The Normalization of Violence in Everyday Life: Traumatic Loss Among Gang Members in Los Angeles

• In Event: Crime, Law and Deviance Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 7: Neighborhoods and Crime

Abstract

Research on gangs rarely focuses in depth on the cumulative effect of emotional distress on the lives of their members. This study examines the relationship between the emotional distress that repeated traumatic loss causes and its role in the social reproduction of gang violence in Los Angeles. I examine how traumatic experiences permeate the life course and shape the life projects and adult family formation of gang members. Data was collected through immersive ethnographic fieldwork, supplemented by semi-structured and in-depth interviews with 46 former and current members of gangs. The findings suggest that gang members’ socially-constructed responses to traumatic experiences are expressed in their: (a) romantic relationships and child rearing practices (b) propensity for violent rumination and (c) patterns of solidarity and conflict among members of the same gang and between rival gangs. Extending Frantz Fanon’s concept of collective catharsis into what I term collectively organized catharsis, gangs are considered here as neighborhood-based social institutions that facilitate collective grieving over personal and communal trauma. In this view, gang violence serves a cathartic function whereby a sense of well-being and self-respect is redeemed, but simultaneously multi-generational traumatic loss is perpetuated.

Author

• Jorge-David Mancillas, University of California-Los Angeles