The following is a sample chapter of my dissertation research: Mapping new(er) connections in a premature place: A case study on youth (dis)connection, mobilities, and the city. (Doctoral dissertation). Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY.

Abstract: Using qualitative and case studies methods that included conducting an online survey, this study examined school-to-work and neighborhood mobilities and the roles social media and digital technologies play in young people’s information-seeking practices. This work addresses conceptions of youth and connection by examining the mobilities of young people ages 18 -24-years-old living in New York City with limited educational and financial resources. In this study, mobilities referred to the physical, geographical, and virtual movements of young people, and recognized the term as a conceptual tool for understanding how young people’s identities are shaped through sociocultural practices. This dissertation presented both broad and in-depth perspectives on how and in what ways young people who are commonly referred to as ‘disconnected' move with, encounter, assemble, and suspect within and among familiar spaces. The premise of this work stated that ‘disconnected youth’—young people 16-to-24-years-old, not working and not enrolled in school—are far from disconnected. As with most young people, participants involved in this study confronted issues such as barriers to enrolling in and attending school, maintaining stable work, and neighborhood conflicts that tended to produce unstable work, school, and neighborhood conditions. A sense of urgency arises among policymakers and community advocates to remedy and mitigate instabilities and uncertainties without careful consideration of how and in what ways young people move among school, work, and neighborhood spaces, and how they make sense of place. As a result, the response from governing and educational institutions has often been to intervene so as to mitigate these instabilities. This response points to pervasive acceptance, particularly among institutions and agencies that states because young people are not working, not in school, and have seemingly weak ties to family supports, they are not labored enough, not educated enough, not adult enough, and in turn, economic liabilities. Therefore, I considered the discourse of youth disconnection as constituting a single story of young people’s lives, one in which this dissertation study directly challenged.

Chapter VI

NEIGHBORHOOD: GROW UP AND WATCH OUT

In Chapter V, I presented Eddie’s story of school. I also illustrated the ways in which social, digital, and mobile technologies enhanced school information-seeking practices for some young people living in New York City. Recall that for Eddie, school mobilities constituted a process of switching and stalling, wherein the switching of institutions, often and sometimes at the discretion of people several degrees removed from Eddie, precipitated periods of stalled activity and progress in his educational experience. Eddie moved within bounded spaces and structures of school, confronting challenges like often transferring to different schools and traveling long distances to the physical site of school. Eddie was fixed in mobility (Jackson, 2012); he moved, often by reorienting himself, but only to wind up stuck trying to figure out how to keep up with conventions of doingschool in the city. 

Recall the opening vignette of the dissertation when I illustrated Eddie standing on the corner of Thomas and Vice avenues. All at once, Eddie encountered people and the typical accouterments of urban dwelling like cars and busses that passed by. He was exposed to physical sites that surrounded him like the bodega on the corner, the school across the street, and the unmarked surveillance vehicle one block away. He watched as people consumed, lurked, and observed their surroundings, all while he too was being watched. I stood across the street staring at Eddie listening to music on his iPhone. I watched others pass him by. I observed the street cameras near the telephone polls directly in sightline view of where Eddie stood. I thought about the surveillance cameras a few blocks away canvassing Eddie’s home at Thomas Housing projects. I wondered at what point during Eddie’s journey home would those cameras document his movements and record his expressions. I also wondered about the ways in which Eddie was read, like information, not only by human actors but also by nonhuman actors, like surveillance technologies.

Throughout this chapter, I detail Eddie’s encounters of growing up and watching out—a perspective on social surveillance that I describe in further detail in the sections that follow—in Weeksville. Both Eddie and Derek have been for most of their lives exposed to aspects of urban dwelling such as policing and criminal activity that influenced how they understood their proximity to others in the neighborhood. To characterize encounters in Weeksville, I apply Marwick’s definition of social surveillance but depart from its meaning somewhat. I describe social surveillance as digitally and non-digitally-mediated social practices that entail interpersonal, peer, and institutional encounters, and constitute the day-to-day realm of young people living among hyper-connected, demographically-shifting, and racializing settings. Social surveillance is an aspect of daily life for young people that I observed which also shaped their understanding about the places they live and work, and the spaces they created and inhabited.

In the following sections, I focus primarily on Eddie’s story of the neighborhood, and the theme, grow up and watch out. Similar to Eddie’s story of school, the theme, grow up and watch out describes Eddie’s encounters in the neighborhood and how he moved accordingly. I begin by documenting Eddie’s story of growing up in Weeksville and how he perceived conflict and relations to others. While interviewing Eddie and Derek, I learned that encounters in the neighborhood often led to both young men expressing suspicion about peers and near dwellers. I also present survey data and follow up interviews with Eddie and Derek that illustrate how peer surveillance plays out online and via social media. The chapter ends with Eddie’s story of a neighborhood characterized by unresolved tensions in the community and shifting demographics. For Eddie, Weeksville is a place where he watched and was watched by others. It is also a place that shaped Eddie’s outlook and where he believed he would eventually leave behind in order to move forward.

Social Surveillance

This chapter sits in conversation with broader discourses on institutional surveillance, yet it also considers the ways in which young people navigate interpersonal and peer encounters of watching and being watched, or what scholars refer to as social surveillance. It is important to note at the onset that this chapter does not take up broad issues of surveillance such as national and international military, government, and corporate surveillance practices. Rather, this chapter focuses on young people, in various moments of life, growing through the city. I document young people’s perceptions and encounters of being watched and of watching others online and offline around Weeksville. I also recognize that by my presence as researcher and observer, I too acted as a surveillant throughout the study.

