals feel that the police cannot be relied on and when they perceive that there is an imminent

1Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge 2The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA

Corresponding Author: Matthew R. Lee, Department of Sociology, Louisiana State University, 126 Stubbs Hall, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, LA 70803 Email: [email protected]

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or potentially recurring threat to their family or themselves. Rarely is violent action justified to achieve overarching values, although values are clearly part of the toolkit that informs social action. Participants also frequently report that some segments of their community would consider violence to be an appropriate response even when they personally disagree with that assessment. This highlights the role of agency, where individual lines of action may be constructed independently from perceived community expectations, another major point of departure from the values model.

Keywords

culture, violence

Introduction

The southern region of the United States has experienced high rates of inter- personal violence since its earliest settlement (see Brearley, 1932; Brown, 1975; Redfield, 1880), but there has never been agreement on the sources of this differential. Structuralists have argued that the socioeconomic climate of the south is the likely culprit, emphasizing that factors like poverty can cause strain or undermine community social control processes (Loftin & Hill, 1974). In contrast, cultural theorists have argued that a set of values (e.g., a southern code of honor) stitched deeply into the social fabric of southern communities for centuries is the root of violence in Dixie (Gastil, 1971; Hackney, 1969; Nisbett & Cohen, 1996).

Debate between the structural and cultural camps has been running for sev- eral decades, but we suggest that much of this dialogue—to borrow a phrase from Mayhew (1980)—is “shadowboxing in the dark.” The reason for our skepticism is straightforward. From an evidentiary standpoint, the epistemo- logical nature of structural analysis differs so much from cultural analysis that the two perspectives do not lend themselves to a classic “either this theory or that theory” duel. In recognition of this, we suggest that southern violence has roots in both structural and cultural factors. Although noteworthy evidence has accumulated in support of structural influences (e.g., Ellison, Burr, & McCall, 2003; Lee, Hayes, & Thomas, 2008; Loftin & Hill, 1974; Smith & Parker, 1980), empirical evidence backing the cultural argument is not particularly compelling. As we argue in more detail below, this is primarily because such evidence requires an epistemological frame and empirical method grounded in a more qualitative analytical approach, which has been relatively scarce in the culture of violence literature.

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The current study focuses on this latter issue and seeks to shed light on the cultural sources of southern violence. To accomplish this objective, we draw on the cultural paradigm advanced by Swidler (1986, 2001), which conceptu- alizes culture not as a set of values but as a repertoire of strategies for action. Framed within this “culture in action” model, the goals of this study are (a) to discern the cultural scripts or tools that people use to construct lines of social action and frame expectations regarding violence and (b) to examine the con- ditions under which scripts supportive of violence emerge. In other words, we do not attempt to identify fundamental values that promote or govern violent behavior (see Ball-Rokeach, 1973) but to illustrate that culture may contribute to violence by providing a set of “skills, habits, and styles” (Swidler, 1986, p. 275) that are differentially available to individuals as they navigate and attempt to interpret cues in social situations. Evidence of these cultural skills, habits, and styles are obtained from responses to a series of vignettes provided to a sample of residents from two geographically isolated southern rural com- munities. This evidence includes participant assessments of whether the situ- ations described to them warranted a violent response and, most critically, their explanations of why the situation was deemed violence worthy or not. Through the analysis of these responses, we attempt to cast new light on the nature of the culture/violence nexus in the rural south with the expectation that this model can be fruitfully applied to other contexts. The study attempts to significantly advance criminological research by better illuminating the interplay between structure, culture, and agency in the production of interper- sonal violence.

Background and Conceptual Framework Values Models

Cultural explanations for interpersonal violence have waxed and waned in popularity over time and no general theory of culture and violence has been established. Instead, culture of violence theories have typically emerged as explanations for the behavior of specific population subgroups in particular historical or geographic contexts. Perhaps the most influential argument per- tinent to the current research is the southern culture of honor/Scots-Irish/ Conservative Protestant thesis (Ellison, Burr, & McCall, 2003; Hackney, 1969; McWhiney, 1988; Nisbett & Cohen, 1996). This explanation and its various permutations emerged in reaction to the centuries long regional dis- parity in lethal violence rates observed in the United States (Brearley, 1932, 1935; Redfield, 1880). In one of the classic statements of this perspective,

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Hackney (1969) argued that values centering on honor and the protection of family and property lie at the root of the southern violence problem.

This culture of honor argument was later given an ethnic basis by Nisbett and Cohen (1996) who formulated a Scots-Irish/herding thesis. Their argu- ment suggests that because of the rough terrain in parts of the British Isles, herding and livestock management supplanted agriculture as the primary economic occupation of many Scots-Irish. Because herders are often in remote locations for long periods of time, they are vulnerable to robbery and theft at the hands of raiders and thieves. Hence herding peoples developed a survival mechanism embodied in a culture of defensive self reliance, which demands a quick resort to violence in the face of perceived threats. With the migration of large numbers of these Scots-Irish highlanders to North Amer- ica between 1717 and 1775, it is argued that the defensive culture of honor was imported to the United States and has remained a prominent part of the culture in the southern United States where Scots-Irish settled, particularly in hilly and mountainous locations where herding was a prominent economic activity (Fischer, 1989; Leyburn, 1962).

Although this imported culture of honor has been maintained over centu- ries through a process of intergenerational socialization, one line of argument suggests that it has been fortified by southern fundamentalist and evangelical Protestant religious beliefs. Indeed, some scholars maintain that key features of conservative Protestantism—such as its literalist biblical orientation (i.e., “An eye for an eye”), its focus on the relationship between God and man instead of social altruism, and the belief that deviant behavior reflects indi- vidual moral failings (Ellison, 1991; Ellison, Burr, & McCall, 2003; Gregory, 1993)—serve to support the violence-conducive culture of honor of the south. The common thread running through this body of literature is the belief that southerners, on average, are more likely to hold a particular set of values that define violence as a normative means for achieving certain ends.

