The American Ghetto, Gangster, and Respect on the Streets of Copenhagen: Media(tion)s between Structure and Street Culture

“Street culture” is often considered a response to structural factors. However, the relationship between culture and structure has rarely been empirically analyzed. This article analyzes the role of three media representations of American street culture and gangsters—two films and the music of a rap artist—in the street culture of a disadvantaged part of Copenhagen. Based on years of ethnographic fieldwork, this article demonstrates that these media representations are highly valuable to and influential among young men because of their perceived similarity between their intersectional structural positions and those represented in the media. Thus, the article illuminates the interaction between structural and cultural factors in street culture. It further offers a local explanation of the scarcely studied phenomenon of the influence of mass media on street culture, and a novel, media-based, local explanation of global similarities in different street cultures.

“In the Dark Places, Getting Burned”: Portrayals of Street Culture in Taiwan Cinema Today

Street culture is represented in two mid-2010 Taiwan films, The Kids (Xiaohai, 2015) and Thanatos, Drunk (Zui sheng meng shi 2015), in such stunning and beautiful ways that this essay sets out to etch each of them not only into the annals of Taiwan’s most memorable urban films ever made, but also position them as essential texts within the emergent field of street culture more broadly. Both movies depict physical and ideological boundaries that separate urban spaces from Taiwanese culture at large, and reveal the extent to which their young protagonists are perceived as “abnormal” even as they use street literacy in sophisticated ways to interact with formal actors (such as school teachers and the police) and informal actors (such as hooligans and petty criminals). These two films arguably present the best vantage point to understand the peripheral status of Taiwan’s urban young people who do not conform to hegemonic norms.

Adherence to street code and violent victimization and delinquent offending of youth in Turkey: An analysis of mediation and moderation effects

In this study, we estimated a model of youth violent victimization and delinquent offending in Turkey using the subculture of violence thesis. Specifically, we employed adherence to street code and risky lifestyle measures to understand the relationship between these factors and the odds of youth violent victimization and the incidence rate ratio of delinquent offending, controlling for social ties such as family and peer-related measures and demographics, in a sample of 2627 students from 18 schools in Bagcilar county of Istanbul, Turkey. Moreover, we also explored the mediation and moderation effects among adherence to street culture and lifestyle measures. We found that risky lifestyle corresponds with higher odds of victimization and a higher incidence rate ratio of offending. Moreover, we found that adherence to street code has direct and indirect effects on offending, but it has only an indirect effect on victimization. In other words, lifestyle measures fully mediated the effect of street culture on victimization. Finally, we also found moderation effects of adherence to street culture on the relationship between lifestyle, victimization, and delinquent offending. Implications of our findings are discussed.

Road capitals: Reconceptualising street capital, value production and exchange in the context of road life in the UK

This article engages with existing applications of Bourdieusian (habitus, field and capitals) theory as applied to ‘street’ settings. It advocates for the recognition of strategies developed by those involved in road life, a UK variant form of street culture, to mobilise capital from the ‘street field’ in order to facilitate exchanges into less subordinate social fields/spaces. Drawing on Bourdieu’s three metaphors of social, economic and cultural capital, this article illustrates ways these forms of capital can and are being mobilised by youth engaged in ‘street’ settings (on road), in the hope of gaining advancement both in street spaces and beyond. This is in contrast with some criminological thinking which tends to take a ‘narrow’ focus on the criminogenic aspects of marginalised men’s lives, missing at times the full range of agency and expression of those affected by and/or involved in street value systems, as well as the wider struggles which take place over the value they create.

Making Sense of Murder: The Reality versus the Realness of Gang Homicides in Two Contexts

Despite the proliferation of research examining gang violence, little is known about how gang members experience, make sense of, and respond to peer fatalities. Drawing from two ethnographies in the Netherlands and Canada, this paper interrogates how gang members experience their affiliates’ murder in different street milieus. We describe how gang members in both studies made sense of and navigated their affiliates’ murder(s) by conducting pseudo-homicide investigations, being hypervigilant, and attributing blameworthiness to the victim. We then demonstrate that while the Netherland’s milder street culture amplifies the significance of homicide, signals the authenticity of gang life, and reaffirms or tests group commitment, frequent and normalized gun violence in Canada has desensitized gang-involved men to murder, created a communal and perpetual state of insecurity, and eroded group cohesion. Lastly, we compare the ‘realness’ of gang homicide in The Hague with the ‘reality’ of lethal violence in Toronto, drawing attention to the importance of the ‘local’ in making sense of murder and contrasting participants’ narratives of interpretation.