Neighborhood Wisdom: An Ethnographic Study of Localized Street Knowledge

This study received ethical approval from the Research Ethics Boards at the University of Alberta and the University of Toronto.

While the names of participants are pseudonyms, the name of the neighborhood is not. This was a decision made in conjunction with community members. It is also in line with other urban ethnographers who have protected the identity of participants while identifying their research sites for purposes of transparency and replicability. See, for example, Duneier (2006), Vargas (2016), and Venkatesh (2000).

I use the terms neighborhood wisdom and ’hoodwise interchangeably throughout the article.

For some, like residents of Lawrence Heights, this might be the neighborhood; for others, it might be a block or street corner within a neighborhood. This largely depends on individual patterns of mobility and knowledge of the social and spatial environment.

Despite being separate constructs, studies sometimes conflate “street knowledge” and “street codes.” Admittedly, both can be acquired through socialization and help people navigate the uncertainties of everyday life. Yet, the former functions as an interpretive lens that exists within the individual; the latter serve as sets of informal rules of behaviour that exist socially (i.e., outside of the individual).

TCHC is the second largest provider of social housing in North America. RioCan is Canada’s largest real estate investment trust, which focuses exclusively on retail real estate.

Official data from TCHC on resident composition are not publicly available.

Most shooting victims are not fatally wounded (Lee 2013). Of those who survive, some treat their own wounds and do not report the incident to police (Goffman 2014). I was personally aware of such a case in Lawrence Heights, where a gunshot victim had his leg-wound cleaned and packed by friends in the laundry room of an apartment building. Thus, my count likely under-estimates the actual number of cases where somebody was struck by gunfire. Moreover, this does not include cases where perpetrators shot into the air or into the homes of residents, but did not wound anyone.

The media has racialized this moniker. Many local residents and stakeholders, however, have embraced the moniker and use it in everyday parlance.

Victims and perpetrators of gun violence in the City of Toronto, more broadly, cut across racial, gender, and socio-economic lines.

Neptune is an adjacent housing project that is less than a two-minute drive away from Lawrence Heights.

Not surprisingly, even residents outside this demographic were uneasy about the prospect of violent victimization. Some of the women and non-black men I spoke with (including senior citizens) voiced concerns about becoming “collateral damage” in these neighborhood beefs—e.g., being struck by a stray bullet or having their house shot-up in the process of a drive-by. Yet, most also conceded that this was unlikely to occur. Indeed, when prompted, residents and police were unable to recall any victims who were outside the demographic of young, black, and male. Albeit beyond the scope of this analysis, it is also worth noting that a number of women I spoke with voiced concerns about other fears and risks, particularly around harassment, sexual violence, and other forms of abuse.

Those outside the demographic of young, black, and male are not compelled to adopt or apply neighborhood wisdom within the boundaries of Lawrence Heights (at least as it pertains to gun violence). These individuals (women, seniors, children, and non-black men) are not the targets of gun violence in the community and, thus, the social environment has not necessitated the adoption of such a hyper-localized form of street knowledge.

This typically occurs to “innocent individuals.” In Lawrence Heights, ’hoodwise residents use this term to refer to victims of gun violence who have little-to-no knowledge of neighborhood beefs. In some respects, this group is similar to the “decent” folks outlined in Anderson’s (1999) Code of the Street. Members of both groups tend to exist outside the world of interpersonal and community-level conflicts. They are, to some degree, aware of the realities of their social and spatial milieu but prefer not to get mixed-up in “street” life. The “decent” individuals in Anderson’s (1999) study avoid victimization by acquiring a cursory understanding of the “code of the street” and then “code switch” their way through dangerous situations (flipping from “decent” to “street” and back again). Unfortunately, street knowledge is less malleable and more difficult to feign. Unlike the “code of the street,” which hinges on social interaction and is thus largely performative, “neighborhood wisdom” exists internally, within the individual, and hinges on one’s personal knowledge and mastery of the local environment. Consequently, those without it cannot “fake it” and, indeed, would gain little protective value from posturing as though they had it.

This can be taken as an example of what Bourdieu calls “hysteresis.” Shammas and Sandberg (2016, 17) describe this as a “situation where the structure of habitus lags behind the conditions of the objective world.” Thus, Jonathan and Raynard may have possessed an “inappropriately calibrated” habitus (Bourdieu 1990, 62)—one attuned to danger and risk in Chalkfarm and Rexdale, but not to Lawrence Heights.

See Wacquant (1992) for discussions on “territorial fixation” that emerges from advanced marginality.