The evidence for whether or not southerners actually have an identifiable set of values supporting the use of violence is mixed. General population surveys are the main method used to examine this issue. Based on survey data, Doerner (1978) reports that southerners are no more likely to approve of punching an adult male stranger than respondents from other regions, while Hayes and Lee (2005) report that southern White males from rural areas are more likely to support assaultive violence in situations where general approval is very low to begin with. Erlanger (1975) finds that southern Whites and Blacks are no more likely to approve of various forms of assaultive vio- lence than nonsouthern Whites and Blacks, while Cao, Adams, and Jensen (1997) report that Whites are more supportive of “defensive violence,”

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whereas southerners are more supportive of “offensive violence.” In contrast, Ellison (1991) reports that Whites and native southerners are more supportive of defensive violence than members of other groups. A host of other studies provide equally mixed evidence, but the key issue from our point of view is that all of these studies focus on values as the critical causal link to interper- sonal violence.

Cultural Scripts and Strategies of Action In a recent critique and reformulation of the values model, Sampson and Bean (2006) develop a useful heuristic framework for evaluating the ways that cul- ture may influence violence. Based on their review of extant scholarship, they contend that three positions are evident: (a) culture doesn’t matter; (b) culture is a malleable adaptation to particular structural conditions; and (c) culture is an independent causal force, distinct from structural roots (see Sampson & Bean, 2006, pp. 22-23). In their review, they argue that the classic culture of honor model has been cast as an independent causal force, whereas the promi- nent social isolation model of William Julius Wilson (1987) views culture as a malleable factor that is endogenous to social structure.

Most important, Sampson and Bean draw on the culture in action frame- work, grounded in the work of Swidler (1986) and others, to begin defining the parameters of potentially more powerful contemporary cultural explana- tions of violence. This emerging cultural theory of violence contrasts with the more traditional view of culture as a widely shared set of values that con- stantly reside in and define the worldview of individuals embedded within the culture. Specifically, Sampson and Bean argue for a relational theory in which culture is conceptualized not as a mediator of structural conditions, nor as an independent causal force. Rather, culture is viewed as intersubjec- tive, performative, affective-cognitive, relational, and worldmaking. Thus to say that an individual has a culturally based tolerance for violence is not to say that violence is motivated by a desire to uphold some fundamental set of values; it is to say simply that the individual holds a repertoire of interpretive scripts and action frames that define violence as a situationally viable strat- egy for constructing or maintaining a particular position in a social field. This distinction is important because it recognizes that violence scripts are likely to be one of several—including nonviolence—that an individual has to choose from. The interpretive script and action strategy that an individual employs is therefore not rigidly determined by an underlying value but is influenced in part by the nature of the interactional situation and the broader social context that they encounter. Thus, although the values model suggests

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that a violent course of action typically can be justified prospectively, the culture in action model suggests that violence often is justified retrospec- tively. In essence, people commit violence NOT because it is the right thing to do in terms of some preestablished value or worldview but because given a set of interactional circumstances, it is an action strategy perceived to be available and effective for the situation at hand.

Although there are substantive analytic differences between the culture as values and culture as a strategy of action models, many of the issues relevant to studying cultural sources of violence in the rural south are similar. First, as with the values based model, the use of interpersonal violence as a strat- egy of action will only be a viable tool in some situations. Historically the values model suggests that threats to individual or family honor or personal property would be a stimulus for violent response (Hackney, 1969; Reed, 1982). This is supposedly because of the core values of individual self-worth and independence, threats to which must be dealt with violently to, by defi- nition, maintain the integrity of the value itself. The famous account of being a jury foreman in 1930s Louisiana, as documented by journalist Hodding Carter, is frequently interpreted this way. As Carter (1950, pp. 48-51) relates, an older man in rural Louisiana was being taunted by a group of young men at a filling station. When they persisted with their taunts, he got his gun and opened fire, maiming one, wounding another, and killing an innocent bystander. In the culture as values paradigm, the value directed the action with the end of preserving the value itself. In this case, the values might have been independence, autonomy, and the right to stand up for oneself. More- over, in this paradigm the value-based expectations of other community members required such a response. However, viewing his actions through the strategies of action paradigm complicates the idea that he opened fire because he thought it was the right thing to do. Rather, under this alternative conceptualization he opened fire because this was the culturally scripted strategy of action he was most familiar with (i.e., that’s simply what people do in these situations). By extension, a violent response wouldn’t emerge in every occasion.

This leads to the second point, which is that not everyone will have the same cultural competencies at their disposal. Debate has raged for quite some time about what groups would possess the values supporting a culture of honor (Bankston, Thompson, Jenkins, & Forsyth, 1990; Nisbett & Cohen, 1996; Sowell, 2005). For example, Nisbett and Cohen (1996) argue under the culture as values paradigm that the culture of honor is basically specific to White males. Unfortunately, as some scholars have illustrated, this fails then to explain why southern females and southern Blacks also exhibit high rates of violence (Butterfield, 1995; DeWees & Parker, 2003; Huff-Corzine,

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Corzine, & Moore, 1986; Parker & Pruitt, 2000; Vandal, 2000). It also doesn’t explain very well the historical fact that violence was found across the spectrum of social classes (Bruce, 1979; Cooney, 1997). Under the new culture as a strategy of action paradigm, this would be explained by the fact that in places where violence flourishes, residents from all walks of life are relatively more likely to have violent dispute resolution strategies in their cultural tool kits and are more likely to choose them for the job at hand. Thus, where rates of violence are high, it tends to be higher among both males and females, among members of both minority and majority racial and ethnic groups, and among people of varying social classes. This is consistent with what Sampson and Bean (2006, pp. 27-29) call culture as “worldmaking.” Notice that this is also consistent with Anderson’s (1999) notion that even “decent” kids are familiar with the code of the street because it is necessary for survival in the milieu in which they are embedded.

Although the influence of the “culture as strategy of action” paradigm has penetrated other fields of social science, it has yet to be fully absorbed into the mainstream criminological approach to understanding violence. The culture as values model continues to dominate academic discussions of the culture– violence link, but remains unsatisfying for a number of reasons. For example, although a few violent offenders express true remorse for their actions, a great deal of them excuse or justify their behavior based on a variety of fac- tors that appear to have nothing to do with their personal values (Presser, 2003; Scully & Marolla, 1984). This sequence of actions is inconsistent with the values model, where by definition the ends essentially justify the means. In addition, the values model does not explain why two people with substan- tively identical value systems and worldviews may react completely differ- ently to a given situation, one committing violence and the other not doing so. In other words, it doesn’t account for individual agency very well. The values model also falls short in its ability to explain why it is that some indi- viduals become heavily invested in violent lifestyles that seem miserable and extremely dangerous by most standards (see Katz, 1988; Miller & Schwartz, 1995). The cultural paradigm treating violence as an intersubjective process can explain these and other issues that are not consistent with the values model. This is because of its focus on the resources that people collabora- tively share to create social interactions and reinforce social structures.

