Gangs and Violence

User Generated

pehm116

Humanities

Description

Attached you will find the Class Summary document for Class 12 and an additional reading for those of you who are especially interested in the importance of gang research and global issues. The Class Summary document contains all the instructions, readings and links that you will need for this class and details the posting that you are required to make in the Discussion Forum. In the Discussion Forum you should write one paragraph in response to the questions and reply to at least one of your class mates. This class requires you to watch the documentary Crips and Bloods: Made in America - available on Netflix or Amazon instant - a clip is posted below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN4pP-1NWoA

Unformatted Attachment Preview

Gangs and Violence To Do: *Read the summary below *Read Barak p. 91 *Watch the documentary Crips and Bloods (available on Netflix) *Read the PBS information on the documentary *Go to the Discussion Forum and answer the questions Gangs and Violence Key Themes: definition of a gang, types and levels of violence, relevance of structural violence Definition A gang is: ‘A street organization…formed largely by youth and adults of a marginalized social class which aims to provide its members with a resistant identity, an opportunity to be individually and collectively empowered, a voice to speak back to and challenge the dominant culture, a refuge from the stresses and strains of barrio or ghetto life and a spiritual enclave within which its own sacred rituals can be generated and practiced’. (Brotherton and Barrios, 2004: 23) 1 How does violence feature? ‘Violence is…consistent among gangs. The extent and nature of the violence varies depending on the status of the gang. Most gangs will use some form of violence to protect their interests, honor or truff.. Many contemporary gangs in large urban areas have a high propensity for violence committed with sophisticated firearms ‘ (Valdez, 2003, p. 15) Commentators have pointed out that gangs are involved in violence against other gang members, will use violence in criminal activities (eg robbery) and initiation ceremonies. But structural violence is also relevant in terms of understanding why people join gangs and violence might also be seen as a form of resistance against a social order that essentially condemns those who join gangs. Being in a gang appears to significantly increase the risk of homicide. As Greg Barak notes, compared to the general population, a gang member’s risk of being killed is 60 times greater. In St Louis, it was found that the gang member homicide rate was 1,000 times higher than the US homicide rate. 2 Crips and Bloods: Made in America Watch the documentary. 3 Source: Crips and Bloods: Independent Television Service 4 Read the following sources from PBS (you may need to cut and paste the links into your browser). http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/cripsandbloods/film.html http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/cripsandbloods/map.html http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/cripsandbloods/timeline.html http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/cripsandbloods/gang.html Further References: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/cripsandbloods/more.html Additional Reading: If you are interested in this topic area the attached paper by John Hagedorn discusses the importance of studying gangs and offers a global perspective. 5 Discussion Forum Now go to the discussion forum and answer the following questions by 1/21 1. Commenting on the street violence in South Los Angeles, Senator Tom Hayden says, “It’s been defined as a crime problem and a gang problem but it’s really an issue of no work and dysfunctional schools.” Do you agree? Why or why not? How does this relate to our discussion on structural violence? 2. What will it take to stop the gang warfare? Where should efforts begin? 6 Journal of /Contemporary 10.1177/1043986204273390 Hagedorn GLOBAL EFFECT Criminal OFJustice GANGS / May 2005 The Global Impact of Gangs JOHN M. HAGEDORN University of Illinois at Chicago The American study of gangs can no longer start and stop with local conditions but today must also be rooted in a global context. Studying gangs is important because of unprecedented world urbanization, the retreat of the state under the pressure of neoliberal policies, the strengthening of cultural resistance identities, including fundamentalist religion, nationalism, and hip-hop culture, the valorization of some urban spaces and marginalization of others, and the institutionalization of gangs in some cities across the world. Keywords: globalization; identity; hip hop; armed young men; death squads W hy study gangs? The short answer is that gangs are a significant worldwide phenomenon with millions of members and a voice of those marginalized by processes of globalization. Understanding these social actors is crucial to fashioning public policies and building social movements that can both reduce violence and erode the deep-seated inequalities that all too often are reinforced by present economic, social, and military policies. The American study of gangs can no longer start and stop with local conditions but must also be rooted in a global context. How else do we come to grips with Jamaican posses in Kansas (Gunst, 1995), San Diego’s Calle Trente and their past relationship to Mexico’s Arellano brothers cartel (Rotella, 1998), the Russian “mafiya” in Chicago (Finckenauer & Waring, 1998), female Muslim gangs in Oslo (Lien, 2002), LA’s MS-13 and 18th Street as the largest gangs in Honduras and El Salvador (Decesare, 2003), Nigerian drug smugglers coming through Ronald Reagan International Airport (Grennan, Britz, Rush, & Barker, 2000), Crips in the Netherlands (van The author wishes to thank Mary Devitt, Paul Elitzik, David Perry, Jim Short, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, Vol. 21 No. 2, May 2005 153-169 DOI: 10.1177/1043986204273390 © 2005 Sage Publications 153 154 Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice / May 2005 Gemert, 2001), the ties of U.S. tongs to Chinese Triads (Booth, 1999), and other examples of a global web of gangs? Gang research is important today for six related reasons: 1. Unprecedented worldwide urbanization has created fertile conditions for the growth of gangs, particularly in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. 