ABSTRACT
Visions of gangs as pathological embodiments of violence and disorder are commonplace, whether in policy-making circles, among law enforcement officials, or the general public at large. At the same time, however, there also exists a rich and long-standing tradition of research on gangs highlighting how they can be institutional vectors for the imposition and promotion of particular types of local social structuration. The mechanisms through which they achieve this can clearly vary significantly, both between and within specific contexts, and are not very well understood. The potential relationship between what might be termed “ordering” and “disordering” process associated with gangs is particularly opaque. Drawing on over 20 years of longitudinal ethnographic research in barrio Luis Fanor Hernández, a poor neighbourhood in Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua, this chapter traces the way that different iterations of the local gang have emerged, transformed, and disappeared over time in order to explore the underlying nature of the local governance that these have provided.
