In this article we explore the interrelationship between school and neighborhood violence through an ethnographic study conducted over a two‐year period in a New York City middle school. This article presents a bidirectional flow of adolescent conflict by analyzing incidents taking place outside the school that originate in the school setting, and incidents of conflict occurring in the school that were initiated in the surrounding neighborhood. The research shows the effect of school and neighborhood structures on adolescent violence, concluding that school violence is a highly contextual and dynamic process. Adolescents do not choose their fights in a vacuum, but instead, in their selection of peers, allies, and conflict groups, they mirror the organizational and cultural settings of both their school and neighborhood.
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