2. Unlike the expansion of the state in the earlier industrial era, in the global era the state has retreated in the face of instantaneous financial flows and neoliberal monetary policy, while emphasizing punitive policies toward marginalized communities. Gangs and other groups of armed young men occupy the vacuum created by the retreat of the social welfare policies of the state. 3. The strengthening of cultural identities by men and women is a central method of resistance to marginalization. Whereas fundamentalist religion and nationalism have been adopted by many gang members, hip-hop culture and its “gangsta rap” variant also provide powerful resistance identities and influence millions. 4. Globalization’s valorization of some areas and marginalization of others has meant the flourishing of an underground economy for survival and as profitable, internationally connected enterprises run by gangs, cartels, and similar groups. 5. The wealth of the global economy has led to the redivision of space in cities all across the globe. “Economic development,” “making the city safe,” and “ethnic cleansing” are among the reasons given for the clearing out of “the other” from urban spaces desired by dominant ethnic or religious majorities. These spatial changes have influenced the nature and activity of gangs. 6. Some gangs institutionalize and become permanent social actors in communities, cities, and nations rather than fading away after a generation. These gangs often replace or rival demoralized political groups and play important, albeit often destructive, social, economic, and political roles in cities around the world. THE EXPLOSION OF URBANIZATION A UN-Habitat (2003) report finds that nearly one billion people live in slums in the world today. In developing nations, slum dwellers make up 43% of the total population compared with 6% in developed countries. Eighty percent of the population of Latin America is now urban. In sub-Saharan Africa, nearly three quarters of those who live in cities are slum dwellers. India has 25 cities of one million or more and China, as of this writing, has 166 (French, 2004). The present urban population is greater than the entire population of the world in 1960 (Davis, 2004). Urbanization has accelerated worldwide in processes that were so well described by Robert Park, Frederic Thrasher, and the Chicago School as prime conditions for the growth of gangs. Malcolm Hagedorn / GLOBAL EFFECT OF GANGS 155 Klein’s (1995) argument that “the common varieties of street gang still are an essentially American product” (p. 3) leads in the wrong research direction. The vast majority of gangs and gang members are from Latin America, Africa, and Asia—recent products of urbanization. Gangs did not originate in the United States. Dickens and others described London gangs long before their American cousins existed (Pearson, 1983). Even female gang members—scuttlers—may have roamed Manchester in the 19th century (Davies, 1998). Gangs have formed all over the world whenever and wherever industrialization and related processes drive people into cities. For example, industrializing Third World countries like South Africa had gangs, or skollies, for most of the 20th century (Pinnock, 1984). “Number gangs” have been known in South African prisons for nearly a century (Shurink, 1986). In the wake of post–World War II urbanization, gangs like the rarry boys in Sierra Leone (Abdullah, 2002) were formed by the children of urban migrants. In New Zealand, Maori gangs have built a national network since the mid-20th century (Hazelhurst, in press). And one familiar figure, Yasser Arafat, learned guerrilla tactics as a street gang leader in Cairo in the 1940s (Aburish, 1998). Other forms of the gang have been around even longer. In China, Triads began in the 18th century and morphed into gangster activity in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and other large Chinese cities (e.g., Booth, 1999). The mafia, originally a rural 19th-century Sicilian rebel force, took root in U.S. cities and transformed local gangs, like Chicago’s Taylor Street crew, into powerful illicit organizations (Hobsbawm, 1969; Nelli, 1969). Much of the current world literature on gangs, unlike the “at-risk youth” literature in the United States, does not use the label “gangs.” The World Bank, for example, documents millions of “street children” around the world and that term includes various semiorganized forms (World Bank Institute, 2000). The “child soldiers” literature, newly supplemented by the category of “children in organized armed violence,” is another source of reporting on gangs (Dowdney, 2003; Human Rights Watch, 2004). By perusing the global organized crime literature and the human rights studies (e.g., Amnesty International, 2004; UN Convention on Transnational Organized Crime, 2000), other snapshots of youth gangs can be garnered. The Social Science Research Council is currently organizing an international working group on “youth in organized armed violence.” But what is a gang? Group process definitions, from Thrasher (1927) to Short and Strodtbeck (1965) to Moore (1978), describe unsupervised youth developing organization through conflict with other groups and authorities. They pointedly exclude criminalization as a necessary characteristic of the definition of gangs as claimed by Klein (1971) and Miller (1982). 156 Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice / May 2005 In today’s cities, particularly in less developed countries, such unsupervised groups of youth are often “supervised” by a variety of criminal groups and recruited by nationalist and religious militias. Prisons both receive and create gangs that spread back to their communities, as in South Africa (Shurink, 1986), California (Moore, 1978), and Rio de Janiero (Dowdney, 2003). The present era has witnessed the proliferation of gangs and other groups who are outside the control of formal state authority. Thrasher’s (1927) diagram of the various paths a “casual crowd” can take was prescient (p. 70). The central issue is that gangs today are organizations of the socially excluded, most of whom come and go as their wild, teenage peer group ages. But a substantial number institutionalize on the streets, either through selfgenerated processes or with the assistance of already institutionalized armed groups.1 The similarity of these