In light of the deficits associated with a values-driven model, this study examines cultural sources of violence utilizing the culture as strategy of action paradigm. Our intent is not to test a “southern culture of violence” thesis. Rather, we utilize data collected from a context where cultural influences on violence are thought to exist to evaluate the integrity of the competing cul- tural explanations. From the preceding discussion we generally expect

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that willingness to use interpersonal violence can be understood as emerging situationally through cultural scripts defining it as a viable strategy for action. Below we describe the method of qualitative data collection that allows us (a) to discern the cultural scripts or tools that people use to construct lines of social action and frame expectations regarding violence and (b) to examine the conditions under which scripts supportive of violence emerge.

Research Design and Method Although there are clearly similar issues pertaining to both approaches to understanding cultural sources of violence, it is also true that different meth- odological approaches are necessary to successfully study them. Although the culture as values approach has been most frequently studied using closed ended survey instruments in general population surveys (Ball-Rokeach, 1973; Borg, 1997; Cao, Adams, & Jensen, 1997; Doerner, 1978; Ellison, 1991; Erlanger, 1975; Hayes & Lee, 2005), the culture as strategies for action approach requires sensitivity to a host of additional issues. Specifically, to analyze when violence is a viable strategy of action, the methodological logic of variable-based quantitative analysis is less appropriate. Instead, qualita- tive methods that provide rigorous data collection tools to ensure a high level of validity are necessary. Because few if any studies have directly tried to investigate cultural tolerance of violence from the strategies of action per- spective, there is little guidance available. Several imperative issues are apparent though. First, it is necessary to find a context in which it is likely that the use of violence is part of the cultural repertoire. Second, because interpersonal violence is not something that is easy to observe ethnographi- cally, a method is required that prompts people to reveal the contents of their cultural toolkits in a way that treats culture as an intersubjective and con- structive process. To address these issues, we have implemented an innovative methodology to assess whether people commit violence because community values situationally demand it as suggested by the values model (see Reed, 1982, p. 143) or because violent response is the cultural script that individu- als are familiar with as the cultural toolkit model states. Our methodology consists of semistructured in-depth face-to-face interviews with vignettes pertaining to interpersonal violence. We begin by providing participants a situation detailed in a vignette and then use open-ended interviews asking them how they would respond, how most people in their community would respond, and most important, why this is the case. Because interpersonal vio- lence may be a sensitive issue for some people to discuss, we decided to frame vignettes in terms of the third person, so that some of the burden of making a decision on whether to inflict injury on another person is displaced

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from the participant. Finally, although several studies recently have investi- gated the behavior of criminals “in the wild” (see Jacobs, 2000; Jacobs & Wright, 2006), to avoid the pitfalls associated with sampling on the depen- dent variable (i.e., finding what you are looking for) we focus on the nature and diversity of cultural scripts pertaining to violence in the population at large. The vignettes themselves are discussed below.

Sampling Methods and Interview Setting Participants for this study were culled from two rural parishes (county equiva- lents) in the state of Louisiana. The research sites were situated in rural areas for three reasons: (a) because the majority of the regional difference in serious violence is due to its prevalence in rural areas of the south (see Lee, Bankston, Hayes, & Thomas, 2007), (b) because much of the theoretical literature refers to the cultural homogeneity of southern rural communities (Lee & Shihadeh, 2009), and (c) because interpersonal violence remains a problem in many parts of the rural south (Nisbett & Cohen, 1996). The communities were selected based on their diversity in terms of ethnocultural history and development, population characteristics, religious characteristics, and violent crime rates.

Louisiana is perhaps more diverse than any other southern state because of its unique history of settlement, the peculiarity of its political history, and the immense natural resources she harbors. Louisiana has significant rural Black populations because of its plantation agricultural history and a significant rural French ancestry component in the southern part of the state, with substantial Scots-Irish and English ancestral populations throughout the rest of the state. It is also essentially dichotomized in terms of religious dominance, with the French Acadian parishes in the southern part of the state being predominantly Catholic and most of the rest of the state being predominantly Baptist—although there are substantial numbers of United Methodists, Presbyterians, Pentacostals, Episcopalians, Assem- blies of God, Church of Christ, and African Methodist Episcopal adherents as well. The two parishes used as research sites are only 60 miles apart, but reflect this marked diversity. According to official statistics, one of the parishes is reasonably characterized as a persistently high violence parish, whereas the other maintains a low to middle range violent crime rate.

Snowball sampling based on personal contacts, cold relationship forma- tion, and the use of kinship networks resulted in a total of 39 completed interviews with a very diverse group of participants, drawn equally from the two communities. To minimize sample and interviewer bias, local graduate students conducted the bulk of the interviews and a locally born and raised African American graduate student conducted most of the interviews with

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African American participants to enhance interviewer–participant rapport. This strategy seemed to be effective, as the consent rate from African American participants was very high. Overall, the participants were both African American (N = 20) and White (N = 19), males (N = 17) and females (N = 22), ranged in age from 18 to 88, and were diverse in denominational background including Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, African Methodist Episcopal, Penta- costal, and nondenominational Christian.1 Several participants had also switched denominations during their adult lifetime. The participants were also from a wide range of socioeconomic and status attainment backgrounds. Interviews were conducted at the leisure of participants in their homes, at workplaces, in public places, and on a university campus.

Data Collection and Analysis Strategies In addition to the vignettes relating to violence (provided in Appendix A), a variety of questions relating to demographics, social integration, cultural and religious background, and social trust were asked. The interview schedule ran from about 30 min to 1 hr and 45 min. Given our interest in flushing out the cultural scripts and schemas that are available to independent actors as they confront situations and draw on their cultural tool boxes to formulate strategies of action, we presented a set of vignettes and response options to each of the participants. They were then asked to indicate which response was most appropriate in their view and to explain why this was the case. Follow-up questions asked them to evaluate what they perceived the com- munity standard to be and again to explain that perception. For example, see Vignette 1 in Appendix A.

