Gangs, Gangsters, and Ganglands: Towards a Global Comparative Ethnography

Project Information

GANGS

Grant agreement ID: 787935

DOI

10.3030/787935

Project closed

EC signature date 29 October 2018

Start date 1 January 2019

End date 30 June 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 875 893,75

EU contribution

€ 2 498 079,00

Coordinated by

FONDATION POUR L INSTITUT DE HAUTES ETUDES INTERNATIONALES ET DU DEVELOPPEMENT
Switzerland

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - GANGS (Gangs, Gangsters, and Ganglands: Towards a Global Comparative Ethnography)

Reporting period: 2023-07-01 to 2024-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Gangs occupy a key position in the global imaginary of violence, widely represented as primary sources of insecurity, and found in almost every society across both time and space. At the same time, as 100 years of gang research have highlighted, the phenomenon can vary in form, dynamics, and consequences. The majority of studies have focused on a single group or location, however, and we still lack a proper sense of what kinds of gang dynamics might be general, and which ones are specific to particular times and places. The GANGS project developed an explicitly comparative investigation of global gang dynamics, to better understand why they emerge, how they evolve over time, whether they are associated with particular urban configurations, how and why individuals join gangs, and what impact this has on their future. The project was based on original collaborative ethnographic research in multiple locations, and adopted a tripartite focus on “Gangs”, “Gangsters”, and “Ganglands” in order to better explore the interplay between group, individual, and contextual factors. A key finding is that representations and analyses of gangs commonly tend to disconnect them from their wider social environment. They are portrayed as disembedded and autonomous organisations, something that legitimises repressive interventions by state and non-state actors, as these are seen to affect only the gangs that are their targets and not the communities within which the gangs emerge and operate. GANGS project research however demonstrates how gangs are fundamentally embedded within, and shaped by, broader social, cultural, economic, and political processes. In particular, the origins and organisational evolution of gangs, as well as the nature of their violence, changes as a result of both internal and external factors, and their variable articulation. Another significant finding is that the way certain urban areas become labelled as “ganglands” obscures the fact that those living in such areas also suffer non-criminal forms of brutality, including structural, infrastructural, environmental, or bureaucratic violence, preventing an understanding of the fundamentally systemic nature of urban violence. Finally, the gangster life histories collected for the GANGS project showcase the non-deterministic nature of individual trajectories and the generally finite nature of gang membership, but also how gangster experiences can enable the construction of sustainable post-gang opportunities, with former gang members becoming social workers, street poets, or human rights activists, for example.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The GANGS project was made up of three subprojects, respectively on "Gangs", "Gangsters", and "Ganglands". Research was built around three primary case studies, Managua in Nicaragua, Cape Town in South Africa, and Marseille in France, and two secondary case studies, Naples in Italy and Algeciras in Spain. A core team of 6 researchers carried out a total of 59 months of qualitative research in these five cities, both individually and collaboratively, and a further 46 researchers also contributed to the project. Research adopted a “disjunctive” comparative approach, the aim of which was not to measure the extent to which phenomena in different contexts might be similar or different, but rather to set different instances of a given phenomenon alongside each other to see what might come out of an examination of their similarities and differences. The logic of this approach was to “ask questions from elsewhere” in different contexts, in order to stimulate doubts and open up new avenues for investigation. The ambition of the research was thus to raise conceptual questions, and generate insights that lent themselves to innovative theorization and practice. The "Gangs" subproject focused on the comparative analysis of gang dynamics in Nicaragua, South Africa, and France. It was divided into two phases: a first phase of joint ethnographic research by the GANGS project PI and Senior Researcher (SR) in Managua, Nicaragua and Cape Town, South Africa, in order to establish a common ethnographic baseline, on the basis of which they carried out a second phase of joint ethnographic research in Marseille, France. In this way, the subproject aimed to reverse the traditional North-South gaze characteristic of transnational gang research, as well as explore new, innovative forms of collaboration in ethnography, traditionally an individual enterprise. The "Gangsters" subproject focused on the comparison of individual gang member life histories. It involved 40 researchers who collected the life histories of 31 gang members with whom they had a prior relationship in 23 countries around the world. The "Ganglands" subproject drew on the research carried out by the PI and SR in Managua, Cape Town, and Marseille, the PD in Marseille, and the 3 GANGS project PhD students. The latter carried out individual and joint ethnographic research in respectively Marseille (France), Naples (Italy), and Algeciras (Spain), thereby constituting a "Mediterranean comparative arc" intersecting with the "North-South" Nicaragua-South Africa-France arc. GANGS project research results have been published as academic articles, books, blogs, podcasts, contributions to The Conversation, and a policy brief. GANGS project team members also presented the results of their research both individually and collectively in a wide range of contexts including seminars, conferences, and workshop, as well as at GANGS project-organised conferences and workshops in Switzerland, Denmark, Mexico, South Africa, France, Italy, and Belgium.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

There are four areas where the GANGS project made progress beyond the state of the art. The first is methodologically, in relation to the joint comparative ethnographic research that was at the heart of the project, and which showed itself to be insightful in unsuspected ways, in particular opening up a range of new avenues for considering gang dynamics. The PI and SR have published two articles detailing the methodological benefits of “comparison through collaboration”, while the 3 PhD students are currently completing an article based on their joint research experience. The second area of progress is conceptual, and relates to the need to decentre our gaze on gangs, and re-embed them within broader social processes in order to properly understand them. Linked to this, another conceptual advance of the GANGS project is the insight that both “gang” and “gangland” dynamics are fundamentally co-constructed by top-down and bottom-up processes that are constantly evolving. More generally, a major innovation of the GANGS project is that it developed a North-South comparison of gangs starting from the South, rather than the more usual starting point of the North. The third advance concerns the experimental comparison of gangster life histories, as well as the development of innovative forms of writing them. The fourth progress is linguistic. This relates to the GANGS project's collaboration with the other ERC project focusing on gangs, the TRANSGANG project at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain), and involved co-financing a Spanish-language translation and publication of Frederic Thrasher’s foundational 1927 study "The Gang", which had never been published in this language before, with the two project PIs co-writing an original introduction setting out the work’s enduring relevance for gang research.

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