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.S.urban social policy.Jankowski (1991) states that there is a striking similarity in gang-media stories.First, the nature of the group is linked explicitly to killings, murder, and brutal-ity and it is presented in a way that such involvements are seen as a defining charac-teristic of the group.This is done through dramatic headlines.The importance ofheadline construction is emphasized in the work of van Dijk (1988) on media-ethnicrelations.Van Dijk calls them the semantic macrostructure of news narratives andshows how ethnic derogation of certain minority groups is a constant in mainstreamcorporate news reports.His treatment of ethnic relations is particularly relevant toa treatment of gangs and the media, especially the treatment of large gangs such asthe Latin Kings, the Bloods, the Crips, and the Mara Salvatrucha which are almostdaily news items somewhere in the United States.In basic terms, the media concep-tualization of the gang is an unsubtle example of race and/or ethnic derogationwhich is best captured by Conquergood, in his commentary on the media s treatmentof the Chicago Latin Kings: Gang has become a fantasy-fetish of primitivism that is co-extensive with other colo-nialist tropes deployed to erect barriers between Self and Other.In our postcolonialworld the alien Other has migrated from the margins of empire and is now, in an ironictwist of history, colonizing our cities.The figure of the gang member in multiculturallate twentieth-century urban America is an ethnic male member of the migrant and un-and underemployed classes.Like the representations of natives in the colonies, repre-sentations of gangs in the cities are deployed to contain and control the dangerousclasses, urban primitives. (Conquergood.1992, p.4)However, the media presentation of gangs is not all pure hegemony since the mediacan be very contradictory and there are openings for groups to influence the mediaif they have the political will and consciousness.For example, in a study of theALKQN in New York City (Brotherton and Barrios, 2004) we also saw headlineswith more equivocation and ambivalence as to the nature of the group.These head-lines demonstrated to the reader that the jury is still out on the legitimacy of theorganization which is bolstered by competing quotes from members of the groupand law enforcement experts. We also found a cluster of headlines that hardlyfeatured any of the evocative, inflammatory vocabulary with the representation notdone cynically but rather suggestively, leaving the reader to digest the article beforemaking any assumption.We concluded that these were powerful examples of theextent to which a gang or street organization was able to effectively intervene in itsown representation over time, not only by affecting the content of the news but byimpacting one of the vital instruments of media storytelling: the headline.The Kingssituation was unique, though not without historical precedent and parallels, in thatmembers were engaged in an effort to actively make the news themselves, a feat GANGS AND THE UNDERGROUND ECONOMY 87similar to Barak s (1988) notion of newsmaking criminology and Gitlin s (1980)reading of the contradictory relationship between the media and radical social move-ments in the 1960s.References/Suggested Readings: Barak, G.1988.Newsmaking Criminology: Reflections onthe Media, Intellectuals, and Crime.Justice Quarterly, 5, 565 587; Brotherton, D., and Bar-rios, L.2004.The Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation.New York: Columbia UniversityPress; Cohen, S.1972.Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of Mods and Rockers.London: McGibbon and Kee; Conquergood, D.1992.On Reppin and Rhetoric: Gang Rep-resentations.Paper presented at the Philosophy and Rhetoric of Inquiry Seminar, Universityof Iowa; Erikson, K.1966.Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance.NewYork: Wiley; Gitlin, T.1980.The Whole World Is Watching.Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress; Glibert, J.1986.A Cycle of Outrage: America s Reaction to the Juvenile to the JuvenileDelinquent in the 1950s.New York: Oxford University Press; Jankowski, M.1991.Islands inthe Street: Gangs in American Society.Berkeley: University of California Press; Spitzer, S.1975.Toward a Marxian Theory of Deviance.Social Problems, 22 (June), 641 651; Van Dijk, T.1988.How They Hit the Headlines: Ethnic Minorities in the Press.In G.Smitherman-Donaldsonand T.van Dijk (eds.).Discourse and Discrimination, pp.261 262.Detroit, MI: Wayne StateUniversity Press.DAVID C.BROTHERTONGANGS AND THE UNDERGROUND ECONOMY.The economic activity ofgang members forms part of an informal economy that is interrelated with othereconomies, in particular, the formal societal economy and the wider global economy,each of which shapes and impacts its constituent sub-economies.The economic ac-tivity of gangs began with property crimes such as robbery and theft, and then movedinto drug sales and sex trading, has recently expanded into a variety of other activities,including alien smuggling, weapons sales, and identity theft, depending on the race/ethnicity of the gang.Indeed, each of these activities has become defined and shapedby gender, ethnicity, and race, fueled by the exclusion brought by globalization, andmanifesting a political resistance and cultural production, itself amplified by massmediated images and the confl icting ideologies and diversity of individual gangmembers [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.S.urban social policy.Jankowski (1991) states that there is a striking similarity in gang-media stories.First, the nature of the group is linked explicitly to killings, murder, and brutal-ity and it is presented in a way that such involvements are seen as a defining charac-teristic of the group.This is done through dramatic headlines.The importance ofheadline construction is emphasized in the work of van Dijk (1988) on media-ethnicrelations.Van Dijk calls them the semantic macrostructure of news narratives andshows how ethnic derogation of certain minority groups is a constant in mainstreamcorporate news reports.His treatment of ethnic relations is particularly relevant toa treatment of gangs and the media, especially the treatment of large gangs such asthe Latin Kings, the Bloods, the Crips, and the Mara Salvatrucha which are almostdaily news items somewhere in the United States.In basic terms, the media concep-tualization of the gang is an unsubtle example of race and/or ethnic derogationwhich is best captured by Conquergood, in his commentary on the media s treatmentof the Chicago Latin Kings: Gang has become a fantasy-fetish of primitivism that is co-extensive with other colo-nialist tropes deployed to erect barriers between Self and Other.In our postcolonialworld the alien Other has migrated from the margins of empire and is now, in an ironictwist of history, colonizing our cities.The figure of the gang member in multiculturallate twentieth-century urban America is an ethnic male member of the migrant and un-and underemployed classes.Like the representations of natives in the colonies, repre-sentations of gangs in the cities are deployed to contain and control the dangerousclasses, urban primitives. (Conquergood.1992, p.4)However, the media presentation of gangs is not all pure hegemony since the mediacan be very contradictory and there are openings for groups to influence the mediaif they have the political will and consciousness.For example, in a study of theALKQN in New York City (Brotherton and Barrios, 2004) we also saw headlineswith more equivocation and ambivalence as to the nature of the group.These head-lines demonstrated to the reader that the jury is still out on the legitimacy of theorganization which is bolstered by competing quotes from members of the groupand law enforcement experts. We also found a cluster of headlines that hardlyfeatured any of the evocative, inflammatory vocabulary with the representation notdone cynically but rather suggestively, leaving the reader to digest the article beforemaking any assumption.We concluded that these were powerful examples of theextent to which a gang or street organization was able to effectively intervene in itsown representation over time, not only by affecting the content of the news but byimpacting one of the vital instruments of media storytelling: the headline.The Kingssituation was unique, though not without historical precedent and parallels, in thatmembers were engaged in an effort to actively make the news themselves, a feat GANGS AND THE UNDERGROUND ECONOMY 87similar to Barak s (1988) notion of newsmaking criminology and Gitlin s (1980)reading of the contradictory relationship between the media and radical social move-ments in the 1960s.References/Suggested Readings: Barak, G.1988.Newsmaking Criminology: Reflections onthe Media, Intellectuals, and Crime.Justice Quarterly, 5, 565 587; Brotherton, D., and Bar-rios, L.2004.The Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation.New York: Columbia UniversityPress; Cohen, S.1972.Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of Mods and Rockers.London: McGibbon and Kee; Conquergood, D.1992.On Reppin and Rhetoric: Gang Rep-resentations.Paper presented at the Philosophy and Rhetoric of Inquiry Seminar, Universityof Iowa; Erikson, K.1966.Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance.NewYork: Wiley; Gitlin, T.1980.The Whole World Is Watching.Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress; Glibert, J.1986.A Cycle of Outrage: America s Reaction to the Juvenile to the JuvenileDelinquent in the 1950s.New York: Oxford University Press; Jankowski, M.1991.Islands inthe Street: Gangs in American Society.Berkeley: University of California Press; Spitzer, S.1975.Toward a Marxian Theory of Deviance.Social Problems, 22 (June), 641 651; Van Dijk, T.1988.How They Hit the Headlines: Ethnic Minorities in the Press.In G.Smitherman-Donaldsonand T.van Dijk (eds.).Discourse and Discrimination, pp.261 262.Detroit, MI: Wayne StateUniversity Press.DAVID C.BROTHERTONGANGS AND THE UNDERGROUND ECONOMY.The economic activity ofgang members forms part of an informal economy that is interrelated with othereconomies, in particular, the formal societal economy and the wider global economy,each of which shapes and impacts its constituent sub-economies.The economic ac-tivity of gangs began with property crimes such as robbery and theft, and then movedinto drug sales and sex trading, has recently expanded into a variety of other activities,including alien smuggling, weapons sales, and identity theft, depending on the race/ethnicity of the gang.Indeed, each of these activities has become defined and shapedby gender, ethnicity, and race, fueled by the exclusion brought by globalization, andmanifesting a political resistance and cultural production, itself amplified by massmediated images and the confl icting ideologies and diversity of individual gangmembers [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]