Contacting with violent patterns and violent peer and students violent drift an application of edwin sutherland’s differential association theory

Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 3, No (2017) 562-572 Contacting with Violent Patterns and Violent Peer and Student's Violent Drift: An Application of Edwin Sutherland’s Differential Association Theory Nguyen Thi Nhu Trang* Abstract: Applying Edwin Sutherland's Differential Association theory, this article attempts to explain the conditions facilitating student violence in Hanoi‟s high-schools Data for this article was collected through participant observation at a high-risk school in Hanoi, in-depth interviews with different stakeholders, and self-administered questionnaire survey at three high-schools Results support differential association propositions that contact with violent patterns and having aggressive peers increase students' drift toward violent solutions Some illustration of the mechanism in which contact with violent pattern and peers encourage students to resort to violence, and further discussion on the application of differential association theory in the context of Vietnam are also presented Keywords: Contact with violent patterns; student violence; differential association theory; Edwin Sutherland; Hanoi-Vietnam Received 21st September 2017; Revised 12nd October 2017; Accepted 30th October 2017 Introduction* In a search for identifying social factors conducive to school violence, Edwin Sutherland‟s differential association theory was applied in this study to establish an understanding of how violent conducts were learnt and spread Before presenting this theory, it is necessary to acknowledged that violence, as other types of social deviance, is not a repercussion of the operation of one single social factor Instead, it is a result of concurrent operations and interactions of several social factors discussed in several theories of deviance such as anomie, labeling/stigmatization, social learning, and opportunities to break the law, just to name a few It is hence impossible to provide a full explanation of school violence in particular and social deviance in general It is also difficult to pick out certain theories For about a decade, school violence has become an alarming issue in Vietnam, since video clips of student fight have been continuously uploaded onto the internet and mass media regularly kept reporting serious violent incidents between students which resulted in permanent injury or even death Despite parental concern and effort from both schools and government authorities, research also documented that school violence still occurred quite rampantly and seriously and hence a need for the understanding why school violence has become so widespread and this problem is still present (Nguyen Thi Nhu Trang 2016) * VNU-University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ha Noi, Viet Nam; email: maiphivn@yahoo.com 562 Nguyen Thi Nhu Trang / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 3, No (2017) 562-572 among such a profuse source to thoroughly explain school violence However, given that the subject of this research are adolescents, this study searches explanation for their resorting to violence in social force that has the greatest impact on adolescents according to lifespan theorists, namely peers Hence, this study borrows arguments from Differential Association Theory (DAT) by Edwin H Sutherland (1974) to explain how interaction with peers might facilitate and propagate violent solutions among students Briefly, Sutherland's differential association theory explains deviance at both the individual and societal level At the individual level, it argues that deviance is bred from an individual's close associations with deviants, which exposes the person to and hence makes him liable to absorb definitions and patterns favorable to deviance At the societal level, this theory claims that the high rate of crime is a result of the way society is organized, allowing patterns and definitions favorable to crime to be spread Applying Sutherland's differential association theory to the interpersonal level of reasoning, this study examines how patterns and definitions favorable to violence spread via (1) association with violent peers and (2) witnessing violent peer confrontation are linked to students‟ violence drift This article will first briefly introduce Different Association theory and its nine propositions, and hence results on how association with violent peers and witnessing violent peer confrontation relates to students‟ violence drift Lastly, it discusses some implications for applying 563 DAT in general and applying it in the context of Vietnam Differential Association theory Sutherland did not write a great deal to present his theory of differential associations, but his theory has made notable contributions to deviance theories He points out essential criteria for constructing a theory explaining the causes of social deviance, and he provides a theory that serves to explain deviance at different levels and one that is testable in empirical studies The vital principle Sutherland proposes for constructing a scientific explanation for crime is that „the conditions which are said to cause crime should be present when a crime is present, and they should be absent when a crime