Gang Lives: Global Portraits from the Streets and Beyond
(Hardback)
Publishing Details
Gang Lives: Global Portraits from the Streets and Beyond
By (Author) Dennis Rodgers
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Bloomsbury Academic
30th April 2026
United Kingdom
Classifications
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Causes and prevention of crime
Street crime
Sociology
Physical Properties
Hardback
304
Width 156mm, Height 234mm
Description
Through biographical investigations of gang members life histories, this open access book illustrates the range of causes, motivations, and consequences associated with being a gang member.
Gangs are one of a small number of truly global social phenomena, present across time and space all over the world. More recently, sociological, anthropological, and criminological studies have noted the presence of gangs in countries as disparate as Bangladesh, Belize, China (Hong Kong), El Salvador, Georgia, Honduras, India, Italy, Kenya, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, and the USA. Partly as a result of this ubiquity, gangs are inherently revealing social institutions. They can be connected to a range of fundamental human activities, such as the exercise of power, capital accumulation, socialization, identity formation, territorialization, or the articulation of gender relations. Indeed, such processes are often observable in a much more direct and unmediated manner through the gang lens.
Frequently associated with an almost pathological form of violence, and represented as engaging in senseless forms of brutality, gangsters are popular scapegoats all over the world. This makes it all the more urgent to understand what it is that motivates individuals to become gang members, why they undergo particular trajectories, and what the long-term consequences of gang membership might be.
The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the European Research Council grant (no. 787935)
Author Bio
Dennis Rodgers is Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Switzerland. He has authored or edited over 150 publications, including the edited volumes Ethnography as Risky Business (2019), Global Gangs (2014), and Youth Violence in Latin America (2009).