In analyzing the data that emerged from these interviews, we drew on the constant comparative analysis method from the grounded theory paradigm, repeatedly canvassing the verbatim transcripts to identify the salient emer- gent themes related to the use of violent or nonviolent action strategies (see Glaser & Strauss, 1967). By cross-referencing demographic characteristics of the participants with vignette responses, it was also possible to address important issues relating to “whom” violence is a viable option and under what conditions this is the case.

The usual caveats with respect to reliability and validity that pertain to many qualitative studies apply here as well. Specifically, although major efforts were made to ensure the diversity of the sample along standard demographic dimen- sions (age, sex, race, socioeconomic status), the use of nonprobability sampling and the limited sample size make it difficult to know the extent to which our sample is representative of the larger population of the parishes from which respondents were selected. However, our goal here simply is to illuminate the

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content and utilization of cultural scripts pertaining to violence and the condi- tions under which they emerge; we make no claims that the results documented here are exhaustive or generalize to the entire universe of potential subjects.

In addition, by its very nature, the presentation of sections of transcripted interviews will involve selection issues. In the following analysis, we try to maximize the presentation of the depth and breadth of information in the data by purposefully including substantively varying, and sometimes contradic- tory, accounts offered by the participants. Finally, we note that in the course of natural conversation, which was established with most participants, pat- terns of speech are frequently interrupted and not fluid. The transcriptions reported below have been “cleaned up” to facilitate readability while making every effort to adhere to the original intent of the interviewee. The reader should keep in the mind that for the present purposes, the goal is not to dis- cern “modal” responses but to highlight the variation in responses that are evident in the interviews.

Findings When Is Violence Acceptable and to Whom?

To begin the analysis, we establish that in fact some participants do find the use of violence a viable strategy of action in certain situations and examine the demographics of such respondents. The six vignettes provided in Appendix A were intentionally varied in terms of their context, with the expectation that participants would be likely to see violence as a more viable strategy of action in some situational contexts than in others. This is clearly the case with these data. Vignette No. 1, where Tom is confronted with a burglar in the house, was the modal vignette in which participants responded in the affirmative. The main themes to emerge from our analysis of the affirmative responses (e.g., shoot the burglar) centered on the availability of law enforcement, the imme- diacy of the threat to the respondent or the family, and the likelihood of a continuing threat over the longer term. Gerald (a pseudonym), a White male in his 60s with several college degrees, illustrates the general pattern found among those reporting violence as a viable action strategy:

Gerald: Well, I suspect that I would find the second the most appropri- ate, although I might have given some kind of warning.

Interviewer: Can you explain a little why you think that’s the appropri- ate response.

Gerald: Well, going back into another room and calling the police— let’s see—you’re probably looking at at least 20 to 30 minutes, you

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know you really can’t depend on the police to protect you. The other thing is that you’re shooting someone, you don’t know that it is a burglar. There is the possibility that somebody else is wandering around, and so just whipping out a gun and shooting without know- ing who it is—but if it was a threat and I knew who it was, that’s what I would do, alright?

Notice here that the participant does not fall back on some conventional value that is calling him forth to shoot the burglar. Rather, he delineates a strategy of action based on his informal assessment of how long he thinks it would take the police to get there. He knows that living in a rural area police response time is significant, perhaps as long as a half an hour. Thus relying on the police to protect him and his family is not a viable strategy of action in his cultural toolkit. He also reveals in the second part of his answer how this strategy is conditional on getting some confirmation that the presence of the burglar is an actual threat. This turned out to be a critical theme, one that with the issue of geographic isolation was articulated by other participants as well. For example, several participants indicated that they would call the police first, but if the threat was imminent they would shoot. The following response comes from Sarah, a professional White female in her late 20s:

Sarah: I would say in scenario 1, unless the burglar was armed and seemed to be (pause), it depends on what the burglar was looking for. If the burglar didn’t see him, go back upstairs and call the police. If the burglar saw him and pulled a gun on him, he doesn’t have much time to call the police. Then it might be appropriate, it might be. I mean if the burglar came at him to do him bodily harm. But if he is snooping around his house go call the police.

Bob, a White male in his mid-20s echoes a similar sentiment: Bob: Number 1, go back upstairs and call the cops. Well my thing, I

don’t know if I could have shot him right there if he didn’t see me. Not unless he was actually inflicting harm on me or my family, could I have shot him. That would have been my last situation, unless he was running upstairs to come after my wife or my kids would I have shot him. I’d probably have got upstairs, got the gun, went in the room with my family behind me, and if he came to the door then did it. But that would have been my ultimate last deci- sion to avoid any kind of death for anyone.

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In both of these cases, the first strategy is to call the police and shooting the intruder only comes to the fore as a viable option if the intruder appears to present an imminent threat to the participant or their family. Another par- ticipant however, views shooting the intruder as a viable action because of concerns over the ability of the police to respond and because of concerns over the effectiveness of the justice system. Alex, an African American man in his late 70s offers as follows:

Alex: Man, I would shoot him. If you gotta go back upstairs, unlock the door, call the police, it’s gonna take them some time to get there. And this rascal has gotten away by that time, and the things that you had downstairs that he came to burglarize and to take and that sort of thing, nobody gave them to you, you had to earn those things. And it’s just plain simply not right for him to come in and mess up what you had worked so hard for. And the judicial system is of such nature that all he has to do is go find some smooth talkin’ lawyer and he’ll be back the next day waving at you. So if you fix him so, then people will wave goodbye, and it’s all over with and you never have to bother with him again.

This response also illuminates two other very important issues. First, when he invokes that “it’s just plain simply not right for him to come in and mess up what you had worked so hard for,” Alex is revealing the important role that personal values do play in the emergence of violence. As noted above, the strategies of action paradigm doesn’t suggest that values are irrelevant. Rather, values are a critical part of the cultural toolkit that inform the strategy of action. But the action itself is not necessarily geared solely toward reinforcing the value itself.

Second, in Alex’s response, the issue of potentially having to deal with the offender again also surfaces. Tracy, a White female in her early 60s, voiced this same concern noting that if someone didn’t shoot the burglar, he is likely to become a recurring threat:

Tracy: Probably the best thing would be where he called the police; however, in (my community) this would not be viewed as the correct choice, the person would be seen as weak that didn’t take care of his own problems. There’s a big problem in (my community) that you are not likely to get anyone there very quickly and if they come it is not likely that very much is going to happen to them, so you are very likely

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to see them on the next day and he is very likely to be back in your house the next day.

