Abstract
Victor M. Rios’s prior book, Punished (NYU Press, 2011), is one of the best books I have read in years. It is a groundbreaking study of Black and Latino young men in Oakland and the “youth control complex” that they face; this is the ubiquitous punitive control that labeled them as criminals and denied them dignity. Punished is a tough act to follow, so I was unsure what to expect with Rios’s new book, Human Targets, and concerned that it wouldn’t meet the same standard.
I need not have been concerned because Human Targets is a brilliant book that picks up where Punished ends and makes independent contributions to literatures on race/ethnicity, culture, and policing. Rather than focusing on the forces that act upon the young Latino/a men and women Rios studies (as he did in Punished), in Human Targets, Rios instead analyzes how young people respond to these forces. The central premise of Human Targets is that young people flexibly adopt different cultural frames—including styles of dress, use of symbols, and modes of behavior and speech—based on different institutional experiences. The Latino/a youth he studied drifted between distinct behavioral styles based on their situation and how they are treated, allowing them to act professionally at work and tough on the streets, for example. This shouldn’t be surprising, since both prior research (e.g., David Harding’s 2010 book, Living the Drama, or David Matza’s 1964 classic, Delinquency and Drift) and common sense suggest that this is how all people act, but it defies much of the literature on young people, particularly on gang-associated youth, who are commonly described in monolithic terms as if they have fixed deviant identities.
Not only does Rios’s analysis make important contributions to our understanding of cultural styles and behavior performances among Latino/a young people, but he also illustrates how these cultural performances result in policing and punishment at school and on the streets. As he explains, teachers and police “misrecognize” youth; adults misunderstand young people’s motives, attribute threatening and/or deviant intentions to the youths’ actions, and fail to recognize prosocial behaviors, such as efforts to engage in school or find work. Teachers and police also fail to see how young people flexibly alter their behaviors based on how they are treated. This latter point is somewhat ironic, since, as Rios illustrates, these police officers themselves adapt their behaviors (policing tactics), varying between the use of “mano suave” (soft-handed or more lenient) and “mano dura” (hard-handed or more punitive) practices to respond appropriately to different situations.
This is a fantastic book with many strengths. One is that it shows off Rios’s rare ability to prioritize the voices and experiences of young adults. The book is based on years of ethnographic field research and dozens of interviews and focus groups with Latino and Latina young adults. Rios analyzes the data reflexively, always aware of his own position as a researcher and how his experiences and perspectives shape both the data and his analysis of it. He empathizes with the young people he studied, respects them, and privileges their experiences, not his. This, of course, is the job of an ethnographer, but one he does so well, and with a level of skill that sets his scholarship apart from that of most others.
Another strength is the complexity of Rios’s analysis. Unlike much similar scholarship, which uses a single analytical lens, Human Targets is about both culture (i.e., the styles, normative behaviors, and attitudes of young people) and social structure (e.g., entrenched poverty, joblessness, and racialized policing). Moreover, Rios describes the agency that young people exercise as they respond to these varying forces acting upon them. His analysis recognizes both individuals’ responses to their experiences and group-based socialization. And it all fits into a clear and compelling narrative. As a sociologist who is deeply skeptical of cultural arguments about street-involved young people (I believe that such arguments tend to gloss over the similarity of values and beliefs across groups and mistake rational responses to poverty or other structural factors for indicators of innate character), I appreciate how deftly Rios analyzes the interplay between social structure, culture, and agency.
Human Targets is also publicly accessible. Make no mistake, this is an excellent piece of scholarship that makes an important contribution to sociological debates. Yet, it is also clearly written, compelling, and easily digestible by a nonacademic audience. It is an ideal book for introducing nonacademic readers to sociological ideas, while communicating the realities of daily life faced by many Latino/a young adults.
Despite (or perhaps due to) these strengths, I would have liked to have seen more analysis of some topics. For example, he writes very little about the experiences of young Latina women, even though Rios and his research assistants interviewed and conducted focus groups with several. A deeper discussion of their experiences might have added considerably—particularly to the chapter on masculinity—and enhanced the appeal of Human Targets to an even broader audience. I would also have liked to have learned more about police officers’ perspectives, since their views need to be taken into consideration if we wish to improve policing practices. Rios does begin such an analysis, and he describes the ways that officers mean well but misrecognize Latino/a young people and default to punitive control in their interactions. But it isn’t very clear why this occurs and how we could prevent it. I found myself wondering whether the default to punitive control is due in part to officers’ formal training or to their on-the-job socialization or whether it might be a selection bias, whereby those who already hold punitive views may be attracted to a career in law enforcement. I also found myself curious about what these officers’ supervising officers say or do to try to either counter or reinforce the punitive control Rios describes.
In sum, this is a balanced, wonderful piece of scholarship. It makes an important contribution to sociological debates, is an excellent example of reflexive ethnography, shows respect and provides dignity to the research subjects, and provides a publicly accessible text on the conditions facing low-income Latino/a young people. It is an excellent example of how one can work within but not for the academy. Aspiring graduate students who wish to produce academically respected scholarship that is meaningful and has an opportunity to engage the broader public, here is your model.