Gangs, Guns, and Violence

Carlock, Arna L.; Lizotte, Alan J.

doi:10.1002/9781118726822.ch10

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Although Hobsbawm and Simmel captured the symbolism of initiation rites for the individual who intends to become part of a collective group and its collective identity in which the latter "is drawn from the shared identifications of individuals" (Murer 2009, 112), the difference of their understanding of initiations to gang initiations, however, is the actual means in becoming a member of a gang, namely the acceptance of physical violence against oneself. Criminological scholarship on gangs agrees upon that physical violence often forms an integral part of the life within a gang (Carlock and Lizotte 2015). For example, scholarship has identified that gang members are more likely to carry firearms than non-gang adolescents (Bjerregaard and Lizotte 1995) which, in turn, increases the level of violence (Fagan and Wilkinson 1998).…”

Section: Rituals Of Painmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Rituals of Pain: The Socio-Symbolic Meaning of Violence in Gang Initiations

Murer

Schwarze

2020

Int J Polit Cult Soc

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Much of criminological scholarship on street gangs focuses on the deviant and delinquent aspects of gang violence. Although the research tradition acknowledges that violence is central to the life in a gang, it often labels this form of violence as an “anti-social” behaviour. This article challenges this conceptualisation of gang violence and proposes instead that gang violence is a social performance. By using the example of gang initiation rites, this article suggests that violence in such rites possesses a socio-symbolic and performative function that informs about the social status of gang members. This article draws on Jeffrey Stevenson Murer’s theory of the performative and communicative function of violence as well as on Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of social field, habitus and social capital in order to demonstrate that violence during gang initiation rites is an inherently social act that reinforces and strengthens the social ties and bonds among the members of a gang. The aim of this piece is to broaden scholarship on gangs towards a more critical theorisation of the performative and communicative functions of gang violence. We suggest that a stronger engagement with critical social theory on collective identity, violence and social capital can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the socio-symbolic and cultural processes that underlie gang membership.

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Section: Rituals Of Painmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Rituals of Pain: The Socio-Symbolic Meaning of Violence in Gang Initiations

Murer

Schwarze

2020

Int J Polit Cult Soc

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“…Further, given the role of firearms in the exacerbation of gang violence (see Section 1.3. Violence), it may be suggested that policy directed at decreasing the availability of such weapons would have considerable impact on reducing gang violence (Carlock & Lizotte, 2015). Banning firearms is unlikely to fix gang violence, or even gang perpetrated gun violence (as more serious criminal groups, or those with contacts to more serious criminal groups, may still gain access to such weapons, see Hureau & Braga, 2018;Roberto et al, 2018), yet reducing the availability of such weapons may influence the severity/frequency of harms.…”

Section: Explanatory Strategies For Risk Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding gangs: Developing an epistemically pluralist framework for gang research

Wegerhoff¹

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Gangs are associated with a range of social, criminal, and economic harms. Yet, after almost a century of dedicated research, the development of effective and ethical responses to such harms has proven difficult. Recent attempts to address this have seen the establishment of the Eurogang Program; an international group of gang researchers and practitioners coordinated around a consensus definition of gangs. Since its recent inception, the Eurogang Program has quickly become the dominant framework of research and practice. While much is being staked on the success of the Eurogang Program, the suitability of such a programme for progressing gang research is yet to be thoroughly examined. In this thesis I therefore conduct a meta-theoretical examination of the state of gang research and particularly the Eurogang Program and its associated practices. By examining the frameworks underpinning gang research and drawing upon insights from the philosophy of science, I characterise the Eurogang approach as an attempt to coordinate gang research through means of unification (i.e., through the privileging of particular research perspectives and strategies to achieve coordination through consensus). I draw attention to some major limitations of these unificatory attempts and emphasise how the consensus Eurogang definition does not appropriately set up researchers to be able to develop the various kinds of conceptual and theoretical understandings of gangs required to improve gang policy and practice. Instead, I make the case for a framework known as epistemic pluralism, in which researchers do not pursue consensus but rather cultivate multiple systems of knowing to serve a variety of different research purposes. After establishing the benefit of epistemic pluralism, I examine how such a framework may be applied to the gang field. This involves specific discussion of the various aims of gang researchers and the roles that conceptual strategies (i.e., definitional, classificatory, and explanatory approaches) play in providing the pragmatic and epistemic (i.e., knowledge-related) insights required to meet them. These discussions offer a novel perspective on the roles of conceptual strategies in the process of knowledge production and justification. Having established the general kinds of strategies required for different research purposes, I then consider some specific examples of conceptual strategies that are relevant to meeting the various needs of gang researchers. This takes the form of the Conceptual Framework for Gang Research (CFGR). This novel approach offers greater opportunities for more meaningful kinds of research coordination and maximises the likelihood of establishing the conceptual and theoretical understandings of gangs required to improve gang policy and practice. The value of this thesis as a case study for pursuing epistemic pluralism in the sciences is also discussed.

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US and UK Gangs: Research, Policy and Practice

Densley

2023

The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK

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Gangs, Guns, and Violence

Cited by 3 publications

References 42 publications

Social Rituals of Pain: The Socio-Symbolic Meaning of Violence in Gang Initiations

Social Rituals of Pain: The Socio-Symbolic Meaning of Violence in Gang Initiations

Understanding gangs: Developing an epistemically pluralist framework for gang research

US and UK Gangs: Research, Policy and Practice

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