Institutional Surveillance

At the time of this study, circumstances around institutional surveillance and policing practices in New York City provided a rich context to what would eventually become an ethnographic account of youth and connection. Two years before I began observations at Café Connect, community activists and the New York City Council brought forth four bills, together named the Community Safety Act (Communities United for Policing Reform, 2012) in response to a legal policing practice called Stop-and-Frisk. This policing practice allowed New York City police officers to stop, question, and frisk citizens under reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. Citizens targeted under this policing practice were disproportionately identified as African American, Latino, Hispanic, Afro-Caribbean, whose skin color colloquially bound them together under the moniker of black and brown men.On August 12, 2013, a federal ruling by Judge Shira Scheindlin deemed the New York City Police Department’s Stop-and-Frisk policies unconstitutional. Also during this time, the NYPD “embarked on a novel new approach” to deter youth criminality by making repeated drop-ins at home, around the neighborhood, and by way of tracking young people’s social media activity on sites like Facebook (Ruderman, 2013). One year after Stop-and-Frisk was ruled unconstitutional and while young people were being surveilled on social media, a forty-three-year-old Black man from Staten Island named Eric Garner died after being held in a chokehold by a New York City police officer. Eric Garner’s death in New York City amassed national attention and further ignited the social, and largely youth-led movement called Black Lives Matter. 

Indeed, I arrived at this study during a moment of intense police scrutiny and conflict in New York City and around the United States. It was also during this time that I observed young black and brown men like Derek and Eddie weary of police intervention and as a result they were on the lookout. That said, police surveillance, was not the only type of monitoring that characterized Derek and Eddie’s encounters of watching and being watched. 

Peer and Interpersonal Surveillance

            Jackson (2012) and Trottier’s (2012a, 2012b) work on youth peer surveillance and interpersonal surveillance, respectively, inform this case study particularly as it concerns how Derek and Eddie perceive surveillance practices among peers and near-dwellers. Jackson’s work focuses on surveillance and homeless youth in London, and Trottier’s work highlights university students’ perceptions of monitoring, lurking, and other uses of Facebook in Canada. This work accounts for how both digitally and non-digitally mediated relations play out for two young men of color living in an increasingly surveilled neighborhood of Weeksville, New York. 

Both peer and interpersonal surveillance involve mutuality; however, for this research, I distinguish the former from the latter slightly. I employ the term peer surveillance to describe observations during which Eddie and Derek were surveilled by, and surveilled others who were most familiar to them and shared similar social and cultural practices. I also use the term peer surveillance to signal the ways in which Eddie and Derek read others throughout physical territories. That is, territoriality was determined by physical turf, or where Eddie and Derek lived, worked, and hung out around Weeksville. During walking interviews, Eddie and Derek talked about certain blocks to avoid because of conflicts with their peers in the neighborhood. Similar to Jackson’s accounts of young people that described this type of peer surveillance and territoriality as ‘stupidness’, Eddie and Derek described peer conflict in the Weeksville as “nonsense.” But even though Eddie and Derek expressed territoriality as trivial, they were affected by these “highly personal [and] imagined boundaries” (Jackson, p. 731). 

Characterized by power, hierarchy, and reciprocity, social surveillance encompasses both interpersonal and peer surveillance and “demonstrates the effects of domesticating surveillance practices on day-to-day life and interpersonal relationships” (Marwick, 2014, p. 379). Marwick (2014), Joinson (2008), and Tokunaga (2011) apply social surveillance within the context of digital, electronic, and social media environments. These applications of social surveillance are notable in the field of media studies and surveillance; however, they do not account for (and reasonably so) the sociality of surveillance in non-digitally mediated spaces. I accept Marwick’s characterization of social surveillance, deriving from (Joinson, 2008; Tokunaga, 2011), and expand on its application to include non-digitally-mediated social systems.

While observing Eddie and Derek in Weeksville, for instance, I noticed that being watched and watching out occurred online and offline. Just as survey participants reported using Web 2.0 sites daily like Facebook (51%) and Instagram (42%) to find out what friends and family were up to (see Appendix A), Eddie and Derek were also watching and be watched by others, including peers and family members while dwelling in the café, around Weeksville park, among unmarked police cars and cameras, and inside Thomas Houses. As Marwick (2014) notes, “[t]echnically mediated communities are characterized by both watching and a high awareness of being watched” (p. 379). However, a heightened awareness of being watched not only characterizes technically mediated communities, but also, and as I observed in Weeksville, non-digitally mediated communities. Eddie often alluded to being watched and watching out as a result of unbalanced political power structures in Weeksville (further illustrated in Chapter VII: Leave Behind). These structures or set[s] “of articulated political relations or assemblages” around, among, and tethered to Eddie are what Weheliye (2014, p. 19) refers to as racializing assemblages.

Hyperaware and Over-policed: Racializing Assemblages

As discussed in Chapter II, racializing assemblages capture the place of race in assembling social formations. Weheliye’s (2014) work intervenes in theoretical explanations on the formation of power and biopolitics, primarily via Foucault, which tend to de-racialize human bodies. Eddie was aware of his body in proximity to others like police officers and peers in the neighborhood. Though Eddie never mentioned race explicitly, he talked about inciting police attention through visual and verbal expressions in public view. During an interview on April 27, 2015, Eddie characterized his encounters with police officers most notably.

