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Through biographical investigations of gang members'' life histories, this open access book illustrates the range of causes, motivations, and consequences associated with being a gang member. Gangs are one of a small number of truly global social phenomena, present across time and space all over the world. More recently, sociological, anthropological, and criminological studies have noted the presence of gangs in countries as disparate as Bangladesh, Belize, China (Hong Kong), El Salvador, Georgia, Honduras, India, Italy, Kenya, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, and the USA. Partly as a result of this ubiquity, gangs are inherently revealing social institutions. They can be connected to a range of fundamental human activities, such as the exercise of power, capital accumulation, socialization, identity formation, territorialization, or the articulation of gender relations. Indeed, such processes are often observable in a much more direct and unmediated manner through the gang lens. Frequently associated with an almost pathological form of violence, and represented as engaging in senseless forms of brutality, gangsters are popular scapegoats all over the world. This makes it all the more urgent to understand what it is that motivates individuals to become gang members, why they undergo particular trajectories, and what the long-term consequences of gang membership might be. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the European Research Council grant (no. 787935)
List of contents
Introduction (Dennis Rodgers, Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Switzerland)
1) Gangster, Addict, Prisoner, Father: Chepas' Salvadorean Journey (Anthony Fontes, American University, USA)
2) Ram the Petty criminal: A Retelling of an Indian Experience (Atreyee Sen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
3) 'You Cannot Win': The Life History of a Kenyan Drug Dealer (Naomi Van Stapele, The Hague University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands)
4) The Life of Bryan in Nicaragua (José Luis Rocha)
5) Koka: Portrait of a Transnational Georgian Gangster (Maroussia Ferry, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France)
6) Jennifer: The First Female Honduran Gang Leader (Ellen Van Damme, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)
7) 'Obviously, I do Not Deny It, Nor Will I Ever Deny It': A Personal History of the Barrio 18 Gang Between El Salvador and Italy (Paolo Grassi, University of Milano Bicocca, Italy)
8) Blood, Deportee, Dealer, Carer: The Life and Times of a Belizean Gang Member (Adam Baird, United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, Geneva, Switzerland)
9) The Second Act: An Oral History of Glasgow Gangs, 1969-2022 (Alistair Fraser, University of Glasgow, UK & Angela Bartie, University of Edinburgh, UK, with Kate Wilson, University of Manchester, UK)
10) The Paper Poet: From Crime to Literature in Sierra Leone (Kieran Mitton, King's College London, UK)
11) Sharif's Story: From Gang Member to Human Rights Worker in Bangladesh (Sally Atkinson-Sheppard, University of Westminster, UK)
12) Resistance and Survival in the Life of an American Gang Radical: The Prison and Post-Prison Experience of Antonio Fernandez (Dave Brotherton, City University of New York, USA)
13) Leaving the Triad in Hong Kong: Beyond De-identification and Disengagement (Sharon Kwok, Western Sydney University, Australia)
14) Sito: An American Life (Laurence Ralph, Princeton University, USA)
Afterword
About the author
Dennis Rodgers is Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Switzerland. He has authored or edited over 150 publications, including the edited volumes
Ethnography as Risky Business (2019),
Global Gangs (2014), and
Youth Violence in Latin America (2009).
