Tim Krueger

            The cover article of Sunday’s New York Times Magazine explores the mechanics of a new approach to gang conflict on Chicago’s south side, in doing so weighing the logic behind regarding violence as a sort of virus.  Alex Kotlowitz explains how Gary Slutkin, the architect of CeaseFire in Chicago, plots out a strategy that is informed by his experiences managing diseases like Cholera and HIV.  The idea behind the organization is that violence also spreads through social networks, one incidence fueling others by way of the human desire for retribution.  Efforts to prevent violence should therefore be aimed at the points of probable transmission, in effect containing the violence.  As with a disease, the earlier one can isolate the source, the less likely something menial is to spiral into an epidemic.

            Slutkin and his colleagues in Chicago’s CeaseFire have thus decided to use their combined cerebral map of the city’s social networks as the canvas for their violence-prevention strategy.  The logic here is impeccable; it moves beyond older approaches that are ideologically inspired and lack focus, and it puts to use the intellectual capital that is probably the group’s greatest asset.  Yet really, the group is attempting to harness Chicago’s social network for two opposite objectives.  As the title suggests, the Violence Interrupters play an anti-diffusion role, blocking the spread of the violence that might otherwise spread outward.  At the same time, however, they try to catalyze a positive diffusion throughout those networks, offering alternative constructs of masculinity to those they visit.  That is, to convince likely vengeful individuals not to escalate conflict, the CeaseFire workers need to provide a set of masculine norms that doesn’t contradict such behavior.  The hope is that this alternative masculine construct will spread in exactly the same manner that violence would have.  The extent to which Slutkin envisions his organization as pursuing this positive diffusion is unclear; while he raises issues of behavior-spreading as central to dealing with violence and other epidemics, he seems to regard the organization’s relationship to social networks as an inherently interjectory one.

            The distinction between these two opposing goals is important for a few reasons.  First, it provides the potential for a self-perpetuating cycle, or behavioral cascade.  When the group only works to retard the spread of something, it is always fighting an uphill battle.  With the chance of offering its own behavior for diffusion, it might be able to craft a long-term plan that does not always depend on the presence of such an organization.  The success of such a cascade, it seems, would depend on whether alternative constructs of masculinity are diffusing at a higher rate than violence is perpetuating.  If not, the prospects of a sustained counter-masculinity are dim.  In the article, this concept of underlying fragility plays out in the constant fear of relapse among the Violence Interrupters.  And on a broader scale, the extent to which a successful cascade might breach the boundaries of Chicago depends largely on the social linkages between Chicago and other cities, and the level of exposure needed for such behavior to spread.

Second, the diffusion-encouraging mission might imply different strategies than the violence-intervening approach alone.  For instance, instead of simply targeting individuals recently affected by violence, the organization might target the most socially embedded norm-setters regardless, and peddle their new-masculinity there.  This would mean contacting a different set of individuals, but might be associated with more effective or efficient results for the norm-spreading objective.  And as in the question of a potential cascade, it might be found that these two type of diffusion have different thresholds for catching on, again possibly necessitating different strategies for each.

            Also, an assessment of a neighborhood’s social density might have implications for which of these two goals might find more success.  In the presence of incredibly dense social networks, it might be difficult to locate and quickly intervene at all of the points to which retributive behavior is likely to take hold.  However, in such an instance, it might be possible to locate a small number of people who are densely linked to large numbers of others, and who therefore might be effective positive norm-spreaders.

If spreading norms for alternative masculinities can only be achieved in the context of potential violence, it may not be possible to fully disaggregate these two tasks.  It does seem that they do not always go hand in hand though.  In one instance when a Violence Interrupter mediated a brooding conflict by paying a gang leader $300, it surely seems that the negative role was achieved without mitigating any conceptions of masculinity.  If nothing else, mere conceptual differentiation between these two roles might have implications for whether or not it makes sense to use women as Violence Interrupters.  While women may be able to successfully mediate conflict, it seems less likely that their forte would be in constructing and spreading norms of masculinity.

In fact, this point probably hits at the heard of any success CeaseFire has had at either goal.  It seems clear that both roles have depended upon the organization’s capacity to attract individuals who are themselves well-linked within these social networks.  Defining the concept of “insider,” and determining whether there exists any difference in this term for the organization’s negative-diffusion positive-diffusion roles, may shed light whether or not those two tasks can or should be disaggregated.