"BEING DOWN": CHALLENGING VIOLENCE IN URBAN SCHOOLS. by Ronnie Casella. (Teachers College Press, 2001)

A strongly written, well-researched ethnography, Ronnie Casella's "Being Down" offers a bold portrayal of the social constructs, events, and policies related to violence in a New York State public high school. Using a qualitative, grounded theory approach wherein new theory emerges from inductively coded data, Casella provides his readers with a meticulous analysis of field data, drawing heavily from an existing body of research. By weaving his findings into the wider context of violence in urban schools throughout the United States, the author reaches out to a broad audience.

Throughout "Being Down," Casella offers solid connections between his own ethnographic research and existing policy and theory. In developing his thesis that school violence is clearly situated within a wider, complicated context, Casella clarifies why policymakers must accurately identify problems before proposing solutions. More importantly, he proposes possible avenues for reform.

Casella lays out his thesis clearly and succinctly in the first and subsequent chapters: "Violence in schools is one formation of a larger street, sexual, racial, and political violence in the United States" (145). Building upon this argument, Casella offers compelling case studies to illustrate why the reality of "being down" must be fully explored before we as a society can hope to effectively challenge violence in urban schools. As he says in his final chapter, "Any violence prevention strategy must be a part of students' neighborhoods and experiences, since, as most school staff know, violence in schools and that in neighborhoods are already linked" (152). While these statements may seem redundant at a glance, the fact that school violence is not a discrete, compartmentalized problem is often inadequately acknowledged by educational policymakers and bears repeating.

Casella recognizes that political recognition of the complexity of school violence too often takes the form of premature policy changes, since "sometimes we look for solutions to social problems without agreeing on what the problem really is" (146). He illustrates this important point with effective concrete examples, including his description of how "a prevention effort to address issues associated with fights between African American and Latino [sic] girls requires an approach very different from that needed to address high suicide rates among white boys" (146).