Global Gangs: Street Violence across the World

309 Pages·2014·2.24 MB·English

by  Jennifer M. Hazen

Global GanGs
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Global GanGs
street Violence across
the World
Jennifer M. Hazen and
Dennis Rodgers, Editors
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Copyright 2014 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Global gangs : street violence across the world / Jennifer M. Hazen and Dennis
Rodgers, editors.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8166-9147-0 (hc : alk. paper) 
ISBN 978-0-8166-9149-4 (pb : alk. paper)
1. Gangs. 2. Violence. I. Hazen, Jennifer M., 1973– II. Rodgers, Dennis.
HV6437.G56 2014
364.106'6—dc23
2013048784
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer.
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Gangs in a Global
Comparative Perspective 1
Dennis Rodgers and Jennifer M. Hazen
Part I. Gang Formation and Transformation
1. Intimate Connections: Gangs and the
Political Economy of Urbanization in
South Africa 29
Steffen Jensen
2. Cholo!: The Migratory Origins of Chicano
Gangs in Los Angeles 49
James Diego Vigil
3. Capitalizing on Change: Gangs, Ideology,
and the Transition to a Liberal Economy in
the Russian Federation 65
Alexander L. Salagaev and
Rustem R. Safin
4. Of Marginality and “Little Emperors”:
The Changing Reality of Chinese Youth
Gangs 85
Lening Zhang
5. From Black Jackets to Zulus:
Social Imagination, Myth, and Reality
Concerning French Gangs 105
Marwan Mohammed
6. Maras and the Politics of Violence in
El Salvador 123
José Miguel Cruz
Part II. Problematizing Gangs
7. Youth Gangs and Otherwise in
Indonesia 147
Loren Ryter
8. “Playing the Game”: Gang– Militia Logics in
War-Torn Sierra Leone 171
Mats Utas
9. “For Your Safety”: Child Vigilante Squads
and Neo- Gangsterism in Urban India 193
Atreyee Sen
10. “We Are the True Blood of the Mau Mau”:
The Mungiki Movement in Kenya 213
Jacob Rasmussen
11. Gang Politics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 237
Enrique Desmond Arias
12. “Hecho en México”: Gangs, Identities, and
the Politics of Public Security 255
Gareth A. Jones
Afterword: The Inevitable Gang 281
Sudhir Venkatesh
Contributors 289
Index 293
Acknowledgments
We thank the Centre for Conflict, Development, and Peacebuilding
(CCDP); the Jacobs Foundation (Switzerland); and the Small Arms Sur-
vey for providing the funding for the workshop convened in May 2009
at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies,
Geneva, that was at the origins of this volume. We are grateful to Thomas
Biersteker, Oliver Jütersonke, Keith Krause, and Sandra Reimann for
their organizational support for this event. We also thank Pieter Martin
at the University of Minnesota Press and the contributors to this volume
for their exceptional patience as we endeavored to finalize it.
vii
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Introduction
Gangs in a Global Comparative
Perspective
DennIs RoDGeRs anD JennIFeR M. Hazen
Frequently depicted as an almost pathological form of brutality, gangs
are ubiquitously associated with senselessly destructive violence and
have become popular bugbears and scapegoats. This is currently per-
haps most obvious in the case of contemporary Central America, where
gangs— known as pandillas and maras— are widely perceived as the
most important security threat within a post– Cold War panorama of
criminality often characterized by levels of violence that surpass those
of the revolutionary conflicts that affected the region during the 1970s
and 1980s (Rodgers 2009). This concern, heightened in the post-9 /11
context, has Central American gangs commonly portrayed as a “new
urban insurgency” aiming “to depose or control the governments of
targeted countries” through “coups d’street,” thereby embodying a dan-
ger that has the potential to extend beyond the isthmus, in particular, to
the United States and Canada (Manwaring 2005, 3). The corresponding
policy response has been particularly repressive, to the extent that it
is no exaggeration to talk of Central American governments having
declared a veritable “war on gangs” in recent years (Jütersonke, Mug-
gah, and Rodgers 2009).
Gangs are a global phenomenon, found in most societies around
the world. On the one hand, this is likely due to a process of convergent
evolution, whereby similar social contexts around the world give rise
to similar social phenomena. On the other hand, however, processes
of globalization have also increased the connections between societies
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