Like the prior quotes, this response also reveals the role of values (“the person would be seen as weak”) and the availability and efficacy of law enforcement in determining the response.

Taken together, several issues have been distilled to this point. First, rural southern residents with a variety of demographic characteristics indi- cate that violence is at times a viable interactional tool. Under essentially the same conditions, participants from different age, race, and sex groups all in one way or another expressed that shooting the intruder would be a viable strategy of action.2 This stands in direct contrast to theorists who have argued that if there are cultural supports for violence in the South, then they are confined mostly to White males (e.g., Nisbett & Cohen, 1996). Second, and partly consistent with the values model of culture, we find that violent actions are only strategically viable under limited condi- tions. In these data, it is when law enforcement cannot be relied on, when there is a concern over an immediate threat to the individual or their family, or when there is reason to believe the threat may return in the future. Impor- tantly, the values paradigm and the strategy of action paradigm interpret these findings very differently.

In the values paradigm, shooting the intruder when he is seen as a threat to the family reflects fundamental beliefs about honor, independence, and duty. If the values model is right, adherents to the culture would presumably be willing to shoot the intruder regardless of how long it may take the police to arrive. In the alternative paradigm that we use here however, underlying values don’t matter as much as the immediate utility of the action. For many participants, shooting the intruder is an appropriate course of action as long as it is believed that the police can’t get there quickly enough. The geo- graphic isolation inherent in rural life innately limits police response ability (see Weisheit, Falcone, & Wells, 2006), and so scripts condoning shooting the intruder come to the fore among a variety of otherwise extremely ordinary people. This finding is consistent with Black’s (1983) perspective on self- help social control, which argues that violence flourishes as a dispute resolu- tion mechanism where the law is unavailable.

This point also illustrates nicely one way in which structure and culture are connected. It reveals that although culture provides the tools, structural factors provide the situational characteristics that elicit the implementation of certain strategies of action. Moreover, it is also important to recognize that because the culture in action model views culture as intersubjective, relational, and

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performative, the viability of a strategy of action is also influenced by, in the case of Vignette 1, the behavior of the intruder. As documented above, several of the participants indicated that shooting the burglar was appropriate if it became clear his intent was to attack the homeowner or his family. Few if any offered that it was universally appropriate to shoot the burglar, even when he is on his way out the door. In this sense then, the actions of the intruder, and the way those actions are interpreted by the participant, strongly influence the cultural scripts/action strategy adopted. What starts to emerge from this analysis then is a cycle where structure provides situations, culture provides the tools to navi- gate those situations, and individual agency comes into play in the implementation of the cultural strategies (i.e., choosing one strategy of action over another).

The intersubjective nature of violence is well illustrated when considering other vignettes in which the offending party is clearly not being immediately aggressive. For example, Vignette 2 involves a situation where an individual cannot access his driveway because the guests of a neighbor repeatedly park there and block access. The modal response from the people we interviewed was to simply drive around. In our data many participants also initially report that confronting the neighbor is appropriate, but then actually stop short of saying it is appropriate to assault the neighbor. Rick, an African American male in his 20s offers as follows:

Rick: Scenario number 2 because I would never destroy my lawn. I mean if this is my driveway and I’ve asked you several times in a respectful way to pretty much get your friends to park somewhere else, just basically not block my driveway, . . . I don’t feel like he had to just hit him, but scenario number 2 was the better scenario. I mean, I would never drive across my lawn because of your stupidity of constantly blocking my driveway.

Patty, a White female in her mid-20s reports a similar response.

Patty: I would say scenario 2, I don’t agree with him hitting the guy, but if it keeps happening and he went over to ask him to do it and the guy was probably being a jerk, I would agree with scenario 2.

Finally, Dawn, an African American female in her late 30s weighs in with the following:

Dawn: Actually, number 2, but not hitting him, but asking him to move his car for one last time and then, he should have called the police and

914 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 26(5)

told them the situation because that is a domestic dispute and by hitting him that would be domestic violence.

In all three of these responses, there is some waffling, where the participant generally would rely on confronting the neighbor but not necessarily violently assaulting him. In this particular scenario, the participant is queried about a unilateral act of violent aggression, but because interpersonal violence is by definition a social interaction, cultural scripts asserting unilateral aggression don’t seem to be available. Similar responses emerged from Vignettes 3 and 4, where a man and his wife are walking to their car when a random stranger makes sexually explicit remarks to the man’s wife. Under the culture as values model, this should be a fairly straightforward situation in which violence is legitimately used to defend the wife’s good name, especially if friends or third parties are present, making it a public transgression. Again however, very few participants indicated that unilateral violent aggression was appropriate. Instead, illuminating the interactional nature of violence, several did suggest that if the offender kept it up, violence may emerge.

Alan: I think the more appropriate thing would be to ignore it. Uh, well, I would approach the guy and tell him not to do that to my wife and ask him to stop. If he didn’t stop, I might do something violent. But of the two scenarios I have, the first one seems the most appropriate. (White male, mid-50s)

Gerald: Probably the first, as long as there’s no aggressive behavior on the part of the uh (offender), although he could of cussed him back, which might spiral out of control, but the first is the best option. (White male, early 60s)

In both cases, participants suggest violence was a possible outcome if the offender didn’t stop the offensive behavior, the first overtly and the second in a more veiled manner when he says that it might “spiral out of control.” Indeed, the role of offender behavior in contributing to the mutual construction of violent strategies of action should not be understated (see Luckenbill, 1977). In Vignette 5, a former coworker has made a threatening phone call. The modal response by our participants was to call the police, but again several cautioned that they would also be prepared with a firearm, in the event that the individual arrived with the intention of carrying through the threat.