institutionalized gangs to other groups of armed young men requires that the global study of gangs broaden its focus (see Hagedorn, in press-a). Although I am a theoretical soulmate of Short and Moore, it’s clear that one central mechanism for the persistence of institutionalized gangs is participation in the underground economy. There are no comprehensive, comparative studies of gangs across the world (but see Hagedorn, in press-b; Hazlehurst & Hazlehurst, 1998; Klein, Kerner, Maxsen, & Weitekamp, 2001; Kontos, Brotherton, & Barrios, 2003). However, it is possible to estimate that, depending on the definition, there are at least tens of millions of gang members in the world today. GLOBALIZATION AND THE RETREAT OF THE STATE The study of gangs began in an era of optimism about the role of the state in solving problems of poverty and diverting youth from delinquency (Thrasher, 1927; Wirth, 1928/1956). The social disorganization that accompanied immigration, the theory propounded, could be overcome by social programs, settlement houses, and the juvenile court “in loco parentis” (Addams, 1920/1960). The key to combating delinquency, Shaw and McKay (1942) argued, was the organization of communities to control delinquent behavior. Gang studies in the 1960s argued for new social programs that stressed opportunity as part of a societal war on poverty (Cloward & Ohlin, 1960; Yablonsky, 1966). Much current gang literature continues to urge increased state intervention (e.g., Klein, 1995; Spergel, 1995), whereas others follow Shaw and McKay (1942) and stress community empowerment, in part through leveraging state resources (Bursik & Grasmick, 1993; Sampson & Groves, 1989). Hagedorn / GLOBAL EFFECT OF GANGS 157 Social disorganization theory is theoretically grounded in the Enlightenment notion of the progressive nature of history and belief that the secular state would continue to grow as religion and tradition were weakened by modern society (Elias, 1939/1994; Nisbet, 1980; see especially Touraine, 2000). The only way to overcome the loss of the bonds of old-world culture, Kornhauser (1978) argued, is to strengthen community institutions, an approach that continues to guide social theory today (Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls, 1997; Wilson & Sampson, 1995). The role of the state has changed, however, and the gang literature has all but ignored the decline of the state and the rise of global cities that are at the cutting edge of urban political economy (see Castells, 1997; Sassen, 2002). The vast transformation of the U.S. economy has resulted in economic restructuring that prioritizes information and services over heavy industry, contingent over unionized labor, and consumption over production (see, e.g., Bell, 1960; Castells, 1998). These developments have been accompanied by public policies that stress security and the needs of the new wealthy and fray the safety net for the poor and a weakened working class (Bourdieu, 1998; Touraine, 2001). In the wake of reduced opportunity for unskilled labor, many gang members have remained in their gangs as adults and gangs have become an important ghetto employer (Hagedorn, 2001). These policies have been accelerated by the war on terror (Calhoun, Price, & Timmer, 2002). In Europe and other advanced countries, the ReaganThatcher agenda has been more controversial and contested (Hagedorn, 1999; Pitts, 2000; Wacquant, 1999). In the Third World, International Monetary Fund strictures to reduce social spending, pay on foreign debt, allow foreign capital penetration, and continue a strong military have resulted in the erosion of the social welfare policies of already weak states (Bauman, 1998; Castells, 1998) while increasing what Wacquant (2004) calls “neoliberal penalty.” Latin American and African academics have long been skeptical about the progressive nature of development (e.g., de Soto, 1990; Frank, 1970). The retreat of the state in the Third World has created anew what might at first blush be considered conditions of “social disorganization,” with weakened and delegitimized social institutions unable to contain a rapidly urbanizing population. As a result, various sorts of “armed young men” (Hagedorn, in press-a; Kaldor, 1999) including gangs, para-militaries, death squads, and drug cartels that parallel, replace, or complement public authority have proliferated. The state in many countries can no longer be said to have a monopoly on violence, Weber’s (1968) standard definition of the modern state. For example, in Rio de Janeiro, drug factions control and patrol the favelas and police enter only with massive armed force and then quickly withdraw (Dowdney, 158 Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice / May 2005 2003). In Haiti, the state lost all capacity to control the populace and various types of groups of armed youth, leading to the deposing of Aristide and an uncertain status for the new state (Farmer, 1994; Kovats-Bernat, 2000). Recent press reports from Haiti tell of pro- and anti-Aristide youth gangs who now refuse to put down their arms and have turned full-time to crime (Children in Organised Armed Violence [COAV], 2004). The proliferation of death squads in this sense is another indication that the state no longer can enforce its rule without resort to extra-legal violence. Like gated communities with their private security guards for the wealthy, armed groups or vigilantes, like the Bakassi Boys in Nigeria (Human Rights Watch, 2002), are filling a vacuum within poor communities, where the state is unable to maintain order. In many cases, the state, to preserve “plausible deniability,” subcontracts tasks of violence to informal death squads (Campbell & Brenner, 2000). In Colombia, militias, cartels, revolutionaries, and the military all draw teenage warriors from the large pool of youth gangs in urban areas (COAV, 2003). Castells (2000) sums up this point: In a world of exclusion, and in the midst of a crisis of political legitimacy, the boundary between protest, patterns of immediate gratification, adventure, and crime becomes increasingly blurred. (p. 210) This does not mean that gangs are the same thing as death squads or terrorists. It does mean, however, that social disorganization and juvenile delinquency are too narrow for the study of gangs. The structuralist emphasis of most U.S. gang studies is also undermined by the power of identity. THE POWER OF IDENTITY Globalization