Jacked Up and Unjust: Teens Confront Race, Gender, and Violent Legacies

Talk by Dr. Katherine Irwin (Assoc. Professor, Sociology) and Dr. Karen Umemoto (Professor and Chair, Dept. of Urban and Regional Planning), University of Hawaii Manoa on their recent book, 'Jacked Up and Unjust: Teens Confront Race, Gender, and Violent Legacies.'

Since at least the 1980s, researchers have been keen to explain the structural causes of youth violence and, more often than not, they have tended to place economic inequalities and neo-liberal politics in the center of their analyses. As a result, racial and gender inequalities have been sidelined in our theories. When conducting an ethnographic study of youth violence in Hawai‘i, the historic role of racialization and race-based injustices in the U.S. came to the fore in youth’s narratives. Also, structures and beliefs supporting male domination reigned as central themes in girls’ and boys’ lives. In this presentation, we broaden current perspectives of youth violence by combining insights about racial formation in the U.S. circulating within colonial theories with theories of patriarchy from feminist criminology. To explain the youth violence that occurred in this study, we outline how violence can be seen as a response to a long history of racial inequality and deeply embedded patriarchal systems in the U. S. nation state.

Ticket Information
FREE & OPEN TO ALL

Event Sponsor
Women's Studies Department, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Vijaya Perumal, 9567464, vperumal@hawaii.edu

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