Eddie: I just don’t like cops. It’s like they treat us like animals […] They just be harassing everybody in the neighborhood, especially me. I don’t know why I’m always harassed by cops. I hate it. I be trying to keep my composure  but they treat me like I’m a felon or something. Felon? Don’t treat me like that!

Eddie, an embodied actor, was also part of a political system in Weeksville wherein he was routinely considered a threat, a suspect, and an “accelerated apprentice” of law enforcement (Fassin, 2014). Weheliye (2014) argues that political systems have memories that view black and brown bodies through the lens of racial slavery, colonialism, Jim Crow, and imprisonment. As a conceptual tool for understanding social formation, radicalizing assemblages offers a framework to locate young men like Eddie and Derek as part of a subset of political processes wherein they are considered threats to white supremacy and capitalist advancement (p. 41). Young men like Eddie and Derek, both of whom occupy spaces in a socioeconomically transitioning neighborhood and a militarized and policed country, are among “a generation of suspects by the merging of market fundamentalism, consumerism, and militarism” (Giroux, 2010; p. 12).

Fassin’s (2014) ethnography of urban policing in France characterizes the experiences of black and brown youth similarly through the concept of interpellation, or the phenomenon that describes how subjects “internalize the representations they are given” vis–à–vislaw enforcement. Fassin writes: “The brutality of the arrest, the harshness of the language used, the lack of any justification for the use of physical restrain, the powerlessness they felt in the face of omnipotence of law enforcement created a sort ofaccelerated apprenticeship” (pp. 7-8).  As Eddie and Derek wandered Weeksville under routine police surveillance they were hyper aware of being watched. 

During a follow-up with Eddie on April 27, 2015, he elaborated on an encounter with the police when shooting a music video with friends.

Tara: What happened last night?

Eddie: [The police] came out of nowhere. Like nowhere! Me and my friends were shooting a video. They come out of nowhere like with some nonsense. Like we weren’t doing nothing. We put it on ourselves but still like--

Tara: What do you mean you put it on yourself?

Eddie: We put it on ourselves as a community.

Tara: What do you mean?

Eddie: We just—we make it worse for ourselves.

Tara: In what way?

Eddie: By creating more violence, more street violence. As a community there’s too much violence going on. So, at the same time I understand where [cops] are coming from but I don’t like how they treat us. Everybody ain’t the same.

Eddie in particular learned how to recognize and avoid encounters with police officers and, in so many ways, became accelerated apprentice of law enforcement through interpellation; that is, by accepting that his community is in part responsible for unprovoked police interventions.

Visual modes like posture and gait, for instance, code Eddie in ways that read him as a brown urban male, a “genre of man” (Weheliye, 2014, quoted on p. 23) that must be carefully observed for deviant acts and criminal behavior. When Eddie expressed feeling as though he was treated like an animal and a felon by law enforcement, his words signaled to a long history of maltreatment and (mis)characterizations of black and brown men, regardless of class status, in the United States. Racializing assemblages considers the visual modality of race as a tool for social grouping, discipline, and dehumanization, which plays out within and among a cacophony of actors in city dwellings.

For this research, social surveillance best characterizes encounters of socializing and dwelling within and among online and offline environments. Whether Eddie or Derek walked along Thomas Avenue, stood on the corner, sat on a bench in Weeksville park, or paced back and forth behind the café counter while browsing social media feeds on their cell phones, they were exposed and always-encountering sites and sights. 

Grow Up

“I Learned Too Fast.”

When I spoke with Eddie earlier on during the study, it was the first time I was able to get a sense of Eddie’s perception of home life growing up in Weeksville. My first interview with Eddie took place at Café Connect on March 28, 2015. I asked him what he thought success looked like. Eddie shared with me what he hoped to be able to pass down to his future children. 

Eddie: I ain’t say I grew up in bad conditions. I just don’t want my kids to grow up in this type of [neighborhood]. I learned too fast. I learned too many things too fast. I didn’t listen. I just want my kids to have everything I never had, basically. To be able to access anything they want. Anything they want. I just want them to be smart and make smart decisions.

Tara: Book smart, street smart, both?

Eddie: It can be both. I just want them to be smart and like no stressing. I don’t want any stress in my kids’ life. Like they won’t have to worry about anything. I’m gonna have a great relationship with they mom, type of stuff. I don’t want my kids to grow up in a house where they always arguing, cause that’s what I saw when I was growing up. They always arguing. I just want them not to be corrupted by problems that happened in the house. Cause that can cause a lot of depression in a kid. Like stuff that goes on in the house reflects who you are outside your house. You don’t even want to be outside of your house. 

Eddie hinted at conflict in the home and implied that because of what he confronted at home, he dealt with bouts of depression. Though Eddie’s psychological and mental health issues are beyond the scope of this study, it is worth noting that Eddie mentioned on a few occasions growing up in an unstable and sometimes volatile household. 

Later in the study, on May 8, 2015, Eddie talked about using marijuana at an early age as a way to cope conflict in the home.

Eddie: When I got this job [at Café Connect]. I just wanted to make money. I just wanted to make an honest living. I just wanted my money to be clean.

Tara: What does that mean? What does wanting money to be clean mean?

Eddie: Cause I used to sell drugs. Sell weed to get money.

Tara: How old were you?

Eddie: I was fifteen.

At various points in Eddie’s life, like throughout school for instance, he felt stalled in his circumstances. According to him, it was because he learned too fast that he still felt stuck in rigmarole characterized by violence, drugs, and unemployment, conditions that Weeksville produced.