and the retreat of the state have meant more than a loss of social control. The failure of modern institutions and the lack of faith in the certainty of a better future have strengthened resistance identities—identities formed in opposition to the dominant culture and the uncertainties of an unstable modernity (Castells, 1997). Touraine (1995) argues that the modern era can be understood best as the clash between the unfettered power of the market and the resistance of national, ethnic, and religious identities. Within poor communities, resistance identities are held by a wide assortment of people including gangs and other groups of armed youth. Nationalist, religious, and ethnic cultures have grown strong by resisting the homogenizing influences of westernization. Islamic fundamentalism today is but one example of the strength of cultural resistance identities. Often overlooked is the resistance of women who share ethnic or religious identities but also challenge the male dominance of traditional culture. As Hagedorn / GLOBAL EFFECT OF GANGS 159 Moore (in press) notes, there is scant literature on female gangs around the world, although such gangs may be increasing. Although most female gangs still appear to be adolescent groups, adult forms may differ markedly from adult male gangs, and both are woefully understudied (Chesney-Lind & Hagedorn, 1999). In the United States, the conflicted voices of women can be seen in gangsta rap music, where misogyny and violence reign, but female rappers strongly protest, while defending Black males against racist attacks on their music (hooks, 1994; Rose, 1994). The power of rap music is not often discussed in gang studies, although its strong influence contradicts the premise that culture is everywhere in decline, and even more so in subcultures (Kornhauser, 1978; Park, 1940; but see Finestone, 1957, 1967). The present era is marked by the strength of culture, driven by the international dominance of the U.S. media, the resurgence and reinvention of traditional cultures, and the dominance of youth street cultures, even in Islamic countries. In Nigeria, gangs of Muslim youth enforce Sharia for the state, while wearing gold chains, using and selling drugs, and listening to rap music (Casey, 2002). Throughout Africa, Latin America, and Asia, homegrown styles of rap music have captured the imagination of youth. Although media corporations promote gangsta rap to run up profits, and the lure of sex and violence celebrates values of the dog-eat-dog “cowboy capitalism” of globalization, the broader cultural power of hip-hop helps forge a more complex resistance identity for youth modeled after African American rebellion to White authority (see Short, 1996). Among the founders of hip-hop were former gang members, like Afrika Bambaata in the South Bronx, who consciously saw hip-hop as a way to pull youth away from gangs (Kitwana, 1994, 2002). The fact that rap now contains conflicting ideals of violence and anti-violence, consumerism and anti-consumerism, religion and antagonism to religion, and misogyny and feminism only attests to its overall power in identifying the locus of the struggle. To say that gangs can be understood through the lens of hip-hop culture is different from saying that gangs are subcultures (Cloward & Ohlin, 1960; Cohen, 1955; Miller, 1958). Miller and Cohen (1955) both saw subculture as an ethnically neutral and temporary outlook of working or lower class youth and adults. Cloward and Ohlin (1960) saw the source of gang subculture in the particular characteristics of opportunity structures within kinds of neighborhoods and downplayed its ethnic dimensions. Hip-hop culture, and its gangsta rap variant, is avowedly African American, with African and Jamaican roots. Originating in communal, life-affirming values (Rose, 1994), like all cultural goods today, it is also shamelessly exploited by media companies “merchandizing the rhymes of violence” (Ro, 1996). Gangsta rap is also nihilistic, worshiping destruction and violence in a 160 Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice / May 2005 way more extreme than Cohen’s reaction formation, a paean to Black survival and a violent response to the no-way-out life of the ghetto. However, the gangster identity exists within a broader, worldwide hip-hop culture and represents an outlook of millions of the socially excluded. This contested resistance identity is no longer a transient subculture of alienated youth but a permanent oppositional and racialized culture arising in the wake of the retreat of the state and the parallel strengthening of cultural identities. The power of gangsta rap within hip-hop culture attests to the importance of the global criminal economy to socially excluded youth. THE UNDERGROUND ECONOMY The criminal economy has been estimated by the UN as grossing more than $400 billion annually, which would make it the largest market in the world, including oil. Peter Reuter’s (1996) more conservative estimates (his low-ball figure of $150 billion in annual drug sales) are nevertheless breathtaking. The U.S. gang literature has often described drug dealing as unorganized, and low-paying, but the sale of drugs in the United States is tied to an international network of drug suppliers, cartels, and mafias that exercise enormous influence in communities and nations on a global scale (Castells, 1998). The literature on gangs and the underground economy in the United States is extensive (Moore, 1991; Taylor, 1989; Venkatesh & Leavitt, 2000). But these are local studies and their emphasis, as in my own prior work, is on the insular world of drug dealing in a single city. These studies describe the importance of the drug market to both young gang members and to the community (see especially Pattillo, 1998; Venkatesh, 2000). They also describe drug-dealing gangs as the main street-level employer of youth in the poorest areas of cities, forsaken by industrial jobs (Hagedorn, 2001). The underground economy, however, has changed over the decades. Portes, Castells, and Benton (1989) explain how globalization has transformed illegal markets into an integral part of the world system. The underground economy has survival functions in urban areas where the formal economy disappears, providing goods and services in unregulated ways that are in demand by more affluent customers. On the U.S. border, a crusading prosecutor who was later killed admitted, “It