The Gang as a Network

Abstract

Social networks represent an empirically grounded model of social structure that grew out of an increasing awareness that spatial boundaries do not delimit social boundaries. The approach taken in this text will focus on the network as a process for the mobilization of action, rather than on the quantification of network characteristics; the latter representing a sociometric path that has emerged since the origins of network analysis in ethnography. Unlike the long-standing occidental gang paradigm, new-age street gangs are not geographically anchored to an area, rather, they are most often characterized by their extraordinary mobility and fluidity of gang composition. The mobility which characterizes their activities has tended to produce loose-knit networks which show little redundancy or overlap in connectedness among the network links.

Everything went through him [leader]. He controlled ‘x’ many people who only knew ‘x’ many people, whereas he [leader] was the key because he knows the whole thing [network]

Interview with a former gang player who is referencing the street gang leader he followed.