While talking about growing up in Weeksville, Eddie often made observations according to how he perceived his relation to others that lived and worked nearby. I gathered that Eddie saw himself through others, as evident during an encounter with a younger boy in the neighborhood. During that first interview with Eddie at the café on March 28, 2105, I asked about how working at Café Connect has changed the way he saw himself and the neighborhood. In the middle of responding, Eddie stopped to look out the window at a young boy he knew walking into the café. “That little man right there,” Eddie said to me. “He lives in Thomas [Houses] like me. So he being raised a little gritty [rough]. You see how he just looked at me?” The little boy stared at Eddie a few seconds before nodding his head. Eddie said to me, “Watch him come in here stuntin.”[1]

Eddie told me that when he was a kid he would spend a lot of time outside of his home and in the streets. As a result, Eddie learned how to carry himself in ways that protected him from outside threats around the neighborhood. During observations Eddie, just like the young boy we saw at the café, was always aware of others watching him. Through the young boy, Eddie saw himself as a kid growing up in a rough neighborhood. He also saw a young boy that he felt responsible to look after and defend. I asked Eddie if he thought that being “raised a little gritty” would negatively impact the young boy in the future. Eddie reassured me, “Nah, he’s a good kid.” 

Hip-hop music influenced how Eddie often expressed growing up and learning fast in Weeksville. It is this particular genre of music and cultural descriptor that Eddie spoke through; it moved Eddie physically (recall the opening vignette in Chapter I) and engendered an imagined space of place to which Eddie strived. Because of this, it is worth highlighting the words and music that shaped Eddie’s world in Weeksville. These expressions also characterized Weeksville itself. 

In late December 2014, while sitting with Eddie in the café, a song called “Blessed” played on a satellite radio station. At first listen, the beat sounded empty. Then it filled with heavy, hard beats, punching rhymes, and a ghostly whimper in the background. Featured on the track was a final verse by hip hop artist, Kendrick Lamar. Lamar grew up in Compton, California and spent time living on Chicago’s south side. He often rhymed about violence he witnessed while living in overcrowded and poor neighborhoods. Eddie and I sat in the café nodding our heads, stopping only to listen to Lamar’s final verse. Eddie rapped in sync with Lamar’s flow, accentuating the first line of the song. This line, “livin’ in a premature place” would inspire the title of my dissertation. 

Livin' in a premature place - wait

Never grow to see the pearly gates - break

Every time a bullet detonate - dates

Of obituary carry crates of a scary picture

With a family member that relate to ya

In December you was finna pin another case

On your record in a stolen Expedition, play it safe

As the record spinnin' you was hearin' angels entertain

Every pun intended, that was wicked, comin' from your brain

Recognize you listened and you didn't hit the block again

That's because the minute after you had knew you would be slain

Open up another chapter in the book and read 'gain

Story of a gun-clapper really tryna make a change

Everybody ain't (blessed my nigga)

Yes, my nigga, you're blessed

Take advantage, do your best, my nigga

Don't stress, you was granted everything inside this planet

Anything you imagine, you possess, my nigga

You reject these niggas, that neglect, your respect

For the progress of a baby step, my nigga

Step, step my nigga

One, two, skip, skip

Back, back, look both ways

Pull it off the hip

Blast at anybody say that you can't flip

This crack into rap music every other zip is a track

Get used to it, get it off quick

Come back, give back to the city you've built

That's that, don't trip, see money, fuck niggas, dawg

It ain't nothin' but a bunch of fuck niggas dawg

In a minute everybody gon' be winnin'

Put a little faith in it then recognize that we all [blessed].

 Despite the bleak picture Lamar paints while living in a place much like Weeksville, he ends the verse on the belief that progress, no matter how stuck one feels in a situation, is possible. When the song faded, Eddie turned to me.

Eddie: You know what I think [the song] means?

Tara: What?

Eddie: [Kendrick Lamar] is talking about how young people in the hood are forced to grow up fast.

Eddie’s insight about the song and about his connection to Lamar’s verse stuck with me. Months later on September 3, 2015 during a follow-up interview outside of the café, I asked Eddie what he meant when he told me that Lamar was rapping about young people in the hood forced to grow up fast. Eddie told me, “We're exposed to too many things too early.” I asked him to elaborate.

Eddie: Like when you grow up and see people smoke weed and drinking liquor, you just think about it. Like when you experiment with something. That's how I started smoking weed. Liquor was always around because my parents always drank. It always starts at home. What your parents teach you and what your parents do around you. So I was exposed to a lot of different stuff young. It probably would've been different for me but I don't bash my parents about it because it's just how things are. You feel me? That's what I mean when I say we exposed to too many things. There's too much corruption around us. Parents don't try to corrupt us. That's not what they trying to teach us. They try to teach you one thing, and tell you 'don’t do this,' but they do everything that they teaching you not to do right in front of you! You can't do that.

Anytime Eddie mentioned home life, he mostly talked about his mom. Though he did not go into too much detail, and although I was not present to observe his home life and his interactions with his mom, Eddie did indicate that the relationship was strained. 

Midway through the study on May 8, 2015, I asked Eddie to complete an ecomap adapted from McCormick’s model (2005). In the first section of the ecomap, Eddie illustrated the relationship with his mom by drawing a jagged line between his name and his mom’s name (see Figure 3). The jagged line indicated a conflicted relationship. I asked Eddie to talk me through the first section of his map. 