is absent‟ (Sutherland and Cressey 1978: 189) Normally, theorists often look for factors „present when a crime is present' and hardly pay attention to the corollary, i.e if the crime is absent if these factors are absent Thus, existing theories of crime mostly address predictors of crime rather than the causes of crime In an attempt to propose a general explanation for crime, Sutherland formulated nine propositions explaining how crime is caused Briefly, these propositions claim that crime is learned via association with delinquent persons By associating with delinquents, individuals gradually learn values, norms, motivations, rationalizations, and techniques of committing a crime What they learn will be translated into action when an opportunity presents itself However, not everyone who has the association with delinquents will become delinquent The likelihood of becoming 564 Nguyen Thi Nhu Trang / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 3, No (2017) 562-572 delinquent depends on the state of this association (that is why Sutherland called his theory the differential association theory) Differential associations have a differential influence on an individual's behavior The more intimate the association is, the earlier in life the association starts, the more intensive and frequent the interactions, the more likely people having an association with delinquents are to learn to commit a crime and engage in crime Applying Sutherland‟s differential association theory to the study of violence, his nine propositions can be outlined as follows: - Violent behavior is learned People not invent violence; rather, they learn it from their close associations - Violent behavior is learned in interaction with other persons in a process of communication Through daily interpersonal interaction, not violent video games or movies and lifeless things, violent behavior is propagated - The principal part of learning violent behavior occurs within an intimate personal group This means that the closer people are with violent individuals, the more likely they will be to learn violent behaviors - When criminal behavior is learned, the learning includes (a) techniques of committing violence, (b) the specific direction of motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitude - The specific direction of motives and drives is learned from definitions favorable to violence - A person becomes violent because definitions favorable to using violence override definitions unfavorable to using violence This is the principle of differential association Students resort to violence because of their contact with violent patterns and (emphasis added) because of isolation from anti-violent patterns Much of our experience is, in fact, neutral (i.e neither pro-violence nor anti-violence) such as studying or walking This neutral experience is important as it occupies a student's time so that chance for engaging in violence is reduced - Differential associations may vary in frequency, duration, priority, and intensity - The process of learning violence by association with violent and anti-violent patterns involves all of the mechanisms that are involved in any other learning Thus, learning violence is not simply a process of imitation - While violent behavior is an expression of general needs and values, it is not explained by those general needs and values, because the non-violent behavior is also an expression of the same needs and values For instance, some students may resort to violence in order to assert their social status However, desire for higher social status is not the cause of violence, since it also explains the effort put forth to reach an excellent level of academic performance Since its publication, Sutherland's differential association theory has received both praise and criticism This theory is valued in that its explanatory sphere is quite large Given the fact that no single theory is able to explain every type of crime, the differential association argument is praised for its explanation of broadly varying observations, more so than any existing theory, as claimed by Cressey (1960) It is also highly appreciated for highlighting the idea that an effective explanation of human behavior is consistent with explanations of epidemiology, as mentioned at the beginning of this section However, some of the concepts used in this theory are criticized for being somewhat vague and Nguyen Thi Nhu Trang / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 3, No (2017) 562-572 difficult to be operationalized for empirical tests, such as definitions of „excess' or „favorable to' and „unfavorable to' Besides, the differential association theory by Sutherland is also criticized for oversimplifying the complex and diversified process in which deviant behavior is learned (Cressey 1960) However, when applied to empirical tests, the differential association argument appears quite effective in explaining deviance In a study of how broken homes affect delinquency among black and nonblack youth, Matsueda and Heimer (1987: 826) found that „in both populations, the effects of broken homes and attachment to parents and peers are mediated by the learning of definitions of delinquency, a finding that supports differential association over social control theory.' Heimer (1997) specifically pointed out that