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Questions of perception and reality.

Professor Robert J. Sampson ranks without any doubt amongst the world leaders in the fields of urban sociology and sociological criminology. He has made seminal contributions to socio-ecological theory (e.g., through his theory of collective efficacy) and, together with Stephen Raudenbush, to the much needed advancement of socio-ecological methods (ecometrics). His studies, with John Laub, into crime across the life course are modern classics. The hallmark of his scholarly activity is his thorough empirical study of carefully chosen central theoretical problems. He is a classic scholar in the best sense of the word: curious, critical, non-ideological and open-minded.All these qualities were evident in his presentation at the 2008 BJS Annual Lecture (Sampson 2009), which fundamentally addressed the topical and important question ‘What is the role of disorder in the social differentiation of urban areas and neighbourhood change?’ His answer is essentially that perceived disorder plays a vital role in these social processes. Let’s summarize his main arguments. Sampson makes the case that it is not actual disorder but people’s assessment of the seriousness of disorders that matters, and that these two aspects of disorder (although related) are not the same thing. He submits that people’s assessment of disorder seriousness depends on the neighbourhood social context in which that disorder occurs. Certain signifiers of disorder (e.g., graffiti) and kinds of disorderly behaviour (e.g., groups of drunken young people) are viewed as more problematic in some neighbourhood contexts than in others. What makes a difference, Sampson argues, is the neighbourhood population composition. Some social groups – in the US context ‘blacks, disadvantaged minorities, and recent immigrant groups’ – are more linked in the public imagination to such things as crime and violence and, therefore, if disorder occurs in neighbourhoods where such social groups predominate, there is a tendency to assess that disorder as more serious than similar disorder occurring in neighbourhoods dominated by other social groups (but, crucially, Sampson’s argument holds, and his empirical findings support, that these