December 7, 2016

Crewe on Gangs and Culture

Don Crewe, Leeds Beckett University, School of Social Sciences, is publishing Gang: Culture. Eidos and Process in volume 6 of the Oñati Socio-Legal Series (2016). Here is the abstract (in both English and Spanish).
English Abstract: The terms ‘gang’ and ‘culture’ are used with varying degrees of (im)precision in different fields of academe, media, public, and policy; and this paper will contend that this circumstance provides a fertile ground for the reification of these two concepts. It will suggest that this phenomenon of reification has already taken hold in various parts of the study of gangs more recently, and in cultural criminology in a more established way. This paper will deconstruct the concepts ‘gang’ and ‘culture’ and attempt to reconstruct them in a way that opens up the discourse of ‘gangs’ and ‘culture’ such that better sense may be made of the phenomena that these terms are intended to evoke.

Spanish Abstract: Los terminos "banda" y "cultura" se usan con diferentes grados de (im)precisión en distintos ámbitos del mundo académico, medios de comunicación, público y política. En este artículo se defiende que esta circunstancia ofrece un campo fértil para la cosificación de estos dos conceptos. Se sugiere que este fenómeno de cosificación ya ha arraigado de diversa forma en los estudios de bandas recientes, y en la criminología cultural de forma más consolidada. Este artículo deconstruye los conceptos "banda" y "cultura" e intenta reconstruirlos de forma que se abra el discurso sobre "bandas" y "cultura" para tener una sensación mejor del fenómeno que estos términos intentan evocar.

Download the article from SSRN at the link. 

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