scholarly journals Becoming the ‘Baddest’: Masculine Trajectories of Gang Violence in Medellín

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
ADAM BAIRD
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Gang Violence ◽  
Gang Members ◽  
The Social ◽  
A Site ◽  
Practical Logic

AbstractDrawing upon 40 life-history interviews with gang members in Medellín, Colombia, this paper argues that many young men join gangs to emulate and reproduce ‘successful’ local male identities. The accumulation by the gang of ‘masculine capital’, the material and symbolic signifiers of manhood, and the accompanying stylistic and timely displays of this capital, means that youths often perceive gangs to be spaces of male success. This drives the social reproduction of gangs. Once in the gang, the youths become increasingly ‘bad’, using violence to defend the gang's interests in exchange for masculine capital. Gang leaders, colloquially known asdurosor ‘hard men’, tend to be themás malos, the ‘baddest’. The ‘ganging process’ should not be understood in terms of aberrant youth behaviour; rather there is practical logic to joining the gang as a site of identity formation for aspirational young men who are coming of age when conditions of structural exclusion conspire against them.

Gangs: Spatialities and Socialities in South Africa

Politeia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Godfrey Maringira
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Emotional Support ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Gang Membership ◽  
Gang Violence ◽  
Gang Members ◽  
Social And Emotional ◽  
Black Township

The “making” of gang relationships has remained at the periphery of research, yet it is critical in understanding the continuity and sustainability of gangsterism in different contexts. This paper examines the ways in which young men involved in gang violence forge and sustain their relationships in the streets of a black township in South Africa. I argue that the “making” of gang relationships is never easy; rather, it is characterised by violence within and outside gang membership. The article asserts that, within gangs, violence is a technique which sustains their relationships, as it acts as a source of social and emotional support—especially in a context characterised by fractured families as well as social and economic marginalisation. The paper draws from an ethnography of walking the township streets, being in gang streets, talking to gang members, engaging with and observing young men involved in gang violence.

‘SLOW REVOLUTION’ IN SOUTHERN AFRICA: HOUSEHOLD BIOSOCIAL REPRODUCTION AND REGIONAL ENTANGLEMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF CATTLE-KEEPING AMONG NGUNI-SPEAKERS, NINTH TO THIRTEENTH CENTURY CE

2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raevin Jimenez
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Broad Context ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

AbstractIn the eleventh to thirteenth century, Southern African Nguni-speakers made a counterintuitive choice to begin investing in large herds of cattle. Despite a long-standing knowledge of cattle, the earliest Nguni-speakers did not take to cattle-keeping as a way of life. Rather, the transition came as the result of changing social circumstances as households sought to manage the lifecycles of young men and reliably exploit their labor through gendered and generational expectations of decorum. Nguni-speakers grounded new concepts about cattle in older practices and norms regarding the social reproduction of young men. Agropastoralists situated cattle-keeping among the obligations young men faced after passing through initiation, giving cattle local salience. The transformation unfolded in gendered and generational household choices, but was shaped by the broad context of an increasingly interconnected Southern Africa.

scholarly journals Re-wilding Parkdale? Environmental gentrification, settler colonialism, and the reconfiguration of nature in 21st century Toronto

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 263-286
Author(s):  
Jessica Parish
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Urban Trees ◽  
Ecological Degradation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Park Area ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City ◽  
Shed Light

In 21st century Toronto, the labour of caring for urban trees is entangled with both gentrification processes and the social reproduction of settler colonial space. This paper contributes to the study of environmental gentrification through a study of the social reproduction of settler colonial relations to land in the Parkdale–High Park area of Toronto. Specifically, I take up the hyper-visibility of some forms of social reproduction, in order to shed light on how the mundane, quotidian ‘non-work’ of living in/with/for capitalism becomes a site of privilege and a luxury pursuit for more affluent residents. The paper highlights the processes and practices whereby settler colonial urban subjects seek out ‘nature’ as a temporary outside where they can escape from widely accepted downsides of capitalist urbanism, including a diverse array of social and physical ills, from stress, to obesity, to ecological degradation. The paper asks: whose social reproduction does the presence of urban trees serve? In the context of 21st century financialized gentrification, cities are increasingly normalized as spaces of wealth and luxury. It is therefore crucial to pay attention to the raced, gendered, and colonial micro-politics through which urban ecologies are transformed in the service of an anti-democratic vision of the city as a space of leisure and luxury.

