“Divergent Social Worlds” reflects a culmination of the in depth study of the linkage of race, place and crime. The book brings into light new aspects and advanced analytical approach to research on the cyclic problems of neighborhood, race, and crime. The authors explore and answer lingering questions of how violent and property crimes differ across neighborhoods that are composed of different ethnic and racial clusters.
The authors begin by postulating an operational theory of the ethnic and latitudinal distribution of crime by enunciating a broad variety of sociology theories; physical race theory, communal disorganization theory, and theories of suburban separation. The authors contend that a key operational mechanism by which cultural orders have been replicated in America is suburban isolation.
In turn these have led to racial spatial divide in which racial-ethnic minorities find themselves compelled to the bottom strata and the privileged whites find themselves at the top strata. This unequal stratification has led to social disparities in which led to the creation of varying interests located in distinct neighborhoods, ultimately leading to unequal rates of crime.
The book has integrated this theoretical perspective meticulously and combined information from urban sociology, criminology, racial and ethnic stratification. Mainly throughout its skeletal body, residential segregation is the major factor that connects the overall racial order with dramatic racial and ethnic differentials in crimes across communities.
Theoretical integration is achieved by the book as it reinforces the complex intertwine of social and institutional inequities that better place white neighborhoods in contrast to those of the African American, Latino and other arrays of neighborhoods. Intrinsically, segregation is the backbone of divergence between the social world of people in the United States in relation to color and as to why neighborhood crime is so radicalized.
Empirical evidence has been brought out by the authors in order to substantiate their theoretical claims. They test their theoretical claims using data from the National Neighborhood Crime Study (NNCS), where they compiled crime and related data of about nine thousand six hundred neighborhoods in approximately ninety-one large cities in the year two thousand. The large database created an unlimited and unbiased source of information, which made it easier to identify the relation between race, place and crime in the United States.
Previous research was conducted in a single city and thus by cutting across different cities, Peterson and Kivro have been able to explore how these patterns of neighborhood crime vary across communities of different races. In the initial analysis, they document how crime rates differ significantly across neighborhoods that consist of different ethnic and racial groups.
The book clearly illustrates the dramatic nature of the racial-spatial divide and helps us fathom how entrenched social and economic disparities in America’s neighborhoods are. In subsequent analysis, they outline the magnitude to which differences in relative advantage and disadvantage are sources of unequal crime rates across the various types of neighborhoods. They use multivariate models to examine both neighborhood and city characteristics as indicators of crime rates.
The book lays to rest the prevalent misunderstanding that persistently high crime rates in less privileged societies is as a result of individual ethical decadence or pathologies or worse a culture of group criminality.
The book exonerates the people living in impoverished societies of the earlier misconceptions of crime activities in these societies and brings to light the silent externalities that are a key factor to molding these societal inequalities. The book tends to close the gap for organizers, policymakers and future researchers and creates an insight in these cyclic issues.