Kim: I think to be honest with you, the first one. But me sitting here thinking of someone comin’ on my property thinking they gonna do

Lee and Ousey 915

what they got to do to me, I would have mine’s ready too. I would have wanted the police too. So a mix. Call the police and prepare. If he is coming on my property for me, I’m gonna answer his question for him. (African American Female, late 20s)

Liz: Hmm, probably both of them in that case. You know you have to be very careful, you have to protect your family. There have been a lot of workplace violence incidents in America, so I think both were appropriate, he wasn’t actually physically attacking anybody.I wouldn’t leave a gun out with kids, but if I had arms I would make sure I had access to it if I needed to. If that person is trying to get in the house, or if that person comes with a loaded gun and looks like maybe they’ll fire through a window or whatever then he has the right to defend himself on his property. (White female, mid-50s)

Carl: I think in both instances, he did what he needed to do. Reported to the police first of all, he also had the right to protect himself should this guy come at him. So I think in both instances he acted appropri- ately. (African American male, mid-60s)

Overall these data provide substantial insight into the cultural scripts that make interpersonal violence possible in the rural south. From these snippets of interview transcripts, we believe it is evident that individuals from a variety of walks of life and demographic groups see interpersonal violence as a viable possibility, under very specific circumstances. The viability of violence depends at least partly on the perceived availability of law enforcement, the degree to which a threat is imminent, the values that participants have, and the willingness of the “offender” to escalate an interaction to the level of violent conflict.

What Would Others Do? Another major issue we are able to address with these data revolves around community expectations and their influence on individual action strategies. As Reed (1982) and other adherents to the values paradigm have argued, cultural expectations for violence are essentially community behavioral stan- dards that govern individual actions. Hyde (1997) relates the case of a man in rural Louisiana who tracked down and killed another man who had been “overly friendly” with his wife. As Hyde (1997, pp. 229-230) puts it, to do anything less would have invited shame on the man’s family. In the tradi- tional way of thinking about this, the community values to which the perpetrator

916 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 26(5)

in this case presumably adhered compelled him to go out of his way to track someone down and kill him in the name of family honor. This suggests that it is difficult if not impossible for individuals to pursue lines of action inde- pendent from the community standard. Indeed, Reed (1982, p. 143) argues that in some instances culture not only permits but “demands a violent response.” In our interviews, we addressed this question directly by asking participants after each vignette what “most people in your community” would do. The answers, interpreted within the framework of culture as stra- tegic action, are enlightening.

For the sake of contrast, we focus here on the responses of those who did not report that violence was a viable and appropriate response. Emerging from these data are basically 4 groups of responses. The first group captures those who think that most members of the community would also address the situation with a nonviolent response. This perception of the community stan- dard is anticipated and should be taken for what it is. Of greater interest for our purposes are the perceptions of the community-wide reaction among those who think it will be different from their own. An additional 3 groups emerged here, which for the sake of clarity and parsimony we call the emphatic response, the calibrated response, and the group-specific response. Participants evidencing an emphatic response felt very clearly that there was a dominant community-wide culturally based strategy for action. For exam- ple, in Vignette 1 regarding a burglar in the house, a number of participants were emphatic that although they personally would not shoot the burglar, many in their community would do so.

Michelle: They would have shot him without a thought (Black female, early 60s)

Tracy: Community response would be to shoot them and take care of it. (White female, mid-60s).

For these participants, there is no equivocation with respect to what community responses would be. However, all of these comments on what other community members strategies of action would be are made by participants who themselves did not draw up such cultural scripts. The same pattern can be discerned from other vignettes. Vignette 2 provided the case where a neighbor was habitually blocking the driveway, Vignettes 3 and 4 the case of a stranger making sexually explicit comments to a man’s wife, and Vignette 5 the scenario of a former employee making a threat. Again among participants who themselves did not see violence as a good strategy

Lee and Ousey 917

of action, there are some who perceive that such a strategy would be viable to wide segments of their community.

Vignette 2 Kathy: They’re gonna ask a couple of, 2 or 3 times, then they’re gonna take matters into their own hands (White female, mid-60s)

Vignettes 3 and 4

Michelle: It would have been on (Black female, early 60s)

Dana: Most folks would probably go and punch the guy out. (Black female, mid-50s)

Vignette 5

Daniel: Most people unfortunately, they would choose number 2 (White male, mid-50s)

In contrast to these emphatic respondents, a second group offered more finely calibrated responses. In this case, there was recognition that although the participants themselves did not see violence as a viable strategy, a good portion, perhaps as many as half in their community, would. Examples here would include the following:

Vignette 1

Jessica: Honestly? 40/60 would have handled it the second way. (White female, mid-60s)

Tina: It’s hard to say, probably fifty-fifty either way (Black female, mid-20s)

Rick: I say it’s a 50-50 (Black male, mid-20s)

Vignette 2

Karen: 50-50 of those who would and wouldn’t confront (White female, early 60s)

918 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 26(5)

Vignette 5

Debbie: Three-quarters would have called the police and of course the roughnecks would have got their guns. (Black female, early 60s)

Finally, a third set of responses to emerge from this analysis captures those who think specific demographic groups would be likely to implement violence.

Vignette 1

Frederick: It really depends on the age group. Someone my age or younger would do number 2, it’s the way things are done around here. (Black male, early 20s)

Vignette 2

David: The older people, they’d probably call the police. For the younger ones, they would ask them to move the car. For the ones that are young, they’re probably gonna fight or something. (Black male, early 20s)

Vignette 3

Kim: It depends on the race. And then the age groups. Older people that’s mature would have ignored him and went on about his business. But the young guys, he probably would have punched him in his face. I think the White couple would of went on. Mostly young Black males would have punched him or threatened him. (Black female, late 30s)

Carl: The older people would have done the same thing [driven around], the younger people no. (Black male, early 60s)

Vignette 5

Christine: I do think that some of the community would choose number 2. Uh, just again it goes back to the low socioeconomic group that lives not too far away. And it think that would just be their mentality, they are low in education also. (White female, late 50s)

Augmenting what was learned in the first part of the analysis, the key points to consider from this latter analysis are (a) many participants

