The Gang and Beyond Interpreting Violent Street Worlds [Hardcover]

This book challenges the widely held conjecture that gangs represent 'the new face of youth crime', repudiating claims which situate the gang at the heart of sexual violence, mass shooting and control of the illegal drugs trade and examining how better we might understand the violence of the street and the organisations that inhabit it.Introduction Welcome to gangland UK My goodness, how things have changed Themes So what is this all about? Part I: Gangland Claims and Gangland Realities 1. Gangs, Weapons and Violence 2.The Fists and the Fury: My Life in a Sea of Gangs Part II: On Gang Talk and Gang-Talkers 3. Deciphering Gang Talk Defining gang talk Reading gang talk as a language game The seduction of gang talk Unforeseen consequences Conclusion 4. Moral Panic and Industry Emergence From reality to gang-talking fantasy: reflections on the media inventory The journey back: reshaping reality in the image of gang fantasies The industrial logic of 'gang' production Conclusion Part III: Getting Real about Violence 5. Arborealism and Rhizomatics: A Treatise The sedentary and the nomadic Arborealism Rhizomatics Back to the street Reading the street as rhizome Rhizomatic organisation Conclusion 6. Back to the Street Beyond the gang Street imperatives Instability, trauma and street life Conclusion 7. Continuities and Discontinuities in Urban Violence Street violence in the postwar period Continuities Discontinuities: on neoliberalism and its consequences Conclusion How to have a gang problem Koyaanisqutsi

The 'gang' has become a magical word used to explain away crime, riots, sexual assault, drug dealing and almost every manifestation of violence in our society. Simon Hallsworth's book is a devastating critique: iconoclastic, hard hitting, and amusing. Read it. - Jock Young, John Jay College, City University of New York, USA and author of The Criminological Imagination

Simon Hallsworth's The Gang and Beyond is precisely the sort of boldly brillilã*