Urban schools are often associated with violence, chaos, and youth
aggression. But is this reputation really the whole picture? In
Navigating Conflict, Calvin Morrill and Michael Musheno challenge the
violence-centered conventional wisdom of urban youth studies, revealing
instead the social ingenuity with which teens informally and peacefully
navigate strife-ridden peer trouble. Taking as their focus a
multi-ethnic, high-poverty school in the American southwest, the authors
complicate our vision of urban youth, along the way revealing the
resilience of students in the face of carceral disciplinary tactics.
Grounded in sixteen years of ethnographic fieldwork, Navigating
Conflict draws on archival and institutional evidence to locate urban
schools in more than a century of local, state, and national change.
Morrill and Musheno make the case for schools that work, where
negative externalities are buffered and policies are adapted to
ever-evolving student populations. They argue that these kinds of
schools require meaningful, inclusive student organizations for
sustaining social trust and collective peer dignity alongside responsive
administrative leadership. Further, students must be given the freedom
to associate and move among their peers, all while in the vicinity of
watchful, but not intrusive adults. Morrill and Musheno make a
compelling case for these foundational conditions, arguing that only
through them can schools enable a rich climate for learning,
achievement, and social advancement.
