respect" mean?

And more importantly: how do they earn it?

This question may seem uncomfortable. But cultural criminology advances not by avoiding uncomfortable questions — it advances by going directly into them.

Elijah Anderson and the "Code of the Street"

In 1999, sociologist Elijah Anderson published the findings of his long-running ethnographic work in Philadelphia's disadvantaged neighbourhoods under the title Code of the Street.

Anderson's central argument was this: in places where state institutions offer no reliable protection, where the police are perceived as a threat rather than a safeguard, and where the courts are beyond reach, people construct their own order. The fundamental currency of that order is respect — and respect is earned through the demonstrated capacity for verbal or physical force.

In this environment, violence is not pathology. Within a specific social logic, it is a rational form of communication.

Appearing "hard" is the cheapest insurance against being targeted. Showing weakness is the greatest risk of all.

Social Learning: How Is Crime Transmitted?

The name that placed Anderson's observations on theoretical ground is Edwin Sutherland. Differential Association Theory holds this: crime, like all other social behaviours, is learned within primary groups.

Family, peer networks, neighbourhood connections. What is transmitted through these relationships is not only the techniques of crime — it is also the rationalisations of crime: the beliefs about why that action is legitimate, even necessary.

Akers' later Social Learning Theory reinforces this: behaviour is shaped through modelling, reinforcement, and definitions. Behaviour that the primary group endorses is repeated; behaviour it condemns is abandoned.

Seen through this framework, the persistence of street culture violence becomes intelligible. The young person does not choose violence — they grow up in a social environment in which violence is rewarded.

Masculinity as Subculture: Why "Toughness" Works

The internalisation of violence and aggression as "proof of masculinity" among marginalised young men is not accidental.

Walter Miller's concept of "focal concerns of lower-class culture" unpacks this dynamic: toughness, excitement, smartness, autonomy, fate. These values are not a rejection of mainstream culture — they are an alternative value system produced by structural exclusion.

The status that cannot be obtained through legitimate channels is, within this subcultural system, earned through physical strength, courage, and street reputation. And this system is transmitted across generations through primary group relationships.

Local Readings from Turkey: Blood Feud and the Culture of Obedience

Transposing cultural criminology into the Turkish context is not simply a matter of translating Western concepts. Turkey's distinctive cultural codes both confirm and enrich these theoretical frameworks.

The blood feud is perhaps the most striking example of this.

Superficial readings label the blood feud as "primitive" or "backward." Cultural criminology analyses it through a different question: within what social logic does this practice become meaningful?

In communities where state authority is perceived as weak or illegitimate, where access to the justice system is limited, and where family honour functions as the primary unit of social capital, the blood feud operates as a cultural economy of vengeance. The family administers the justice the state has failed to provide. Aggression is rationalised as the only legitimate means of recovering lost honour.

Seeing this rationalisation does not legitimise the blood feud. But labelling it simply as "backwardness" or an individual moral failing also solves nothing — it renders the conditions that produce it invisible, and in doing so contributes to the perpetuation of the violence.

Domestic Violence and the "Culture of Obedience"

A dynamic specific to Turkey is frequently overlooked in discussions of domestic violence: the operation of violence not merely as a problem of individual anger, but as a product of cultural norms of obedience and hierarchy.

The discourse of "family matter" pulls violence out of public visibility. The frameworks of "a woman's place" and "male honour" supply cultural scripts that allow violence to be rationalised — by both the perpetrator and those around them. In terms of social learning theory: these norms are transmitted, reinforced, and reproduced within primary group relationships.

This is why intervention programmes focused solely on individual correction remain structurally blind. If violence is a product of cultural learning, intervention must also encompass a process of cultural relearning.

What Should Criminology Do?

Understanding street culture, the blood feud, or domestic violence means entering the cultural logic within which these practices become meaningful. This is not to justify crime — it is to make the social production of crime visible.

A criminology that labels marginalised groups as "deviant individuals" remains analytically and politically insufficient. The framework cultural criminology offers says this: deviance is not a question of individual character; it is a product of social structure, cultural codes, and learned systems of meaning.

And without seeing that production process, no prevention policy can bring about genuine transformation.

Is street culture, the blood feud, and domestic violence in Turkey being analysed sufficiently through a criminological lens?

How do you assess the contribution of social learning theory to the Turkish context? I look forward to your thoughts.

CultCrimNetwork — Crime through the lens of culture. Cultural criminology, Turkey and beyond.

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Does Respect Run Through Violence?