Seeing Disorder: Neighborhood Stigma and the Social Construction of “Broken Windows”*

once again has assumed priority in the social sciences.1 The most visible inquiry has been played out in urban sociology and criminology. According to the “broken windows” theory of urban decline (Wilson and Kelling 1982), minor forms of public disorder lead to serious crime and a downward spiral of urban decay (Kelling and Coles 1996). The presumed reason is that visual cues such as graffiti, public intoxication, garbage, and abandoned cars are thought to attract criminal offenders, who assume from these cues that residents are indifferent to what goes on in the neighborhood. Few ideas have become more influential than “broken windows” (see, e.g., Duneier 1999; Harcourt 2001; Taylor 2001). Although perhaps less noticed, it is equally significant that the concept of disorder has penetrated social psychology. Again the notion is that disorder is negative, this time with harmful consequences for individual health and personal well-being. For example, a number of recent studies have linked perceived disorder to physical decline, depression, psychological distress, and perceived powerlessness (e.g., Cutrona et al. 2000; Geis and Ross 1998; Linares et al. 2001; Mitchell and LaGory 2002; Ross et al. 2000). On these accounts, residents read signs of disorder as evidence of a deeper neighborhood malaise, undermining personal health. Yet there remains a puzzling first-order question about what triggers our perceptions of disorder. Is “seeing” disorder only a matter of the objective level of cues in the environment? Or is disorder filtered through a reasoning based on stigmatized groups and disreputable areas? Simply put, what makes disorder a problem? We find that most research on disorder is based on individuallevel perceptions decoupled from a systematic concern with the disorder-generating Social Psychology Quarterly 2004, Vol. 67, No. 4, 319–342