ABSTRACT
Gangs are a reality for youth in every corner of the globe. But while gang research has been largely concentrated in the United States and lately in Europe, the overwhelming majority of organized or semi-organized street youth hang out in the shanty towns, townships, barrios, and favelas of Africa, Latin America, and Asia. This vast number of gangs, street children, militias, crews, sets, cartels, child soldiers, and the like present a challenge to how we understand the problems of youth. There are two different approaches to this challenge. The one favored by US and
‘Euro-gang’ criminologists applies a formal definition of a ‘gang’ to the youth they study. This deductive, mainly structural approach is largely concerned with adolescent criminal behavior and how to strengthen methods of social control by the state or civil society. In the past decade, a comparative focus has been in fashion, but restricted almost solely to studying youth groups in western countries. Another approach casts a more global net. Rather than trying to fit a group of youth
into a western-based definition, this inductive, more cultural perspective examines a variety of street-socialized youth groups as well as their identities of resistance. This approach includes in its vista western-style gangs, but also considers other types of youth groups as well as conventional and unconventional organizations that often recruit them. Thus ‘gangs’ are described on a continuum of youthful non-state actors with potential for social change as well as violence and threats to order (Hagedorn 2008).
