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  1. Abstract Based on more than four years of ethnographic fieldwork and a dataset of 189 violent encounters, this article explores the social phenomenology of physical fights in a novel setting. Although American sociologists have traditionally depicted violence as a distinctively “ghetto” phenomenon, the members of this sample were overwhelmingly white and affluent. Since the usual explanatory background factors-race, poverty, and neighborhood-cannot adequately account for their violent experiences, the dataset is especially valuable for analyzing the generic interactional processes through which physical fights unfold. Furthermore, the article suggests a model that runs counter to the prevailing sociological perspective that violence is universally motivated by independent, preexisting conflicts. Oftentimes, the sample members set out to “get into” fights for their perceived experiential rewards and only later instigated disputes as a means to motivate and justify violent action. Using the method of analytic induction, the article presents a generalizable theory of how fights unfold in interaction. Three stages were necessary for achieving a fight: (1) agreeing to fight as a solution to a challenge to “interpersonal sovereignty,” (2) transcending the ordinary fear of violence, and (3) using competitive techniques of violence. Keywords Interpersonal conflict . Violence . Crime . Youth culture . Ethnography . Social phenomenology Watching from a safe distance, physical fights can appear inhuman and animalistic, group fights especially. It can be hard to tell who is fighting whom, much less why. Arms swing and heads bounce. Projectiles fly. People run around frantically. And the noises-sounds one never knew humans could make. Everyday language aptly conveys this sense of chaos and disorder. Fights are called “free-for-alls,” “dust-ups,” and “knock-down, drag-out brawls.” They “erupt” and “break out,” like forces of nature, as if beyond the limits of social order-a view sustained by many psychological and biological theories of violence, and only rarely challenged by sociologists.What to make of these beasts with four-fists? Looking more closely, fights are prime sites for studying what is most human about humans: social interaction that is thoroughly meaningful and organized at each moment (Blumer 1969; Garfinkel 1967; Goffman 1967; Katz 1999; Mead 1934/1962; Schutz 1962). To contribute to the sociology of interpersonal conflict and violence, I document a theoretically strategic phenomenon: physical fights in a sample of overwhelmingly white, suburban, affluent youth. My sample members defined a “fight” much as the broader culture does: a stretch of serious competitive violence (Jackson-Jacobs 2009).1 This definition served as both an interpretive lens for defining situations and also a practical guide for organizing action (Garfinkel 1967; Polanyi 1958; Sacks 1967–1968/1992; Schutz 1962). In the cases I describe, members specifically meant to do their violence as fights-rather than, say, unilateral beatings-thus constructing themselves as competitive opponents rather than sadistic predators. American sociology, like popular culture, tends to depict youth violence as a distinctively “ghetto” phenomenon. Since the background factors usually presumed to cause violence are absent in my sample, the data are strategically valuable for highlighting the general process of constructing physical fights in face-to-face interaction. Thus, following the tradition of “interactionist” studies of violence (especially Katz 1988; see also Collins 2008), I seek an explanation that lies closer to and within the moments of violence. Although I make general claims about fighting, I report evidence from a single ethnographic study for two reasons. First, I report on this sample to debunk the perspective that violent youth cultures are exclusive to contexts of poverty. Second, I present the evidence as an empirical contribution to the comparative backdrop of studies that have described qualitatively similar fights across race, class, and gender lines, and in diverse neighborhood, institutional, historical, and geographical contexts (e.g., Anderson 1999; Athens 1997; Brown 2010; Collins 2008; Conley 1999; Farrington et al. 1982; Garot 2010; Gorn 1985; Hagedorn 1988; Horowitz and Schwartz 1974; Jones 2010; King 1995; Monkkonnen 2001; Polk 1999; Sanders 1994; Short and Strodtbeck 1968; Tomsen 1997; Winlow and Hall 2006). In the spirit of analytic induction (Znaniecki 1934), grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967), and the comparative method (Ragin 2008), my purpose is to highlight what is common across contexts without losing sight of what is unique. Whether fights occur in settings such as those