Divided into four main parts, this analysis focuses on the link between gender and violence. While violence has long been presumed to be a man’s domain, in part 1 the author discusses how examinations of the body and biological influences on crime have been largely excluded from serious sociological criminology research. Likewise, much of the focus of research and theory on gender has focused on gender as a social construction rather than as a biological inevitability. The author argues that conceptualizations of gender and its relation to crime must incorporate an understanding of the body and its influence over behavior. Part 2 focuses on structured action theory as the author contends that the relationship between gendered practices and criminal behavior can be understood by conceptualizing it as a form of “structured action.” Part 2 also outlines the methodology used to gather the data for the adolescent life stories presented and analyzed in parts 3 and 4. Part 3 presents a series of life stories involving violence in the lives of adolescent boys and girls. The analysis shows how gender plays out in the production of violence among these adolescents. Part 4 uses structured action theory to examine the three major sites (home, school, and street) of the adolescents’ life histories. The different structured gender relations and different motivations for violence and nonviolence within the participants’ lives are analyzed. Different forms of gender construction are discussed as specific to particular localities, which produces negotiated gender practices in different spaces that occasionally result in violence. Future criminological research should work toward deconstructing the mind-body, sex-gender, and gender difference binaries plaguing most current research on crime. Notes, references, index