ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes different solutions to the representational exploitation dilemma and focuses on the recommendations made by researchers wanting to advance nonexploitative work when examining violence in young people’s lives. There have been at least three approaches that criminologists and urban ethnographers forged when attempting to avoid sensationalist, derogatory, and oppressive qualitative work. The aim of contemporary double consciousness work on crime and violence studies is to reveal the multidimensionality of study members’ experiences with a number of different oppressions, especially racism and racialization. Crime, violence, hyper-policing, and incarceration are just some of the experiences that affect large segments of the American youth population. The chapter offers a review of some of the methodological debates regarding exploitation in ethnographic work on the topic of youth violence. It provides insights about how to marshal many types of resources to open opportunity structures and create fundamental changes that can empower adolescents.
