The ecological context of interpersonal violence: from culture to collective efficacy

This brief essay outlines the progression over the last 20 years of ecological theories of interpersonal violence. The period between the present and the early 1980s began with a revival of cultural explanations of violence that paralleled the introduction of the neo-conservative social science and then witnessed a rediscovery of deficits based structural explanations of interpersonal violence under the broad rubric of social disorganization theory. The essay concludes with a more optimistic appraisal of recent refinements of social disorganization theory that consider the mediating effects of collective efficacy on urban crime and interpersonal violence.