Eddie: Our relationship is like—she makes me mad sometimes. I don’t really talk to her much because she’s part of my stress. I don’t stress that much. But I say she’s my support because—I don’t know. I just want her to be proud of me. Make her happy. That’s why I say she’s my support. She motivates me. She motivates me to make her happy. I don’t know. I just want to be different from my brothers. None of my brothers finished school. I finished school. She’s never happy though.

Tara: Why do you she’s never happy?

Eddie: She’s still not happy. But it’s okay.

Tara: Why do you think that is?

Eddie: I don’t know.

Tara: How do you know she’s not happy?

Eddie: I just know. I know my mom ain’t happy. My mom ain’t been happy in a long time.

Tara: Do you feel comfortable talking to her?

Eddie: It's not that I don’t feel comfortable. We just don’t have nothing to talk about. She grew up a different way than how I grew up. She raised me but, I don’t know. She’s just different.

Tara: So where’s the tension?

Eddie: I don’t know. I just don’t—I don’t know. I never really had a relationship where I could just talk to her. I just used to do my own thing because I used to have stress at home, and I’d leave home so I could get high. I just didn’t want to be in the house.

Eddie rarely mentioned his father. He only mentioned his dad once throughout the entire study and that was only in passing. Padre was the primary father figure in Eddie’s life. Eddie told me that he could talk to Padre about anything, “about girls, about anything!” he said. Eddie also mentioned that Padre was a mentor to him, “he has the maturity to tell me what’s wrong and what’s right” Eddie told me. Based on our limited conversations about home life, I did not get the impression that Eddie held his parents in the same regard as he held Padre. The words and expressions, both verbal and gestural, that Eddie used when he would talk about his relationship with his mother were distinctly different from those he used to discuss his relationships with Padre; in the former, his voice was terse, and in the latter, Eddie was moved and at times even appeared buoyed by his own words.

To Eddie, growing up in Weeksville constitutes the many ways he was exposed to people, places, and different ways of interacting within and around the neighborhood. Eddie felt that these exposures forced him to grow up too fast. He believed that the mistakes others made in his life caused him to make poor choices as an adolescent and young adult. Early on, he had to confront physical conflict with peers at school and in the neighborhood. At home, he was exposed to activities and interactions between adults that influenced the way he learned how to cope with conflict, and just as Lamar rapped about, the ‘stress’ brought on through family and interpersonal relationships. Eddie considered that perhaps if had he not been exposed to these conditions, if he had not been socially connected with certain people while growing up, then maybe things “would’ve been different.” Though past encounters at school, at home, and in the neighborhood might have prevented Eddie from smoking and selling marijuana at fifteen years old, he also learned how to observe and watch (out for) others in the neighborhood. I learned later that Eddie believed, just as Lamar rhymed, that despite growing up too fast as a result of encountering people and neighborhood conditions, there was still a way out of Weeksville.

Watch Out

“I Move Like a Grown Man”

Eddie often talked about conflict he encountered while growing up with other kids in the neighborhood. He mentioned several times during walking and sit-down interviews that he used to get picked on a lot as a kid. During a walking interview with Eddie and Derek on June 14, 2015, Eddie spoke candidly about getting beat up by kids that eventually became his friends. 

Eddie: Yo, these kids in Thomas they used to pick on everybody. I swear to God! Like where I was raised at, Thomas Projects, there was this group of kids that used to pick on everybody.

Derek: Mostly kids from the school.

Eddie: Yo, they used to pick on me OD [too much], son! That’s crazy. Like dudes that became my friends later on went to the same public schools as me and I didn’t know them.

Eddie: I remember when they put me under the desk one day. I don’t know. I was running from them. They always used to jump me bro. And I never used to tell my mom. And I still know them niggas to this day. I know this one dude named [redacted]. Yo, bro. He used to beat me. Yo, boy I remember one time he punched me in my lip and I gotta bruise on my life! You know how hard you gotta punch somebody to bruise they lip? How you get a bruise on your lip? You gotta punch somebody super hard.

Eddie also told Derek and me about the time when he was set up by one of his classmates that lived next door to him. According to Eddie, his classmate stole a teacher’s purse and blamed it on him. When Eddie denied it, his classmate punched him in the face.

Eddie: And then one day somebody amped him up [encouraged] to punch me in my face and fight me. He punched me. He punched me mad hard! I dare him to do some shit like that now! Like I just be seeing him. He got respect for me. Now he just be ‘Yo, boy you got mad big boy!’ I’m like ‘Yeah!’

Derek: Try that now! 

Eddie: I dare you!

Derek: Snap! [Derek makes a snapping sound with his fingers].

As Eddie and Derek talked about the confrontation, Eddie made it a point to distinguish his past from the present. Eddie told us that he no longer gets picked on because he was bigger and stronger. The same guys that used to pick on him as a kid, do not bother him now that he is a young man. Eddie spoke differently about interactions with the guys he grew up with, reminding Derek and me that he was no longer the same slim Eddie that posed like a bodybuilder on Instagram. Derek, however, still encouraged Eddie to be on guard.

Eddie: I still be saying what up to them because I grew up with them. So it’s like there’s no real animosity towards them. I just know you used to do that. You feel me? Now you see that I’m big, we gonna have respect for each other. But don’t go there with me ever again cause it’s gonna get crazy.

