Milwaukee research finds that most young male adult gang members cannot be described accurately as “committed long‐term participants” in the drug economy. Rather, most adult gang members are involved sporadically with drug sales, moving in and out of conventional labor markets at irregular intervals. Four types of male adult gang members are described; only one type has rejected conventional values. Despite relatively high average earnings from drug sales, most gang members would accept full‐time jobs with modest wages. This suggests that severe and mandatory penalties for cocaine use and sales should be ended.

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.

Researchers have debated whether gangs are selling drugs “freelance” or whether gang drug selling is more organized. Some have speculated that gangs are evolving into organized crime. This article uses contingency theory from the literature on organizations to examine the sources of variation in drug-selling organization of gangs from Milwaukee. In the turbulent environment surrounding drug selling, inflexible vertically organized drug businesses are unlikely to be successful. The failure of this kind of entrepreneurial drug gang in Milwaukee is described. Most gang drug sales in Milwaukee were by neighborhood-based, loosely organized operations. Neighborhood-based drug-selling organization varied according to the lucrativeness and stability of the drug market. Complexity of gang drug organization generally varied inversely to the degree that drug sales were centered on the neighborhood as a market. Ethnicity may also exercise an independent effect on organization. Research needs to pay more attention to organizational theory and the neighborhood context of gang activities and organization.

Across the globe, the phenomenon of youth gangs has become an important and sensitive public issue. In this context, an increasing level of research attention has focused on the development of universalized definitions of gangs in a global context. In this article, we argue that this search for similarity has resulted in a failure to recognize and understand difference. Drawing on an alternative methodology we call a ‘global exchange’, this article suggests three concepts—homologies of habitus, vectors of difference and transnational reflexivity—that seek to re-engage the sociological imagination in the study of gangs and globalization.

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