Weapon-Carrying Among Young Men in Glasgow: Street Scripts and Signals in Uncertain Social Spaces

Abstract

Our work contributes through a cultural criminological perspective to a contextualised knowledge of street violence and its constructed meanings; uncertainty, familiarity and strangeness in spaces of urban disadvantage as perceived by Scottish white youths are examined. Youth criminal and antisocial behaviour associated with knifecarrying is widely reported and structures political and media discourses which classify street culture. In our article we argue that a particular symbolic construction of social space, as experienced and constructed by weapon-carrying young white men in Glasgow, informs the landscape of violence judged in terms of official statistics and fear of crime. Signal crime theory as a particular type of cultural criminology affords insights about why weapons are carried. Links with a hierarchical codification of consumer culture inform the findings and resonate with the penetration of capitalism in the lives of the marginalised street youth. Cultural Criminology Cultural criminology engages with the ontological fragility of late-modernity, structural inequality, uncertainty, and how these haunt the included and excluded, impacting their fear and vindictiveness (Ferrell and Hayward 2014). A politics of meaning-making

Getting to the Point? Reframing Narratives on Knife Crime

“…Pre-placement of knives within the shrubbery of a housing estate or block of flats demonstrates ability to risk assess and control the environment. Holligan et al (2016) and Winlow and Hall (2009) identified something similar from their interview participants who were prepared to strike first and act pre-emptively. Recent expansion of the social field suggests that this assertion, once limited to interpretations of the physical field boundary (gang turf), is now open to wider interpretation.…”

“…In some ways the normalisation script is bolstered by local neighbourhood passivity and inactivity, or at times a casualised acquiescence to normalised violence which can be read as condoning knife-carrying for protection but which simultaneously generates wider forms of criminal agency. Holligan et al (2016) reported on one interviewed participant who utilised the discourse of Glasgow as 'stab capital of the world' to normalise his weapon-carrying.…”

“…Holligan et al (2016) suggest that knife-carrying for protection arises from a ‘pragmatic analysis of the cultural construction of an uncertain social space’ (p. 147). In social field theory, such admissions are rarely made as they indicate a diminished street capital whereby the actor is not yet fully able to interpret the nuances of Road Life.…”

Progression from Cafeteria toà la carteOffending: Scottish Organised Crime Narratives

“…Prior research has documented how reputations for violence earned in gangs could lead to opportunities for employment in the illicit economy (Holligan, McLean and Deuchar ), and how gangs formed part of the same street culture that more organised criminal enterprise in Scotland grew out of (McLean ; McLean, Densley and Deuchar ). In some cases, gangs provided a pathway into more organised forms of criminality (Fraser ).…”

Exploring County Lines: Criminal Drug Distribution Practices in Scotland

“…In some British cites, the demise of employment opportunities and weakening of community cohesion will trigger strain that may surface in recourse to the use of violence as a form of street capital enabling criminal governance. Local youths may also respond to the fear of crime by carrying weapons for status and protection (Holligan et al, 2017). Without the availability of recourse to the legal system, grievances and personal slights arising in criminal networks are resolved through codes of violent retribution and notions of natural justice (Coomber and Moyle, 2017; Densley, 2013).…”