Derek: You supposed to give a pound [touch fists], and when they try to let go, you hold them. Pull ‘em in, and be like—

Eddie: I won’t do that cause he already know!

Derek: Nah, you think he already know but you still gotta let people know!

Eddie: Bro, trust me bro, he knows because I’m older now. He sees how militant I move. He don’t be watching me. He just knows how I move.

Derek: You gotta be watching him if he know how you move.

Eddie: You’re not gonna do that cause I’m grown now.

Over the course of the study, Eddie mentioned growing up, or some variation of the term, thirteen times. He associated the act of moving safely in his neighborhood with physical strength, stature, and older age. The stronger, taller, and older he was, the less threatened he felt by peers he encountered in the neighborhood. 

While sitting in front of the café with Eddie during a follow-up interview on September 3, 2015, I asked him what he meant when he said ‘He sees how militant I move.’ In the exchange below, Eddie recalled again the time when he was beat up by a classmate, and drew a connection between moving and growing up.

Eddie: Like you can tell a lot from a person in how they act. I think I was talking about a certain person that used to pick on me. He used to punch me in my face and bruise my mouth up when I was younger. He used to do dumb shit. Like one day, I was at my window and he would throw rocks at my window. I was basically scared of him. But he see how I move now. He sees that I got a little weight on me now. When I see him I say 'what up'. Because I grew up with him, in the back of my head I knew he used to pick on me. I know that he thinks twice. He probably say in his head, 'Oh, nah. I can't do that with him now because he might violate me.' I just move in a certain way towards people that used to pick on me. I know you used to pick on me when I was younger so just know that I remember. You feel me?

Tara: You say that you move a certain way. How do you see yourself moving a certain way?

Eddie: I'm nineteen and the way I move, I move like a grown man.

Tara: What does that mean?

Eddie: I don't know. I don't act like a little boy. I have my times that I act like a little boy but people look at me and think that I'm older than what I really am. I'm only nineteen. That's why I say I move like a grown man.

I looked at Eddie, as he sat across from me on the bench outside of CaféConnect, and observed the way he carried his body through gestures and speech. I wondered where these ways of holding his body--of rising his chest and deepening his voice when he spoke about no longer being afraid--would fall in the spectrum of masculine movements between boyhood and manhood. Eddie’s description of moving differently according to changes in time and in physical stature reinforced the idea that Eddie’s world, as he sees and narrates it, is constantly being mediated by people he encounters.

During a similar conversation with Derek on September 10, 2015, I asked him to elaborate on what he meant when he told Eddie “you gotta be watching him if he know how you move”. In the exchange below, Derek expressed suspicion and illustrated how peer surveillance, the mutual exchange of watching and being watched between those most familiar, played out in Weeksville.

Tara: What did you mean by 'You gotta be watching him if he know how you move.'?

Derek: If he knows how you move, then you don't want him to be watching your every move. So you gotta keep a close eye on him, if he knows your every move. Like how they say, 'keep you friends close, keep your enemies closer'. So basically, that's what I meant when I said that.

Tara: Gotcha. And do you find that you have to do that yourself around here? Watching how you move?

Derek: Yeah. Especially around here. Yeah.

Tara: Is it in the same way you refer to when talking about Eddie?

Derek: Oh, no. Just in general.

Tara: Who do you watch out for? What are some of the things that you look for?

Derek: Like, say for instance, if one of my friends knows somebody that I don't know, and I don't feel too comfortable around him, or if I feel a certain vibe around him, like I don't like them or I feel like they sneaky or they up to something, I'll keep my distance. But as a good friend, I watch my friend being a friend to that person.

Both Eddie and Derek were suspicious of peers that posed a threat in Weeksville. Overtime, Eddie perceived these encounters less threatening than when he was younger because, as he put it, “I move like a grown man.” He was always aware that he was being watched, even as a young boy. However, as a young man, he carried himself differently in ways that communicated to his peers he was no longer afraid of physical harm. Despite the evolution of Eddie’s posture in the neighborhood, Derek continued to be suspicious about people he was less familiar with and who might pose a threat to his friends. These were offline encounters that characterized peer surveillance. In the section that follows, I present online (via social media) encounters wherein Eddie and Derek remained watchful. 

Peer Surveillance and Social Media

Peer surveillance in Weeksville bares some resemblance to peer surveillance online via social media. However, in this study, the difference between online and offline peer surveillance had to do with who was watching and being watched. Offline, peer surveillance was characterized by suspicion towards those who posed a threat to personal safety while dwelling in Weeksville, whereas online (via social media) peer surveillance was characterized mostly by suspicion about romantic partners’ social media activity. When Eddie or Derek talked about watching and being watched online, they spoke about encounters with their girlfriends on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Eddie and Derek’s concern around peer surveillance online was supported by those surveyed for this research. When it came to social media activity, overall participants expressed more concerned about peer surveillance when it came to romantic relationships than in the context of police monitoring.

In follow-up interviews with Derek and Eddie, they told me why they were most concerned about someone posting negative information about them on social media. On April 27, 2015, Derek spoke about concern over content on social media being used against him.

Tara: You also said that you are extremely worried that something you post on social media will be used against you. Has that ever happened to you? Or are you just worried about it? 

Derek: Just worried about it.

Tara: Why?

Derek: Because like my girlfriend, for example, I’ll post a good morning post, and she’ll use that against me. Like I’m flirting with everybody on Facebook! I’m just granting everybody a good morning. God gave them another day to wake up. That’s all I’m doing.