Lee and Ousey 919

perceive that violence is a viable strategy of action for other residents in their immediate community under certain conditions even though it is not for themselves and (b) some think these scripts are widespread, some think they are evident but not ubiquitous, and some think they are confined to specific population subgroups. Following the logic of the culture as values paradigm, the variations noted above seem unlikely because individual behavior should be strongly channeled by community-wide expectations for violent response. Coming back to the case documented by Hodding Carter (1950) and discussed above, during the jury deliberation process for the man who shot people at the filling station, one juror thought the accused man guilty, whereas most of the rest were in disbelief at such a thought. Their reasoning as interpreted by Carter and others is illustrative: “Good God almighty, bub. He ain’t guilty. He wouldn’t of been much of a man if he hadn’t shot them fellows.” (Carter, 1950, p. 50). In terms of the culture as strategy for action paradigm advanced here though, such an observation is moot because lots of people think that others around them would commit violence in the same situation in which they personally claim they will not. Moreover, the fact that our participants frequently identified specific groups—the younger generation most notably—as being most likely to use violence in the various situations seems very much at odds with the notion of cultural violence as values driven. This is because values proponents argue that such behavior would be evident among individuals who are most fully socialized into the culture, the older as opposed to younger generations (see Ellison, 1991; Reed, 1982). In contrast, the newer culture-in-action paradigm more elegantly argues that such age-linked variations in violent actions are the result of the utilization of cultural scripts by individuals as they navigate their way through the social world, independent of what others in their community might expect of them. Cultural scripts are essentially a resource, much like the human capital resources of income and education. It is likely that as people get older and accumulate more experience, their repertoire of cultural scripts and skills expands, diversifies, and changes. The young, being more resource deficient, will typically have a narrower range of scripts from which to choose, a point the values paradigm has trouble accommodating. The implications of these findings are discussed below.

Discussion and Conclusion This analysis reconsidered the links between culture and violence. A large body of research using the traditional culture-as-values paradigm has argued

920 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 26(5)

that violence largely takes place in the name of specific values, particularly personal and family honor. In the context of the southern culture of violence, this would mean that at least part of the regional differential in violence that has been evident for at least two centuries is explained by the different value orientations of southern residents. Although not focusing on explaining the regional differential per se, the current study uses the rural south as a context in which to examine the utility of an alternative cultural framework for explaining violence. Drawing on recent developments by Sampson and Bean (2006), among others, we have analyzed how people use accessible cultural tools to navigate interactional situations that arise in the social world. Our qualitative analysis of responses to a series of vignettes depicting situations in which there may be the potential for a violent course of action was illumi- nating in several respects.

First, cultural scripts condoning the use of violence are evident across a broad cross-section of the southern rural population from which our sample was drawn. This differs from culture-as-values arguments, such as that of Nis- bett and Cohen (1996), which claim that the southern culture of violence is a phenomenon confined primarily to White males. Second, it appears that cul- tural scripts that lead to violence appear most likely when people perceive that the police or other agents of the law are unavailable or slow to respond (due to the geographic isolation of rural communities), when individuals perceive that they or their family members are in imminent physical danger from an offender, or if they perceive that there is a risk of being victimized by the offender again. Finally, cultural scripts and action strategies containing violent responses do not appear to simply be a reflection of the values or normative expectations of a broader community because participants frequently indicated that although many in their community would commit a violent act when faced with a par- ticular interactional situation, they themselves would not.

Considered as a whole, our analysis illuminates to some degree the inter- play between culture, structure, and individual agency. From the strategies of action paradigm, the process by which violence emerges involves a cultural dimension whereby tools in the form of scripts, styles, habits, and the like are part of the interactional repertoire available to individuals. The social struc- tural dimension supplies the situations in which interpersonal interactions are embedded and contextualized, while individual agency is exercised by autonomous although not necessarily rational or goal oriented actors who implement various scripts based on what they know how to do given the contextual restraints. Although our analysis does not tap into it, an additional point that would be consistent with Sampson and Bean (2006) is that these processes are worldmaking, in that they construct and reinforce the cultural and structural milieu in which people operate.

Lee and Ousey 921

The main difference as we have articulated it between a values-based approach to understanding the culture–violence nexus and the relational approach we have adopted here is that the former focuses on the content of culture, whereas the latter focuses on how people use culture. It is therefore important to emphasize that this does not mean that values play no role in deter- mining whether or not violence will occur. Indeed, the exact opposite is true: values are another important component of the cultural tool kit that individuals have at their disposal to delineate and experience their strategies of action.

The analysis presented here should also not be interpreted as a comprehen- sive assessment of the relational perspective put forth by Sampson and Bean (2006). Although these data were amenable to examining whether it is only values that drive violence, whether violence is intersubjective, and whether violence is relational as opposed to consensual, the data are not necessarily appropriate for examining how violence in and of itself is a worldmaking enter- prise that reinforces social structures and cultural preferences. Thus although the data are informative, they are not without limitations.

Because the relational perspective does not suggest that the cultural influence on violence is confined to any specific population subgroup or region where violence is prevalent, future research should focus on examin- ing its utility across other geographic, social, economic, and demographic contexts. An obvious example is in the urban milieu where homicide is a major public health concern, particularly for young Black males. Enhanced understanding of the cultural toolkit carried by these population groups in these localities may shed light on why violence is all too common. Such knowledge may also help to elevate the likelihood of successful interven- tions. For example, if violence reduction required a total reorientation of both individual and community values, efforts in this regard would be extremely daunting. However, if violence reduction can take place by way of teaching young people alternative scripts and action strategies for dis- pute resolution (i.e., adding more tools to their cultural toolkit), the task would become imminently more manageable.

Appendix A Vignettes

Now I am going to give you some situations and I am going to describe dif- ferent ways that they may be handled. I am then going to ask you to evaluate which response was appropriate according to your personal view, and why. I want to make clear that there is no right or wrong answer here that we are looking for. Instead, we are interested in your personal view of the issue.

922 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 26(5)

Vignette 1

Tom is married and the father of two children. He wakes up in the middle of the night because he hears a noise downstairs. When he goes downstairs, he locks the door to the upstairs where his family is sleeping behind him. He then goes to the living room, where he sees an adult male burglar. The burglar does not see Tom.

In scenario 1, Tom quietly turns around, goes back upstairs, while locking the door behind him, and calls the police.

In scenario 2, Tom pulls his pistol out of a nearby drawer and shoots the burglar. He then goes and calls the police.

In your personal view, in which scenario do you think Tom did the appro- priate thing? Please explain why.

In which way do you think most people in your community would have responded? Why? Can you give me an example from around here that you know of? [Interviewer: Try to get R to relate a similar concrete example if they know of one and why it was or was not okay.]

And what if Tom was Theresa? Would you answer the same way? Why or why not?