association with violent peers influenced violence indirectly through its impact on the learning of definitions favorable to violence Consistent with the findings of Matsueda and Heimer (1987) and Heimer (1997), Hoffman (2002) also found that those who hold conventional definitions are less likely to be involved in delinquency; yet, he noted that the impact of definitions varies across urban communities, suggesting that theories need to be developed with more attention to specific contextual processes More recently, the study of Haynie and Osgood (2005) also supported the differential association arguments, showing that adolescents tend to engage in delinquency if they are associated with delinquent friends or if they indulge in a great deal of unstructured socializing with friends In sum, research has provided evidence supporting differential association arguments, mainly with regard to the effect on the delinquency of association with 565 delinquent peers and learning definitions favorable to delinquency Following this proven-to-be-effective line of explanation, this study seeks explanations for the overwhelming use of violence among high school students in Hanoi based on students' contact with violent patterns and association with aggressive friends Research method and key concepts Three main research methods were applied to collect data for this study, namely participant semi-structured observation, indepth interviews, and self-administered questionnaire survey First, participant semi-structured observation was conducted in a high school in Hanoi Researcher played the role as volunteer full-time school social worker for one school year Beside daily fieldwork diary, an observation table was used to record some patterns of interaction between students and their significant others as peers, homeroom teachers, and parents During observation, 24 in-depth interviews were made with students (students who witnessed their peers‟ violent confrontation, those who resorted to violence and those victims of violence), teachers, school superintendents, parents, and civil defense officials At the end of data collection period, a self-administered questionnaire survey was conducted at three public high schools in inner districts of Hanoi (Ba Dinh, Dong Da, Cau Giay), with the participation of 604 students selected by simple random sampling technique The number of questionnaires collected was 560, response rate reached 92.7% Two hypotheses derived from Sutherland‟s DAT was developed to 566 Nguyen Thi Nhu Trang / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 3, No (2017) 562-572 establish the correlation between students‟ violent drift and their contact with violent patterns and peers Hypothesis 1: Exposure to violent patterns increases students‟ violent drift Hypothesis 2: Association with aggressive peers positively correlates to students‟ violent drift Student violent drift is a scale measuring how far students are involved in and committed to violent solutions This scale is composed of three items, including (1) have you ever been involved in a violent confrontation with other student(s) in your school in the previous school year; (2) Have you ever given your friend a hand in their fight against other students in the previous school year; and (3) Thinking of your most recent violent clash, if you could live your life again, would you participate in that fight? The higher the score indicates a higher degree of students' violent drift Exposure to violent patterns was measured via the students' frequency of witnessing their peer's violent confrontation at school Students were asked to report their frequency of witnessing (0=Hardly witness; 1=Sometimes per semester; 2=Sometimes per month; 3=sometimes per week; 4=Nearly daily) six types of school violence, ranging from verbal violence to physical violence using lethal weapons The higher the score students got, the more exposed to violent patterns they are Association with the aggressive peer(s) was measured by a variable of how many friends of student have been involved in school violence in the school year prior to the survey The higher the score student got, the more they are associated with violent peers Students’ contact with violent patterns and peers and their involvement in school violence It is argued in this study that the more students witness other students resorting to violence to deal with peer conflicts, the more likely they will be to apply violent solutions to handle their own peer conflicts Hence, we first present how frequently students at research sites witnessed violent confrontations between their peers 4.1 Rate of students who witnessed violent confrontation between their peers The following figure shows the percentages of students who witnessed one or more violent student incidents in their school during the school year prior to the survey in the three sampled high schools in Hanoi Generally, witnessing rate is significantly higher than the victimization rate Overall, up to 90 % of survey respondents reported that they witnessed violent conducts on the part of peers in the school year prior to the survey, whereas the overall rate of students who were victims of violence is 46.8% Nguyen Thi Nhu Trang / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 3, No (2017) 562-572 567 Figure 1: Rates of witnessing violent