Derek later told me about surveilling his girlfriend’s Facebook page after they broke up. She blocked Derek from accessing her profile. 

During a walking interview with both Derek and Eddie on June 14, 2015, Derek admitted to surveilling his ex-girlfriend through a variety of digitally mediated practices, including creating a secondary Facebook page.

Derek: She told me that she needed a break. So I told her, ‘alright’. I’ll go. I see she blocked me on Facebook. Blocked me on Instagram. And now, just when we got off work, I called her phone, it went straight to voicemail. When I go home, I’m a try to contact my girl. I got one last option: my secondary Facebook. She ain’t block me on that one. If I write her on that one she gonna remember and say, “Oh I forgot he had two Facebooks!’ Then she gonna block that one. Then I’m a be out of options! Then I’m gonna have to turn into a creep and go to her crib. Follow her around.

Tara: Don’t do that.

Eddie: That’s a super creep.

Derek: I’m tryna avoid that! I don’t wanna do that.

Trottier (2012) distinguishes between creeping and stalking on Facebook. Creeping, according to Trottier, is “a more involved and targeted way of using Facebook […] it is a function of perusing Facebook, using the site in a way it was intended [that] leads to the prolonged scrutiny of others’ information” (p. 324). To creep in this context involves similar meanings. Through one interpretation, Derek creeped on Facebook in the way Trottier explains above. He also creeped offline to pursue his girlfriend, who at the time of the interview was uninterested in being pursued. Whether Derek was hiding from his ex-girlfriend on Facebook, then pursing her again on a secondary page, these forms of creeping characterize peer surveillance throughout mediated contexts.

Eddie also reported concern that someone would post negative information about him on social media. Similar to Derek, Eddie was worried that his girlfriend would see what he posted online. On March 28, 2015, Eddie and I talked about his concerns:

Tara: You indicated that you are somewhat worried that someone will think bad things about you because of what you posted on social media. Why are you somewhat worried?

Eddie: I think it would be something like relationship-wise.

Tara: Your girlfriend?

Eddie: Yeah, basically. Somewhat worried that she’ll see [my posts] and I’d have to explain myself.

Overall, survey participants including Eddie and Derek reported feeling most concerned about losing their cell phone and data stored in their phone than they were concerned about being surveilled. However, when participants reported about their social media activity surveilled via cell phones, they were generally more concerned about being monitored by romantic partners than by police officers, co-workers, and family members. The survey data I collected supports Marwick and boyd’s claim (2011) that “most social media users are less concerned with governments or corporations watching their online activities than key members of their extended social network, such as bosses or parents (Marwick & boyd 2011)” (Marwick, 2014, p. 379). For a complete breakdown of survey responses on social media and privacy, see Appendix A. 

“The Neighborhood is Changing.”

The more I witnessed and listed to Eddie and Derek’s encounters growing up in Weeksville, the more I also learned about how interpersonal surveillance played out in their day-to-day interactions with outsiders, police officers, and unfamiliar near-dwellers. Dissimilar from peer surveillance, interpersonal surveillance occurred throughout less familiar daily encounters. For both Eddie and Derek, the practice of watching (out for) and being watched characterized the many ways in which the neighborhood was changing. While observing these practices, I learned how both young men perceived place according to whom and what was unfamiliar to them. 

At the beginning of the chapter, I acknowledged that I arrived at this study during a moment of intense institutional surveillance in New York City. I mentioned the unconstitutional policing practice of Stop-and-Frisk. I also mentioned the death of Eric Garner at the hands of a New York City police officer, a moment that intensified police surveillance around the city. Eddie shared with me his thoughts about the latter case. He said, “[Garner] shouldn’t have did what he did. The cops shouldn’t be doing what they doing. It’s 50/50.” This conversation between Eddie, Padre, and I took place one week after two New York police officers were shot and killed at the corner of Thomas and Carter, one block away from Café Connect. This was a pivotal moment for me during the study. On December 27, 2015, I illustrate this turning point in my field notes.

When I arrived today, I wasn't sure what to expect. When I found out that the shooting took place last weekend near Café Connect, I was worried about the young men and Padre. After I spoke to them, the guys weren't fazed by the events that took place last weekend. Or maybe they were, but it didn't show. It was just another shooting to them. That two NYPD officers were shot means, for me at least, that this neighborhood will be changed forever. I'm not sure they realize the implications; I’m not sure they realize what's happening outside of their worlds. Do they understand what it means when the NYPD union leader declares war on its citizens? Maybe they do understand. Maybe my worry is their norm.

Padre mentioned that there were cameras on the block. I tried to locate the cameras, but I couldn't find them. I was told that the cameras helped detectives identify where the shooter was moments before he killed the police officers. I found out after talking to Padre that the shooter walked by Café Connect. Detectives saw the shooter on a street camera, and as a result, returned to the café the next day to question the guys working that shift.

‘They asked to take a cup’ Padre told me. The officers wanted evidence. Evidence of what? None of the young men at the café were involved. It was an outsider that killed those police officers, an idle wanderer, a flâneur whose only purpose according to his Instagram post was to put ‘wings on pigs’ . The man’s declaration was apparently in retaliation to the deaths of Mike Brown and Eric Garner. 

The young men working at Café Connect encountered an outsider, an “unanticipated neighbor” (Bissell, 2013), one that interrupted the normal stasis of the neighborhood block. Padre told me that moments before the 28-year-old African-American man shot and killed the officers, he walked by the café and said to one of the guys, “watch what I’m about to do” (CBS, 2014).