Vignette 2 Jim’s neighbor Ed and his friends keep parking their cars in front of Jim’s house, blocking his driveway. Jim has asked Ed several times not to park there, and Ed has refused to ask his friends to park somewhere else. Jim has even called the police, who said there was nothing they could do about it. The next time one of Ed’s friends parks in front of his driveway

Scenario 1: Jim simply drives across his own lawn to get around the vehicle.

Scenario 2: Jim goes next door to Ed’s house, and asks him one last time to move the vehicle. When Ed refuses, Jim hits him with a closed fist sev- eral times in the head and body.

In your personal view, in which scenario do you think Jim did the appro- priate thing? Please explain why.

In which way do you think most people in your community would have responded? Why? Can you give me an example from around here that you know of? [Interviewer: Try to get R to relate a similar concrete example if they know of one and why it was or was not ok]

What if Jim was Jane? Would you answer the same way? Why or why not?

Lee and Ousey 923

Vignette 3

Gary and his wife are walking to their car after a dinner in the early evening. On the way to the car, a man in the parking lot makes sexually suggestive remarks to Gary’s wife.

Scenario 1. Gary and his wife ignore the man and go to their car, where they leave to go home.

Scenario 2. Gary approaches the man and, without warning, punches the man in the face.

In your personal view, in which scenario do you think Gary did the appro- priate thing? Please explain why.

In which way do you think most people in your community would have responded? Why? Can you give me an example from around here that you know of? [Interviewer: Try to get R to relate a similar concrete example if they know of one and why it was or was not okay.]

Vignette 4 Gary and his wife are walking to their car after a movie and there are 8 other people with them that they know. Most of these people are their close friends or their coworkers. On the way to the car, a male stranger in the parking lot makes sexually suggestive remarks to Gary’s wife in front of everyone.

Scenario 1. Gary and his wife ignore the man and go to their car, where they leave to go home.

Scenario 2. Gary approaches the man and, without warning, punches the man in the face.

In your personal view, in which scenario do you think Gary did the appro- priate thing? Please explain why.

In which way do you think most people in your community would have responded? Why? Can you give me an example from around here that you know of? [Interviewer: Try to get R to relate a similar concrete example if they know of one and why it was or was not okay.]

Vignette 5 Jeff is a single 30-year-old male who lives alone and owns a small business in his town. Jeff receives a telephone call from a former employee that he fired 1 week ago. The former employee says to Jeff “I know where you live, and I am coming to get you.”

924 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 26(5)

Scenario 1. Jeff calls the police immediately and reports the situation, giv- ing them the other man’s name and address.

Scenario 2. Jeff decides to handle the situation himself. When he gets home, he takes his shotgun out of its case, loads it, and puts it near the front door in his home.

In your personal view, in which scenario do you think Jeff did the appro- priate thing? Please explain why.

In which way do you think most people in your community would have responded? Why? Can you give me an example from around here that you know of? [Interviewer: Try to get R to relate a similar concrete example if they know of one and why it was or was not ok]

What if Jeff was Jane? Would you answer the same way? Why or why not?

Vignette 6 George has lost his job and needs money to pay the rent on his apartment or he will be evicted. Unable to find work, and getting desperate, George takes his pistol and goes to a gas station. There he threatens the cashier with the gun and eventually shoots him in the leg to make the attendant give him the money.

Do you consider this an acceptable use of violence? Why or why not? Do you think most people in your community would consider this an

acceptable use of violence? Why? Can you give me an example from around here that you know of? [Interviewer: Try to get R to relate a similar concrete example if they know of one and why it was or was not ok]

Appendix B Participant Characteristics and Pseudonyms

Pseudonym Sex Race Age

Shaun Male Black 23 Gerald Male White 61 Ashley Female Black 23 Kate Female Black 50 Olivia Female Black 24 Shana Female Black 31 Rick Male Black 26 Tina Female Black 26

(continued)

Lee and Ousey 925

Appendix B (continued)

Pseudonym Sex Race Age

Dawn Female Black 40 Brian Male Black 21 Tracy Female White 63 Carl Male Black 60 Kim Female Black 27 Sarah Female White 27 Alex Male Black 78 Debbie Female Black 61 Dana Female Black 56 Julia Female White 75 Jessica Female White 57 Chantel Female White 86 Andrew Male White 88 Daniel Male White 54 Thomas Male Black 62 Chad Male White 66 Alan Male White 45 Keith Male Black 36 David Male Black 19 Christine Female White 57 Kathy Female White 67 Jennifer Female White 35 Frederick Male Black 31 Liz Female White 52 Rachel Female Black 18 Jill Female White 18 Michelle Female Black 49 Edward Male White 25 Patty Female White 25 Bob Male White 25 Karen Female White 58

Authors’ Note

A prior draft of this article was presented at the 2008 annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society in Richmond VA.

Acknowledgment

The authors appreciate helpful input from participants at the 2008 annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society in Richmond, Virginia, as well as thoughtful

926 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 26(5)

comments from Sarah Becker, Bill Bankston, and Dana Berkowitz. Special thanks to Emily Berthelot, Le’Brian Patrick, and Shaun Thomas for conducting interviews and Julia D’Antonio for transcription.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed that they received the following support for their research and/ or authorship of this article: The data collection for this study was funded in part by a seed grant from the Office of Research and Economic Development at Louisiana State University to Matthew R. Lee.

Notes

1. Appendix B provides demographic characteristics of the sample along with pseudonyms used in the presentation of participant responses below.

2. The vignettes also switched gender roles at the end and asked participants if they would answer differently if the person deciding to commit the violence were a female. Interestingly, participants did not differentiate on gender as the values model suggests they would.

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Bios

Matthew R. Lee is a professor of sociology, provost fellow in the Office of Research and Economic Development, and the coordinator of CAPER, the Crime and Policy Evaluation Research group at Louisiana State University. His scholarly interests are the structural and cultural sources of violence. His recent research has appeared in Criminology, Journal of Research on Crime and Delinquency, Social Forces and Social Problems among other places.

Graham C. Ousey is the Arts and Sciences distinguished professor of sociology at The College of William and Mary. His current research interests include the macro- social link between immigration and crime, the reciprocal relationship between criminal offending and victimization, the utility of cultural explanations of violence, and theories of offending across the life course. His previous research has appeared in a variety of outlets, including Criminology, Social Problems, Social Forces, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency and Journal of Quantitative Criminology.