From the streets to the ring: street habitus, combat sports and youth violence intervention

• In Event: Cultural Criminology 1: Youth Subcultures, Identities & Resistance

Abstract

Recent scholarship on street-oriented youth in violent urban settings has increasingly drawn on the Bourdieusian concept of street habitus to examine how individuals adopt and utilize street cultural dispositions in response to marginalization and exclusion. However, less attention has been given to community-based youth violence interventions and the role of bodily practices in these efforts. This paper contributes to these debates by analyzing how combat sports training serves as an effective tool for engaging at-risk youths. Based on an 11-month ethnographic study as a volunteer combat sports coach at a gang prevention project in Vantaa, Finland, I argue that while such training cultivates alternative attitudes and behavior through the social regulation of violence, it does not address the structural conditions of exclusion that drive youth toward street violence. By examining the intersectionality of class, ethnicity, and gender in embodied transformations, this article highlights both the possibilities and limitations of combat sports as a violence prevention strategy.

Author

• Juuda Tamminen, University of Helsinki