I considered from that point forward that Weeksville had changed. It was not the only moment during the study when I considered that the neighborhood was rapidly transitioning while under surveillance. 

It was apparent, during the final walking interview with Eddie and Derek six months after the shooting on June 14, 2015, that police surveillance was going to be a routine practice in the neighborhood. While walking towards the intersection of Vice and Carter avenues, Eddie spotted an unmarked police car (see Figure 9). It appeared to have been a surveillance car. Eddie and Derek talked about why the car was in the neighborhood.

Eddie: You know these shits [cars] be listening in to people’s conversations bro? [Eddie points to a black car that appears to be an unmarked police vehicle].

Tara: Oh. Geez. What is that?

Eddie: These things be listening to people’s conversations.

Tara: Is there anybody in there?

Eddie: They put these cars in random places so people don’t know, bro. This shit [car] be really listening to people’s conversations. And then that shit right there probably snap a picture of you. [Eddie points to the front tinted window of the car].

Derek: They be eyeballing you.

Eddie: That’s how they do it, bro. They will put the car in a random place so people--

Derek: That car is always there. Not always but--

Eddie: Nah, hell no! That shit is never there.

Derek: I seen this more. I’ve seen this car several times there.

Eddie: Because that’s what they do, bro! They take a car they not using and just place it somewhere.

During a follow-up interview with Derek on September 10, 2015, I asked him to recall the walking interview with Eddie. In the exchange below, Derek explains why he believed the unmarked police car was parked in the neighborhood. He noted, rather poignantly, that despite the car’s visibility in the neighborhood, it was likely that most of people in the neighborhood never noticed it.

Tara: What did you mean by 'They be eyeballing you'?

Derek: They keep a close watch on you.

Tara: Who is they?

Derek: Police. Detectives. And that car that we seen, they changed the color now. They changed it to white.

Tara: Really?

Derek: Yeah.

Tara: Is it the same car, or is it a different car?

Derek: Sometimes they switch the cars up.

Tara: And it's always over there? [Pointing out the window in the direction of Vice and Carter avenues].

Derek: Yeah, but they tinted the windows now so you can't see the wiring inside. And yeah, they made it white.

Tara: How long has that car been there?

Derek: Well, I've seen it there for a little while. But when I started noticing it, like it wasn't a regular car that somebody just parked there, until that day we was walking and I actually seen the wiring in the car, and mind you, when we came back, the detective was moving it.

Tara: Did that car have cameras on it? Was it looking at us looking at it?

Derek: It could've had cameras. It could have had a monitoring voice box of people talking as they pass by. It could've had information. Stuff like that. It could have had anything in it. I know it had pretty much wires in there. A lot of wires in there.

Tara: And how do people in the neighborhood normally refer to that car, or is it just a police car?

Derek: Not too many people in the neighborhood seen that car. They probably seen it but haven't got the idea that it's a car that the cops are using for crime.

Over the course of the study, I came to depend on Derek and Eddie’s analyses, memories, and observations about their community. They were arbiters of the knowledge that I would have otherwise not been privy to as an outsider looking in. In this way, we co-created knowledge necessary to shape this research on youth mobilities.

Police officers, like cars, idle wanderers, and unfamiliar near dwellers all characterized actors of interpersonal surveillance in Weeksville. While talking with Eddie in the café on May 8, 2015, he interrupted the interview to point out an unfamiliar neighbor walking by. This was another pivotal moment during the study; it was one of the first times during our exchanges when he expressed a desire to leave Weeksville.

Eddie: You see this right here? I never seen a Jewish person.

Tara: You never seen a Jewish person in this neighborhood?

Eddie: No.

Tara: Really? 

Eddie: She’s Hasidic Jew. I never seen it. This is my first time seeing a Jewish person walking on this side.

Tara: So what does that mean?

Eddie: It’s like changing. The neighborhood is changing. 

Tara: Is that a good thing or a bad thing, or is it just a thing? 

Eddie. It’s good. It’s bad. 

Tara: Why? 

Eddie: Cause we were moved over here. We was pushed into this neighborhood because we couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. But now look what’s going on. Now we being pushed out because it’s getting too expensive to live here. 

Tara: Do you still feel like it’s safe to live here?

Eddie: Yeah.

Tara: Do you feel like you belong in this neighborhood? 

Eddie: I want to leave. 

Tara: Why?

Eddie: I just want to leave. Not leave! But I wanna come back but I just don’t want to live here anymore.

Eddie would sometimes talk about not being able to afford to live in Weeksville. Throughout out our conversations Eddie would express a desire to make more money. In the next chapter, I present Eddie’s story of work as means to leave Weeksville behind.

Weeksville is, as Eddie described, a neighborhood that forces young boys like him to grow up too fast, to figure out how to cope too soon, and to learn what and where to avoid. Eddie was exposed to all the things that Weeksville produced; social surveillance, dehumanization, criminality, drugs, and violence. The neighborhood also shaped Eddie’s perceptions of growth, proximity, and change. For Eddie, Weeksville is a premature place, it is where he carved out his own territory and transformed from a young skinny kid who sold drugs to a young man working at Café Connect who looked forward to opportunities outside of his neighborhood. 

Notes:

[1]To stunt in the neighborhood means to show off. The term is used often by those familiar with hip hop vernacular, namely, for example, the song by New Orleans’ rapper Lil Wayne, called “Stuntin Like My Daddy.”