Gang glocalization: How the global mediascape creates and shapes local gang realities. (March 2019)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- Gang glocalization: How the global mediascape creates and shapes local gang realities. (March 2019)
- Main Title:
- Gang glocalization: How the global mediascape creates and shapes local gang realities
- Authors:
- Van Hellemont, Elke
Densley, James A - Abstract:
- This article introduces the concept of 'gang glocalization' to capture the processes by which global media myths and conventions create and shape local gang realities. The different stages of gang glocalization, and the motives to engage in this process, are examined by comparison of two empirical cases – Congolese gangs in Brussels and Afro-Caribbean gangs in London. This multi-sited ethnography finds that youth use fiction and imagination in order to create individual and collective gang identities. Police and political action against gangs is then informed by the same fiction and imagination, resulting in new gang realities based not on what is real. We find that mythmaking is an essential aspect of gangs – without the myth there is no gang – and that imagination is at the core of some of its most harmful activities, namely spectacular symbolic violence. This is an update on Thrasher's (1927) old themes. The driving forces behind gang glocalization are emotions and desires tied to lived experiences of social and cultural exclusion. Implications for research and practice follow.
- Is Part Of:
- Crime, media, culture. Volume 15:Number 1(2019)
- Journal:
- Crime, media, culture
- Issue:
- Volume 15:Number 1(2019)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 15, Issue 1 (2019)
- Year:
- 2019
- Volume:
- 15
- Issue:
- 1
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2019-0015-0001-0000
- Page Start:
- 169
- Page End:
- 189
- Publication Date:
- 2019-03
- Subjects:
- Ethnography -- gangs -- globalization -- imagination -- race
Crime in popular culture -- Periodicals
Crime and the press -- Periodicals
364 - Journal URLs:
- http://cmc.sagepub.com/ ↗
http://www.uk.sagepub.com/home.nav ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1177/1741659018760107 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 1741-6590
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 9698.xml