Neighborhood Wisdom: A Localized Version of Street Knowledge

• In Event: Navigating Risky Spaces: Tacit Knowledge in the Neighborhood, Prison, on the Beat and Online

Abstract

There is a dearth of criminological research on the characteristics, scope, and value of street knowledge in assessing threats and mitigating victimization in dangerous spaces. The few studies that do exist (Anderson, 1990; Stuart, 2016) suggest that, once acquired, street knowledge is useful in a wide range of socio-spatial settings, moving with individuals as they traverse uncertain public terrain. Drawing on two and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork in Lawrence Heights, one of Canada’s largest and most notorious social housing developments, I challenge this assertion by introducing the concept of “neighborhood wisdom” – a locally oriented, place-based form of street knowledge. Based on in-depth interviews and participant-observation with young men from a community battered by gun violence, I show that street knowledge is actually geographically bounded and finite – i.e., its value in helping individuals reduce risk and avoid victimization is largely limited to the particular space from which it emerges, exists, and operates. This more nuanced and localized concept calls for a change in the way that scholars interpret the value and limitations of street knowledge for vulnerable populations on the ground, thereby adding deeper insight into patterns of violence and victimization for those living and/or operating in dangerous environments.

Author

• Luca Berardi, University of Alberta