Abstract
This work of scholarly erudition is a worthy edition to the Clarendon Studies in Criminology series. It is gratifying to see an ethnography of youth crime included in such a high-profile imprint and this is a testament to the quality of this book. It is packed with rich ethnographic insight and forward-thinking theory rendering Urban Legends of interest to a range of students and researchers across criminology, social studies, urban studies, geography, youth studies and more. The reader is introduced to the Langview Young Team (LYT), a group of disadvantaged young people growing up in the public housing schemes of post-industrial Glasgow, their lives, personalities and struggles. More than this, the social structures which bound their lives become another set of starring characters, locating the ‘gang’ activities of LYT within the complex intersection of abstract social forces and concrete human action. For Fraser, indeed, the study of the gang cannot take place in the absence of detailed historical, cultural and socio-economic analysis. Drawing on a range of theoretical traditions, from Mills to Bourdieu, Bauman to critical gang studies, Fraser transports the reader beyond the boundaries of the Scottish second city to consider how the changing socio-economic environment impacts on youth lifestyles, criminal and otherwise, in a more general, conceptual manner.
The first commendable aspect of this book arrives early with a well-conceived commentary on the nature of contemporary gang research. Fraser rightly points to problems with the adoption of a positivist ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to conceptualizing the gang, insisting instead that contextualized and nuanced applications of this controversial term are necessary. Indeed, the subtlety of this author’s treatment of the Glasgow gang phenomenon demonstrates the extent to which ‘gang talk’ (see Hallsworth and Young, 2008) can be done in a manner that speaks to empirical realities. Rather than becoming embroiled in debates around the appropriateness of the word as an academic term of analysis (on this see Ilan, 2015), the author applies it in a specific sense: to describe a set of practices forged in the unique historical crucible of Glasgow city, a ritualized territorial violence which has long been a feature of its working-class youth culture. The book thus sits comfortably within the tradition of critical gang studies, whilst adding to it the use of Bourdieuian thinking tools to understand the Glasgow gang phenomenon as a particular localized variant of a more ubiquitous ‘street habitus’ and ‘street culture’.
Indeed, whilst making the case for seeking to understand the ‘homologies of habitus’ between different street groups across the world, the book provides a considered and detailed description of the history of Glasgow and its gangs. This analysis necessarily involves considering its shifting economic base from a hub of Fordist heavy industry to a late-modern, entrepreneurial, neoliberal site of service sector employment and tourism. A key strength of Fraser’s analysis is the way in which he traces how these socio-economic changes become traced onto the materiality of city life, with shifting land uses, leisure and security architectures, and also onto individual and community life-worlds. As such, the most localized of practices and cultures, the author maintains, must be understood within the context of globalization. The changes in broad socio-economic patterns are not just a matter for macro-economics and international governance, but have discernible effects within the humblest of city spaces.
These more conceptual concerns and historical analysis constitute the first half of the book, along with an effective account of the research participants, the research process and an introduction to the Langview community where the author conducted his fieldwork. A dividing line between this section of the book and what follows is provided in the shape of an intermezzo which reflects on the representation of Glasgow in film and literature. This section constitutes more than a pleasing distraction, highlighting the role played by the imaginary in the creation of place and showcasing a further element of the author’s analytical talents. Throughout the book, Fraser’s writing itself could be classed as literary. Citing novelists and Scotland’s most famous poet with the same ease as he quotes social theorists, the author has produced a text that is written with a flow and flair that is rare in academic writing, and yet it is very much a work of social science. Descriptions such as that which follows (from p. 102) are evocative and successful, convincingly conveying a sense of particular kinds of young men that one can encounter in various settings across the world:
They comprised a jack-in-the-box of energy, enthusiasm, and spirit, straining to burst out of whatever confines they found themselves in, resulting in anger among some community residents, fear or resentment amongst others, and awed respect from some younger groups in the area.
The second half of the book is more centrally concerned with presenting ethnographic findings and using them to substantiate the arguments well-made earlier. As the above quote demonstrates, Fraser has successfully avoided over-sympathizing with his participants and is capable of presenting them in their nuanced complexity: feared by some, admired by others, but following a cultural script derived from localized notions of what it is and means to be a ‘hardman’. As the author describes the world of the sometimes violent gang members, the reader gains the sense of young men who are forced to resolve tensions between historical legacies of a disappearing way of life and the realities of a new world they are ill-suited to thriving within. Whilst a youth of chasing a violent reputation and defending home territory against all challengers may have made sense when an adulthood of tough physical labour and rich community life awaited, its raison d’etre could not be so directly identified when an adulthood of unemployment and exclusion from expensive leisure and residential spaces might be expected.
A strength of the ethnographic analysis presented is the way in which it is able to explain how the participants use ‘gang’ life to address such tensions presented by the co-presence of continuity and change. Displaying a sense of daring and violent potential not only harks back to historically logical cultures of rugged masculinity, but the excitement of breaking into leisure venues and evading security provides the young men with thrills to negate some of the boredom that comes with being young and poor in contemporary society. Moreover, clinging to territoriality provides a means of negotiating a relationship with a city that is changing all around them, becoming increasingly privatized, security obsessed and commercial. The homologies of habitus that Fraser identifies between young disadvantaged men in various parts of the world unfold in particular ways in different localities, resolving the particular tensions that exist within particular spaces and times.
Fraser avoids romanticizing the activities of his participants. He demonstrates that despite their own immobilities, confined as they are by low cultural capital (in the conventional sense), they impose a certain tyrannical order on those young people who fear leaving their homes or being present in public in case they become victimized by the LYT. The voices of young women are included, although the reader does get as rich a sense of their lives as they do of the young men (which makes sense considering the emphasis of the book). Finally, the author is frank and considered about the implications of his research: what it demonstrates and what it misses (for example the voice of ethnic minorities).
The author invokes the tragedy of the members of the LYT who are cast in the role of ‘damaged hardmen’, bearing psychic scars to match the physical marks they pick up through their ritual violence. They are left as the custodians of a variant of masculinity no longer valued or desired outside of relatively small circles of disadvantage. Their prospects for future success are low and yet they are not tempted into developing more sophisticated criminal enterprises. Herein lies a crucial and understated argument implicit within the text. Although the young men studied by Fraser begin to ‘age out’ of the gang process, they are not necessarily inclined to become a different kind of criminal. They simply leave youthful offending behind. Notions that ‘the gang’ is a universal, ubiquitous institution that inevitably leads to increases in violence and ever more organized and sophisticated forms of advanced criminality are demonstrated as false. There is no inevitability, but rather a range of possibilities which tie into specific local, regional and national realities. Ultimately this book deserves wide readership and to be considered in time as a seminal work in both the ethnography of youth crime and in critical gang studies.