Street gangs

Gangs feature prominently in popular culture, from novels, songs and more recently film and video games. The serious study of gangs, however, only took off in the 1920s following the interest from the Chicago School of Sociology. In their analysis, gangs were a sign of social disorganization as a result of rapid urbanization. These early studies located gangs in particular spaces, notably the street corner and ‘slum’ neighborhood, but also linked them with social and political institutions. More recent studies have emphasized the gang as complex social phenomena and have noted the evolution of individual gangs, occasionally including a transnational dimension and links with terrorist and criminal organizations. Contemporary research is attentive to the economics of gangs, gender and social identity, and to the uses and effects of violence. Finally, the paper considers some of the policy approaches to gangs, especially in the Global South.