Gangs and Criminal Community

Catalog description

This course introduces students to gang-life as an urban phenomenon that starts in the 19th century and that in the 2000s is diffused across the margins and illicit flows of the global economy. Students will read memoirs of members of gang communities, with attention to notions of agency and iconoclasm, situating gang life in a continuum of political resistance. We will aslo look at the history of modern transnational gangs as a view into the history of displacement, modern war, and the pre-history to the discourses surrounding "global terrorism", giving students the tools for a critical reading of current debates around state security, "organized crime", and sovereignty.