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S. HallsworthThe Gang and BeyondS. HallsworthThe Gang and BeyondInterpreting Violent Street Worlds2013QUALITY PAPERBACK
UPC: 9781137358097Release Date: 10/1/2013
Biographical note:
Simon Hallsworth is Professor of Sociology and Head of the School of Applied Social Sciences, University Campus Suffolk, UK. He has written extensively on punishment in modern society, the local politics of crime and community safety and more recently violent street worlds. His research interests include street violence, weapon use, and the development of the security state. His previous books include Street Robbery (2005) and The New Punitiveness: Issues Themes and Perspectives (2005). Main description:
The gang today is seen as Britain's public enemy number one. This book tackles this gangland thesis head-on and refutes it, questioning how we think about and interpret violent street worlds and how and why we need to think about them in very different ways, pushing the boundaries of critical enquiry and providing a range of new ways of looking at disturbing realities. Through the novel use of authoethnography, the book contests the widely held thesis that urban gangs today represent a serious, novel and developing threat. In this guise, they have been blamed for causing the riots of 2011, most gun related crime, the sexual violation of women, and outbreaks of dangerous dogs. Hallsworth argues that when subject to critical scrutiny, there is always an excess to the violence blamed on gangs that is not gang related and explanations for problems blamed on gangs can be advanced without needing to evoke the gang as an explanatory factor. In light of this, the book considers how best we might understand the nature of violent street worlds without falling into the pitfalls of the discourse of gang talk, exploring questions such as 'How do we have a gang problem?' and 'How best do we avoid one?'This book is provocative, polemical and theoretical and one that seeks to make a significant intervention into both gangs studies and studies of urban violence more generally, commanding significant social attention in the academy and beyond. Review quote:
"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 brilliant work that criminology badly needs but seldom sees. Strikingly original in its scholarly perspective and in its narrative orientation, this book constitutes an intellectually audacious confrontation with gangs, gang scholarship, and the assumptions that surround them." - Jeff Ferrell, Texas Christian University, USA "Provocative and stimulating, this book provides an emphatic critique of the 'common sense' surrounding youth gangs in the UK and elsewhere. From auto-ethnography to moral outrage at gang talk distortions, Simon Hallsworth provides a personal and powerful indictment of the gang industry within academia, including its convergence with rapidly expanding and inappropriate gang suppression efforts, and its failure to fully understand street culture and street violence. Not to be missed." - Rob White, University of Tasmania, Australia Table of contents:
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 |
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