Coming of Age in the Solitude of the Lost Land: Randa Jarrar’s A Map of Home

Hawwa ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 268-288
Author(s):  
Marta Cariello
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Arab American ◽  
The Novel ◽  
A Site

This contribution analyzes Palestinian-American Randa Jarrar’s semi-autobiographical novelA Map of Home(2008). The novel is read through various, overlapping lenses: the use of the semi-autobiographical form and the related challenge, brought about by the woman migrant writer, to the genre itself of autobiography and its relevance to individual and collective identity formation, the deconstruction of fixed, universal subjectivity and the challenge that exile narratives bring to the narration of nations, the specific positionality of the author that brings into play not only Arab and Arab-American identity construction but more specifically the narration of the Palestinian people. Finally, aMap of Homeappears as a site for Jarrar to produce a specific articulation of an Arab, Arab-American and Palestinian self through a female genealogy of agency.

scholarly journals Land, land banks and land back: Accounting, social reproduction and Indigenous resurgence

2021 ◽  
pp. 0308518X2110608
Author(s):  
Matthew Scobie ◽  
Glenn Finau ◽  
Jessica Hallenbeck
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Primitive Accumulation ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
The Social ◽  
Settler Society ◽  
Modes Of Life ◽  
A Site ◽  
Indigenous Land

This paper situates Indigenous social reproduction as a duality; as both a site of primitive accumulation and as a critical, resurgent, land-based practice. Drawing on three distinct cases from British Columbia, Canada, Aotearoa New Zealand and Bua, Fiji, we illustrate how accounting techniques can be a key mechanism with which Indigenous modes of life are brought to the market and are often foundational to the establishment of markets. We argue that accounting practices operate at the vanguard of primitive accumulation by extracting once invaluable outsides (e.g. Indigenous land and bodies) and rendering these either valuable or valueless for the social reproduction of settler society. The commodification of Indigenous social reproduction sustains the conditions that enable capitalism to flourish through primitive accumulation. However, we privilege Indigenous agency, resistance and resurgence in our analysis to illustrate that these techniques of commodification through accounting are not inevitable. They are resisted or wielded towards Indigenous alternatives at every point.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Financial Returns ◽  
Self Recognition ◽  
International Audience ◽  
National Identity Formation

The conclusion reaffirms the essential role played by cinema generally, and the coming-of-age genre in particular, in the process of national identity formation, because of its effectiveness in facilitating self-recognition and self-experience through a process of triangulation made possible, for the most part, by a dialogue with some of the nation’s most iconic works of literature. This section concludes by point out the danger posed, however, by an observable trend toward generic standardization in New Zealand films motivated by a desire to appeal to an international audience out of consideration for the financial returns expected by funding bodies under current regimes.

The Right to Dream: Gender, Modernity, and the Problem of Class in Kate O'Brien's Bourgeois Bildungsromane

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-289
Author(s):  
Naoise Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Class Status ◽  
The Right ◽  
Aristocratic Culture ◽  
Modern Form

Feminist critics have celebrated Kate O'Brien's pioneering approach to gender and sexuality, yet there has been little exploration of her innovations of the coming-of-age narrative. Creating a modern Irish reworking of the Bildungsroman, O'Brien's heroines represent an idealized model of female identity-formation which stands in sharp contrast to the nationalist state's vision of Irish womanhood. Using Franco Moretti's theory of the Bildungsroman, a framing of the genre as a thoroughly ‘modern’ form of the novel, this article applies a critical Marxist lens to O'Brien's output. This reading brings to light the ways in which the limitations of the Bildungsroman work to constrain O'Brien's subversive politics. Their middle-class status remains an integral part of the identity of her heroines, informing the forms of liberation they seek. Fundamentally, O'Brien's idealization of aristocratic culture, elitist exceptionalism and ‘detachment of spirit’ restricts the emancipatory potential of her vision of Irish womanhood.

Asserting the Capacity to be Free

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Catherine Kramarczuk Voulgarides
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Connective Tissue ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Zero Tolerance ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Community Context ◽  
Northeastern United States ◽  
Suburban School District ◽  
The Social

In this article, I explore how the social contract of schooling and the three functions of schooling (Noguera 2003)—to sort, to socialize, and to control— impact and constrain the freedom and agency of a group of young Black and Latinx men in one suburban school district that was experiencing sociodemographic shifts in the Northeastern United States. I use qualitative data to frame how the young men experience schooling, and I show how the local community context facilitates the institutionalization of discriminatory sorting processes and racially prejudiced norms. I also show how the young men are excessively controlled and monitored via zero tolerance disciplinary practices, which effectively constrains their humanity and capacity to freely exist in their school and which inadvertently strengthens the connective tissue between schools and prisons.

Learning the anthropology of development: the university as a site of knowledge construction and identity formation

Journal ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanya Jakimow
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Lifelong Learning ◽  
Knowledge Construction ◽  
Multiple Identities ◽  
Classroom Teachers ◽  
Practical Skills ◽  
Student Reactions ◽  
A Site ◽  
The University ◽  
Anthropology Of Development

Recent work exploring student reactions to the anthropology of development highlights the importance of going beyond simply imparting practical skills, or alternatively delivering content that offers an unrelenting critique (Djohari 2011; Handler 2013). In this paper, I argue that by casting an anthropological eye on the classroom, teachers can provide a learning environment in which students transform into reflective ‘novice’ practitioners equipped for lifelong learning. This involves making explicit the processes of knowledge construction in the classroom, and by extension, the development field. It entails providing the resources through which students can become social beings in the development sector, with attention to expanding the possibilities for the formation of multiple identities. 

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