incidents during the school year prior to the survey, by types of violence (Source: Nguyễn Thị Như Trang 2017) As shown in above figure, swearing and humiliating is the most common violent behaviour observed among students on the research sites 85.7% of survey respondents reported they observed such violent verbal confrontation between their peers Not surprisingly, fighting with weapons is the least observed among six types of violent behaviors However, it's alarming that the rate of students who witnessed such serious violent incident as fights using weapons1 is remarkably high (27.2%) Another alarming fact showing the prevalence of weapon use in violent confrontation between high school students in Hanoi is that up to 33.3% of survey respondents reported that they did witness a student or a group of students using weapons to threaten another student(s), even though most of them observed this type of violence at a low frequency (sometimes per semester) Only a small percentage reported that they observed this type of violence at a Weapon in this study was defined as arms that might cause dangerous injury or death such as knife, sword, metal stick Things students sometimes use in a fight but not likely to result in serious injury or death such as a book or wooden ruler were not counted as a weapon higher frequency (sometimes a month) However, this rate suggests that students are being exposed to contact with serious school violent incidents Interviews with students provide the same indication „Yes, I did [see a fight where a weapon was used] Last semester a boy in my class pressed a knife into another boy to threaten him But he just wanted to threaten; he dared not anything else I know him; his truculence is just on the surface He dares not anything, even if you paid him a lot.‟ (Girl, grade 12, academic performance: Average) I myself also saw students using knives at school during the field study at the research site Once, when I was talking and eating some fruits with a group of schoolgirls before their class, a boy came and asked if we needed a knife to cut the fruits Before we answered, he stuck an old kitchen knife on our wooden table The girls laughed and reacted as if it was a petty joke and the presence of the knife was nothing at all: they continued talking and ignored the knife on the table Another time, a 10thgrade boy quarreled with a group of about to boys from another class in the corridor 568 Nguyen Thi Nhu Trang / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 3, No (2017) 562-572 during recess Suddenly he took out a knife and angrily threatened his opponents Fortunately, his classmates, both girls and boys, held him back and took the knife away from him so nothing serious happened between the two angry sides Some 12thgrade boys told me that „many‟ students, especially boys, brought weapons to school, some to protect themselves and some only to show off It is not sure what „many‟ means, but it is sure that weapons were sometimes brought to the high school where I conducted my fieldwork Even though this type of violence is less serious than physical fighting in terms of instant physical consequences, using a weapon to threaten others portends potential very serious consequences to both the one who threatens and the one who is threatened The former will be immediately expelled from school if his conduct is discovered, while the latter faces the danger of being seriously injured or even killed That may be the reason why the rate of students who witnessed threats using a weapon is much lower than those who witnessed physical fighting (33.3% and 67.3% respectively) The rate of students who witnessed physical fighting in the school year prior to the survey is only lower than the rate of students witnessing their peers using foul language and humiliating one another (67.3% and 85.7% respectively) It is remarkable that the frequency of witnessing physical fighting is also quite high Up to 14.5% of respondents reported that they witnessed physical fighting sometimes a month and 42.3% witnessed it sometimes a semester „I have seen [student fighting] a few times [in the last school year], but I don‟t know any of them [those who fought] Reasons for fighting are varied They [the students] may even beat someone up just because s/he looks unfavorable to them Jealousy is also a popular reason.‟ (Girl, grade 12, academic performance: Good) It is also noteworthy that the rate of students who observed student fighting where weapons were used is quite high (27.2%) Notably, up to 20.9% of respondents reported they saw fighting using weapons at a frequency of sometimes a semester This rate significantly contributes to the notion that some students are being exposed to the contact with serious violent incidents in school settings In summary, it was found in the survey that the rate of students who witnessed student violence in the school year prior to the survey is very high In other words, the proportion of students who are exposed to violent patterns is quite large A question then emerges: Does this fact bear a relationship to the rampant resorting to violence among high school students? Regarding the association between a student's witnessing violence and subsequently getting involved in violence, data shows that the two variables are positively correlated (Pearson's r= 336, p