is sad to say, but while the drug lords are here the economy is strong. This money activates the economy, injects new money” (Rotella, 1998, p. 254). In many areas, profitable illegal markets in drugs are but one business among many that include arms sales and trafficking in women and children. When the formal economy falters, the informal steps in. Hagedorn / GLOBAL EFFECT OF GANGS 161 An important feature of the global era is the coexistence/convergence of different kinds of non-state actors, including groups of armed young men (see also Goldstone, 2002). Political movements often rely on the underground economy and many state security forces have been corrupted by massive profits derived from selling drugs and guns. As left-wing political movements wane, demoralization sets in and militants, many who have few skills outside of armed struggle, are faced with a dubious moral choice of unemployment or working for drug gangs. Thus, the inability of the new government in South Africa to assimilate all “Spear of the Nation” guerrillas into the police or military has led some former guerrillas into the world of crime. Protestant militias in Belfast, faced with the “greening” of Northern Ireland and what appears more and more certainly as a future reunification with the south, have turned their guns on one another in a war over drug turf. Mexico is the poster child for the integration of military and police forces with the local drug cartels. In Central America, journalist Silla Boccanero sadly reported, “Until recently, a rebellious youth from Central America would go into the mountains and join the guerrillas. Today, he leaves the countryside for the city and joins one of the street gangs engaged in common crime without political objectives” (COAV, 2002). The informal underground economy is now a structural part of the world order, assured by the uneven development of globalization. Violence is not a necessary condition for illicit enterprises, but when regulation by peaceful means fails, gangs and other groups of armed youth rise in prominence. URBAN REDIVISION OF SPACE Peter Marcuse (1997) argues that the vast expansion of wealth in the world economy has produced global cities that are separated into the “citadel” and the “ghetto.” Space in globalizing cities is redivided as the wealthy and wellpaid “knowledge workers” hew out spaces for themselves near the banks and central business districts (see Sassen, 2002). This “yuppie” land grab is accompanied by renewed emphasis on safety, crime, and ethnic antagonisms. The spatial concentration of ethnic minorities—often people of African descent—in the poorest areas of old cities has meant that lands coveted by the wealthy must be “cleansed” of the criminal, the violent, and the “other.” Thus, Chicago has displaced 100,000 African Americans by demolishing the high-rise housing projects that were built to contain them less than half a century ago (Hagedorn & Rauch, 2004). São Paulo is compared to Los Angeles in Caldeira’s (2000) brilliant study of the two cities erecting walls of segregation to keep the dark poor away from the White elite (see also Massey, 1996), the vast expansion of wealth in the global economy. 162 Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice / May 2005 This worldwide trend has meant the politicization of policies on crime and violence, even though in most cities of the industrialized world, violence declined in the 1990s. In the United States, this law and order trend has targeted alienated and jobless African American youth, resulting in an unprecedented expansion of prison building. America’s prisons, at least 50% Black in a country where African Americans make up about 12% of the population, can be seen as but another device for control of the “social dynamite” of the ghetto. Wacquant (2000) argues that the prison and the ghetto are but two nodes on a continuum of social control dating back to slavery. Although prisons are often built far from urban areas, they have become virtually contiguous to ghettoes and barrios, as gang leaders continue to run their organizations from their cells. Most gangs in both Rio de Janeiro and Chicago are run from the prison (Dowdney, 2003; Hagedorn, in press-a). Some gangs have their origins in prison, like La Eme, and later dominate the streets (Hayden, 2004). THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF GANGS Violence in cities of the world varies widely, from very low rates of homicide in Europe, China, Japan, Oceania, and the Middle East to very high rates in cities of many countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Within the United States, as in South America, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa, some cities have very high rates, and some low. Gangs are to be found in cities all over the world, in those with both low and high rates of violence. However, in some cities, gangs have institutionalized and have been present for decades. To say that a gang has institutionalized is to say that it persists despite changes in leadership (e.g., killed, incarcerated, or “matured out”), has organization complex enough to sustain multiple roles of its members (including roles for women and children), can adapt to changing environments without dissolving (e.g., as a result of police repression), fulfills some needs of its community (economic, security, services), and organizes a distinct outlook of its members (rituals, symbols, and rules). That some cities are home to institutionalized gangs and others not reinforces the importance of local conditions. My research suggests that in every city in the world that has had persisting high rates of violence, there are institutionalized groups of armed youth—for example, Chicago, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Medillin, Caracas, Kingston, Cape Flats, Lagos, Mogadishu, and Belfast—although causality is likely to be recursive. The divided cities literature (Hagedorn & Perry, 2002; Marcuse, 1997) suggests that gangs or other groups of armed youth institutionalize in contested cities with high levels of racial, ethnic, or religious (rather than solely class) oppression, where demoralization and the defeat of political struggle have occurred, and in Hagedorn / GLOBAL EFFECT OF GANGS 163 defensible spaces that provide natural protection opportunities for illegal economic activity. Institutionalized gangs are more than a crime problem. Many are deeply involved with politics, real estate, religion, and community organizations and cannot be easily destroyed by suppression or repression of the drug economy. Drug sales also provide opportunities for large-scale corruption and the purchase of heavy weapons. Gangs thus are social actors, in Touraine’s and Park’s sense. As social actors within poor communities with weak mechanisms of formal social control, gangs, militias, factions, and cartels have the capacity not only to wage war but also to rein it in (see Brotherton & Barrios, 2003; Bursik & Grasmick, 1993; Hayden, 2004, for different elaborations of this thesis). Differences among cities (e.g., why Chicago and Los Angeles are home to institutionalized gangs and New York City is not) have not been satisfactorily explained. Understanding the factors underlying the institutionalization of gangs and the persistence of violence are among the most pressing reasons for studying gangs. CONCLUSION: GANGS AS SOCIAL ACTORS The U.S. Justice Department war on terror has redirected funds for research (Savelsberg, Cleveland, & King, 2004), with the result that fewer social scientists will be doing gang research and perspectives are likely to be polarized. Federally funded studies are likely to stress gang links to terrorism, whereas non-federally funded studies may continue to “puncture stereotypes” and stress local conditions. A more realistic and productive future for gang research lies in neither of these directions. Instead, we should combine our sociological and anthropological orientations with urban political economy and the analysis of gangs and other organizations of the socially excluded in the globalizing city. Gangs cannot be understood outside of their global context, nor reduced to epiphenomena of globalization or cogs in an international terrorist conspiracy. To a far greater degree than in the past, we need to study the racialized identities of male and female gang members and the salience of culture. Gangs are being reproduced throughout this largely urban world by a combination of economic and political marginalization and cultural resistance. We ignore organizations of the socially excluded at great risk. Although the collapse of socialism and demoralization of left-wing forces have been replaced by new social movements that show promise for social change (Castells, 1997; Touraine, 1995), in some places institutionalized gangs and other groups of armed youth have moved into the vacuum created by the demise of the left. These groups are cynical about politics and looking des- 164 Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice / May 2005 perately for a better life today, not tomorrow. For them, the promises of modernity have proven to be illusory. Gangs are one price we pay for the failure of the modern project. Institutionalized gangs are unlikely either to gradually die out or be eliminated by force. It might be profitable for social scientists to see them as partners at the table who need to be included in the polity, as Bursik and Grasmick (1993) controversially suggested a decade ago. In Touraine’s sense, institutionalized gangs, too, are subjects. Dealing with gangs as social actors requires a policy of both intolerance of violence and tolerance of informal, nonviolent economic activity. It requires more negotiation and less suppression. How we deal with the reality of gangs and others among the socially excluded is one of those markers that will shape the nature, and the future, of civilization. NOTE 1. Although women play roles in these gangs, overwhelmingly they are groups of armed young men, warriors fighting for masculinity, survival, and ethnic or religious identity. REFERENCES Abdullah, I. (2002). Youth, Culture, and Rebellion: Understanding Sierra Leone’s Wasted Decade. Critical Arts: A Journal of South-North Cultural and Media Studies, 16(2), 19-37. Aburish, S. K. (1998). Arafat: From defender to dictator (1st U.S. ed.). New York: Bloomsbury. Addams, J. (1960). Twenty years at Hull-House. New York: Signet. (Original work published 1920) Amnesty International. (2004). 2004 report. Retrieved November 14, 2004, from http://www.amnestyusa.org/annualreport/index.html Bauman, Z. (1998). Globalization: The human consequences. New York: Columbia University Press. Bell, D. (1960). The end of ideology: On the exhaustion of political ideas in the fifties. New York: Free Press. Booth, M. (1999). The Dragon Syndicates: The global phenomenon of the Triads. New York: Carroll & Graf. Bourdieu, P. (1998). Acts of resistance: Against the tyranny of the market. New York: New Press. Brotherton, D., & Barrios, L. (2003). Between black and gold: The street politics of the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation. New York: Columbia University Press. Bursik, R. J., Jr., & Grasmick, H. G. (1993). Neighborhoods and crime: The dimensions of effective community control. New York: Lexington Books. Hagedorn / GLOBAL EFFECT OF GANGS 165 Caldeira, T. P. R. (2000). City of walls: Crime, segregation, and citizenship in São Paulo. Berkeley: University of California. Calhoun, C., Price, P., & Timmer, A. (Eds.). (2002). Understanding September 11. New York: New Press. Campbell, B., & Brenner, A. D. (2000). Death squads in global perspective: Murder with deniability. New York: St. Martin’s. Casey, C. (2002). “States of emergency”: Islam, youth gangs, and the politically unseeable. Unpublished manuscript, University of California, Los Angeles. Castells, M. (1997). The information age: Economy, society and culture (Volume 2: The Power of Identity). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Castells, M. (2000). The information age: Economy, society and culture (Volume 3: End of Millennium). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Children in Organised Armed Violence. (2002). From guerrillas to gangs. Retrieved November 18, 2004, from www.paranaonline.org.br Children in Organised Armed Violence. (2003). Country reports, Rio de Janeiro, Viva Rio. Retrieved November 14, 2004, from http://www.coav.org.br/ Children in Organised Armed Violence. (2004). Youth gangs using arsenal inherited from Haitian government. Retrieved November 14, 2004, from http://www. coav.org.br/frame.asp?url=/publique/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm?UserActive Template=%5Fen&infoid=827&sid=38 Cloward, R., & Ohlin, L. (1960). Delinquency and opportunity. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Cohen, A. (1955). Delinquent boys. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Davies, A. (1998). Youth gangs, masculinity and violence in late Victorian Manchester and Salfored. Journal of Social History, 32, 349-370. Davis, M. (2004, March-April). Planet of slums. New Left Review, 26. Retrieved November 13, 2004, from http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR26001.shtml Decesare, D. (2003). From Civil War to gang war: The tragedy of Edgar Bolanos. In L. Kontos, D. Brotherton, & L. Barrios (Eds.), Gangs and society: Alternative perspectives (pp. 283-313). New York: Columbia University Press. de Soto, H. (1990). The other path: The invisible revolution in the Third World. New York: Harper & Row. Dowdney, L. (2003). Children of the drug trade: A case study of children in organised armed violence in Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: 7Letras. Elias, N. (1994). The civilizing process: The history of manners. Oxford: Blackwell. (Original work published 1939) Farmer, P. (1994). The uses of Haiti. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press. Finckenauer, J. O., & Waring, E. J. (1998). Russian mafia in America: Immigration, culture, and crime. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Finestone, H. (1957). Cats, kicks, and color. Social Problems, 5, 3-13. Finestone, H. (1967). Reformation and recidivism among Italian and Polish criminal offenders. American Journal of Sociology, 72, 575-588. Frank, A. G. (1970). Latin America: Underdevelopment or revolution. New York: Monthly Review Press. 166 Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice / May 2005 French, H. W. (2004, July 28). New boomtowns change path of China’s growth. New York Times, p. 1. Goldstone, J. A. (2002). States, terrorists, and the clash of civilizations. In C. Calhoun, P. Price, & A. Timmer (Eds.), Understanding September 11 (pp. 139-158). New York: New Press. Grennan, S., Britz, M. T., Rush, J., & Barker, T. (2000). Gangs: An international approach. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Gunst, L. (1995). Born fi’ dead: A journey through the Jamaican Posse underworld. New York: Henry Holt & Company. Hagedorn, J. M. (1999). Gangs and globalization. In M. Klein, H-J. Kerner, C. L. Maxson, & E. G. Weitekamp (Eds.), The Eurogang paradox: Street gangs and youth groups in the U.S. and Europe (pp. 41-58). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. Hagedorn, J. M. (2001). Gangs and the informal economy. In R. Huff (Ed.), Gangs in America III (pp. 101-120). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Hagedorn, J. M. (in press-a). Gangs in late modernity. In J. M. Hagedorn (Ed.), Gangs in the global city: Reconsidering criminology. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Hagedorn, J. M. (Ed.). (in press-b). Gangs in the global city: Reconsidering criminology. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Hagedorn, J. M., & Perry, D. (2002). Contested cities. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Chicago. Hagedorn, J. M., & Rauch, B. (2004). Variations in urban homicide. Paper presented at the City Futures Conference, Chicago. Hayden, T. (2004). Street wars: Gangs and the future of violence. New York: New Press. Hazlehurst, C. (in press). Observing New Zealand “gangs,” 1950-2000: Learning from a small country. In J. M. Hagedorn (Ed.), Gangs in the global city: Criminology reconsidered. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Hazlehurst, K., & Hazlehurst, C. (Eds.). (1998). Gangs and youth subcultures: International explorations. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Hobsbawm, E. (1969). Bandits. New York: Pantheon. hooks, b. (1994). Misogyny, gangsta rap, and the piano. Retrieved November 14, 2004, from http://eserver.org/race/misogyny.html Human Rights Watch. (2002). The Bakassi Boys: The legitimation of murder and torture. Retrieved November 14, 2004, from http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/ nigeria2/index.htm#TopOfPage Human Rights Watch. (2004). Stop the use of child soldiers. Retrieved November 14, 2004, from http://hrw.org/campaigns/crp/index.htm Kaldor, M. (1999). New and old wars: Organized violence in a global era. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Kitwana, B. (1994). Rap on Gangsta rap: Who run it? Chicago: Third World Press. Kitwana, B. (2002). Hip hop generation: Young Blacks and the crisis of American culture. New York: Basic Civitas. Klein, M. W. (1971). Street gangs and street workers. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Hagedorn / GLOBAL EFFECT OF GANGS 167 Klein, M. W. (1995). The American street gang: Its nature, prevalence, and control. New York: Oxford University Press. Klein, M., Kerner, H.-J., Maxsen, C. L., & Weitekamp, E. G. (Eds.). (2001). The Eurogang paradox: Street gangs and youth groups in the U.S. and Europe. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. Kontos, L., Brotherton, D., & Barrios, L. (Eds.). (2003). Gangs and society: Alternative perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press. Kornhauser, R. R. (1978). Social sources of delinquency: An appraisal of analytic models. Chicago: University of Chicago. Kovats-Bernat, J. C. (2000). Anti-gang, Arimaj, and the war on street children. Peace Review, 12, 415-421. Lien, I. (2002). The dynamics of honor in violence and cultural change. Unpublished manuscript, Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research, Oslo, Norway. Marcuse, P. (1997). The enclave, the Citadel, and the ghetto: What has changed in the post-Fordist U.S. city. Urban Affairs Review, 33, 228-264. Massey, D. S. (1996). The age of extremes: Concentrated affluence and poverty in the twenty-first century. Demography, 33, 395-412. Miller, W. B. (1958). Lower class culture as a generating milieu of gang delinquency. Journal of Social Issues, 14, 5-19. Miller, W. B. (1982). Crime by youth gangs and groups in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Moore, J. W. (1978). Homeboys: Gangs, Drugs, and Prison in the Barrios of Los Angeles. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Moore, J. W. (1991). Going down to the barrio: Homeboys and homegirls in change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Moore, J. W. (in press). Female gangs: Gender and globalization. In J. M. Hagedorn (Ed.), Gangs in the global city: Criminology reconsidered. