This book tells two interrelated stories about youth confl ict at a diverse,
high- poverty public high school in the urban American Southwest. We
ground these stories in sixteen years of ethnographic fi eldwork, as well as
archival research that historically locates the school in more than a century
of local, state, and national change. These unusually long time horizons
give us a unique window onto both the lived experience of youth confl ict
and the changing school contexts and control practices in which it unfolded. The fi rst story challenges the conventional, violent- centered focus
in most studies of urban youth confl ict, revealing the social ingenuity with
which teens informally and peacefully navigate potentially strife- ridden
peer trouble. The second story tells a tale of resilience in the face of administrative changes to assert carceral- like school control practices, aligned
with the national “safe schools” movement, which interrupted, but did not
destroy, the very historic capacity for social trust and fl uid peer relations
across diverse groups that made campus peace possible. Taken together,
these narratives offer the framing for what we call a “trouble perspective”
on urban youth confl ict