Youth Conflict and Control in High Schools

Youth Conflict and Control in High Schools

PIs: Calvin Morrill (Berkeley Law; Director, Center for the Study of Law and Society) and Michael Musheno (San Francisco State University and Distinguished Affiliated Scholar, Center for the Study of Law and Society)

Funders: Multidisciplinary Initiative on Conflict Management and Center for Urban Inquiry, Arizona State University; Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Institute and Morris K. Udall Center, University of Arizona; School of Social Sciences and Center for Organizational Research, UC Irvine; Dean of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Fund, San Francisco State University; Center for the Study of Law and Society, Berkeley Law

This project uses a multiethnic high school as a strategic case in which to investigate how youth handle everyday conflict amidst changes in criminal justice and school control policies. Based on more than a decade of qualitative (ethnography, in-depth interviews, narratives and visual representations) and quantitative data (police call and demographic data), we find that students primarily handle conflict peacefully, but that policies (e.g., “safe schools” and “zero tolerance”) aimed at tight control of everyday youth activities and movements on campus can unintentionally increase the conditions for violent and racially-charged conflict.

Products of this Project to Date:

Adelman, Madelaine, and Sang Hea Kil. 2007. “Dating Conflicts: Rethinking Dating Violence and Youth Conflict.” Violence Against Women 13: 1296-1318.

Adelman, Madelaine, and Christine Yalda. 2000. “Seen but Not Heard: The Legal Lives of Young People.” POLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 2: 37-58.

Bejarano, Cynthia L. 2005. ¿Qué Onda? Urban Youth Cultures and Border Identity. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.

Morrill, Calvin, Christine Yalda, Madelaine Adelman, Michael Musheno, and Cindy

Bejarano. 2000. “Telling Tales in School: Youth Culture and Conflict Narratives.” Law & Society Review 34: 521-566.

Morrill, Calvin, and Michael Musheno (with Cynthia Bejarano, Christine Yalda, and Madelaine Adelman). 2008. “‘Brown on Brown’: The Institutional Conditioning of Racial Conflict in a Multiethnic High School”. Paper presented at the Law & Society Association Annual Meetings, Montreal.

Morrill, Calvin, and Michael Musheno (with Cynthia Bejarano, Christine Yalda, and Madelaine Adelman). 2009. “Compartmentalized Fluidity: Negotiating Race in a Public High School”. Paper presented at the Law & Society Association Annual Meetings, Denver.

Morrill, Calvin and Michael Musheno (with Cynthia Bejarano, Christine Yalda, and Madelaine Adelman). Makin’ it Work: Youth Conflict and Control in a Multiethnic High School. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (under contract)

Yalda, Christine A. 2003. Just Kids? The Role of Legality in Governing a Public High School. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, School of Justice Studies, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona.