ABSTRACT
The following chapter compares gangs to secret societies. The assumption that gangs become more secretive when they are confronted with arbitrary authority provides the rationale for the comparison. The analytic question of the chapter is when and how an increase in secrecy (self-alienation, invisibility, etc.) produces a qualitative transformation, such that any gangs might be understood as secret societies. The political question is what can be done to reverse the increase of the arbitrary authority that is a feature of the war on gangs and an objective of the xenophobic side of the culture war.
