Robert Vargas on the Persistence of Violence in Some Areas of Chicago

Neighborhood violence is often talked about as being a result of poverty or random threat but, in this podcast, University of Wisconsin–Madison sociologist Robert Vargas says that those characterizations can be very inaccurate. Instead, based on his extensive ethnographic research in a Chicago neighborhood, Vargas explains we can’t understand problems of violence or disadvantage without understanding the political histories and structures of those neighborhoods.