Facing Violence: Everyday Risks in an American Housing Project.

Many manage risks of urban violence through constructing of no-go areas--not so the residents there. How do they manage risks of violence? This paper approaches this question through the concepts of risk and (dis)trust of Sztompka (1999) and within a framework of disadvantage in a 'matrix of oppression' (Collin 2000). Based on ethnography, the paper asks how people experience risks of 'street violence' and 'personal violence', how they manage them, and how their discourses about it relate to institutional discourses of how to solve problems of violence. I show that violence is being accepted and rejected in their specific relation to identity enhancement and respect within a context of intersecting forms of oppression along lines of race, class and gender. Through a discourse of fate, residents tell that violence concerns the wider context of stigmatization and exclusion--which does not match with the approach of local institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]