I describe or in impoverished, workingclass, or “gang” contexts, the actors often pursue them as an opportunity to experience thrilling “action” (Garot 2007a, b; Katz 1988, chap. 4; see also Goffman 1967), to “test” or demonstrate one's emotional and violent skills (Brown 2010, 186; Garot 2007a; SanchezJankowski 1991), and to achieve the narrative payoffs and prestige of storytelling (Collins 2008; Jackson-Jacobs 2004a; Katz 1988, chap. 4; Morrill et al. 2000). To be sure, there are differences in the interactional repertoires for provoking fights, the ways violent emotions are generated, and the bodily techniques of violence across contests and categories of actors. Gang members may challenge other youth by demanding to know the other's affiliation (Garot 2007a, 2010). Young men and women living in impoverished urban neighborhoods may be particularly sensitive to how their violent performances will affect the “respect” they receive from their peersWomen may be more likely than men to tear clothing, pull hair, and strike each other open-handed rather than with closed fists (Jackson-Jacobs 2011). Yet these variations fall within the more generic process of socially organizing fights that I describe below. Since fights involve mutual combat by definition, I analyze the fight as a fundamentally collective phenomenon. I outline three individually necessary and collectively sufficient stages in the process of organizing a fight-an explication of the fighter's tacit knowledge about how fights work. The model below constitutes a causal “recipe” in two senses (Gasking 1955): in Schutz's (1962; Schutz and Luckman 1973) sense of the practical knowledge used to create a fight in interaction, and in Ragin's (2008) sense of the conditions used to construct a sociological explanation. To construct and sustain a physical fight, opponents must do the following: 1. Agree to solve a mutual challenge to “interpersonal sovereignty” with a fight. Whatever the substantive matter, disputants must transform a conflict into a challenge to sovereignty over the self-that is, the right of autonomy over body and identity, and the responsibility to defend one's selfhood. To achieve this definition of conflict, disputants must come to feel provoked by ritual or “remedial” matters rather than simply substantive offenses (Goffman 1971). Implicitly or explicitly, disputants must agree to resolve the crisis of selfhood with a fight. 2. Transcend the ordinary fear of using violence. In ordinary interaction, virtually everyone feels considerable tension and fear in anticipation of using violence. Overcoming the “confrontational tension/fear” (Collins 2008) that surrounds violence is not simply an individual phenomenon. Instead, it depends on the disputants creatively exploiting situational resources, often in collaboration with audience members. To transcend fear, disputants must provoke one another to reinterpret the immediate present as an urgent “last chance” crisis-one requiring violence right now. 3. Use competitive techniques of violence. Not any violence will do. To sustain a fight, it must be performed competitively. Standard competitive bodily practices include making one's own body vulnerable, fighting back-and-forth, and stopping upon victory. Not only do my sample members' socioeconomic backgrounds rule out various explanations of their violence, but the interactional process itself also demands a refinement of theory. Prevailing theories portray violence as universally motivated by conflicts that exist prior to and independent of the violence (e.g., Black 1983, 1998), a notion premised on the view of conflict as motivated by objectively contradictory interests (see, e.g., Schelling 1960). It would be too simplistic, and often inaccurate, to describe conflict as the precipitating cause of fights in my dataset. In many cases, members went out “looking for a fight” before any conflict had begun or any opponent been selected. In every case, however, establishing conflict was a necessary ingredient in constructing the motivation to fight. Furthermore, generating the necessary emotions was not simply a psychological phenomenon, but an interactional achievement (Katz 1999). Fighters do not simply get angry and “lose control,” but instead collectively provoke violent emotions in one another (compare to Berkowitz 1989; Dollard et al. 1939; Freud 1907/1959; Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990; Wilson and Herrnstein 1985). Finally, the bodily practices of competitive fighting challenge the notions that conflict and cooperation are incompatible and that the intent of violence is exclusively to dominate or harm (see also Conley 1999; Labov 1972; Lee 2009; Luckenbill 1981; Pagliai 2000; Simmel 1905/1955

     

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