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Nelli, H. S. (1969). Italians and crime in Chicago: The formative years, 1890-1920. American Journal of Sociology, 74, 373-391. Nisbet, R. A. (1980). History of the idea of progress. New York: Basic Books. Park, R. (1940). Race and culture. Chicago: University of Chicago. Pattillo, M. E. (1998). Sweet mothers and gangbangers: Managing crime in a Black middle-class neighborhood. Social Forces, 76, 747-774. Pearson, G. (1983). Hooligan: A history of respectable fears. New York: Shocken Books. Pinnock, D. (1984). The brotherhoods: Street gangs and state control in Cape Town. Cape Town: David Philip. Pitts, J. (2000). The new politics of youth crime: Discipline or solidarity? Basingstoke: Palgrave. Portes, A., Castells, M., & Benton, L. A. (Eds.). (1989). The informal economy: Studies in advanced and less advanced countries. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press. 168 Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice / May 2005 Reuter, P. (1996). The mismeasurement of illegal drug markets. In S. Pozo (Ed.), Exploring the underground economy (pp. 63-80). Kalamazoo, MI: Upjohn Institute. Ro, R. (1996). Gangsta: Merchandizing the rhymes of violence. New York: St. Martin’s. Rose, T. (1994). Black noise: Rap music and Black culture in contemporary America. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press. Rotella, S. (1998). Twilight on the line: Underworlds and politics at the U.S.-Mexico border (1st ed.). New York: Norton. Sampson, R. J., & Groves, W. B. (1989). Community structure and crime: Testing social-disorganization theory. American Journal of Sociology, 94, 774-802. Sampson, R. J., Raudenbush, S. W., & Earls, F. (1997). Neighborhoods and violent crime: A multilevel study of collective efficacy. Science, 277, 918-924. Sassen, S. (2002). Governance hotspots: Challenges we must confront in the postSeptember 11 world. In C. Calhoun, P. Price, & A. Timmer (Eds.), Understanding September 11 (pp. 106-120). New York: New Press. Savelsberg, J., Cleveland, L. L., & King, R. D. (2004). Institutional environments and scholarly work: American criminology, 1951-1993. Social Forces, 82, 12751302. Shaw, C. R., & McKay, H. D. (1942). Juvenile delinquency and urban areas (1st ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago. Short, J. F. (1996). Personal, gang, and community careers. In R. C. Huff (Ed.), Gangs in America (2nd ed., pp. 221-240). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Short, J. F., Jr., & Strodtbeck, F. L. (1965). Group process and gang delinquency. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shurink, W. J. (1986). Number gangs in South African prisons: An organizational perspective. Paper presented at the Association for Sociology in Southern Africa, Durban, South Africa. Spergel, I. A. (1995). The youth gang problem: A community approach. New York: Oxford University Press. Taylor, C. (1989). Dangerous society. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Thrasher, F. (1927). The Gang (1st ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago. Touraine, A. (1995). Critique of modernity. Oxford: Blackwell. Touraine, A. (2000). Can we live together? Equality and difference. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Touraine, A. (2001). Beyond neoliberalism. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. UN Convention on Transnational Organized Crime. (2000). Retrieved November 14, 2004, from http://www.unodc.org/palermo.convmain.html UN-Habitat. (2003). Slums of the world: The face of urban poverty in the new millennium. Nairobi, Kenya: United Nations Human Settlements Programme. van Gemert, F. (2001). Crips in orange: Gangs and groups in the Netherlands. In M. Klein, H.-J. Kerner, C. L. Maxson, & E. G. Weitekamp (Eds.), The Eurogang paradox: Street gangs and youth groups in the U.S. and Europe (pp. 145-152). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. Hagedorn / GLOBAL EFFECT OF GANGS 169 Venkatesh, S. A. (2000). American project: The rise and fall of a modern ghetto. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Venkatesh, S. A., & Leavitt, S. D. (2000). “Are we a family or a business?” History and disjuncture in the urban American street gang. Theory and Society, 29, 427462. Wacquant, L. (1999). Urban marginality in the coming millennium. Urban Studies, 36, 1639-1647. Wacquant, L. (2000). The new “peculiar institution”: On the prison as surrogate ghetto. Theoretical Criminology, 4, 377-389. Wacquant, L. (2004). Deadly symbiosis: Race and the rise of neoliberal penalty. London: Polity Press. Weber, M. (1968). Economy and society (Vol. 1). Berkeley: University of California Press. Wilson, W. J., & Sampson, R. J. (1995). Toward a theory of race, crime, and urban inequality. In J. Hagan & R. D. Peterson (Eds.), Crime and inequality (pp. 37-54). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Wirth, L. (1956). The ghetto. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1928) World Bank Institute. (2000). Street children: Latin America’s wasted resource. Retrieved November 14, 2004, from http://www1.worldbank.org/deboutreach/ summer00/article.asp?id=64 Yablonsky, L. (1966). The violent gang. New York: Macmillan. John M. Hagedorn has been studying gangs, drugs, and violence for more than 20 years. He is currently in the midst of a long-term study of the history of gangs in Chicago. He has also participated in several international studies of gangs. He is the editor of the forthcoming Gangs in the Global City: Exploring Alternatives to Traditional Criminology from the University of Illinois Press.
Purchase answer to see full attachment
User generated content is uploaded by users for the purposes of learning and should be used following Studypool's honor code & terms of service.

Explanation & Answer

Attached.

Running head: GANGS AND VIOLENCE

1

Gangs and Violence
Institution Affiliation
Date

GANGS AND VIOLENCE

2

1. Commenting on the street violence in South Los Angeles, Senator Tom Hayden says,
“It’s been defined as a crime problem and a gang problem but it’s really an issue of no
work and dysfunctional schools.” Do you agree? Why or why not? How does this relate
to our discussion on structural violence?
I do agree with the Senator because, even from the documentary, the interviewed gang
members who are specifica...


Anonymous
Super useful! Studypool never disappoints.

Studypool
4.7
Trustpilot
4.5
Sitejabber
4.4

Related Tags