Psychosocial Dynamics and the Youth Street Gang

• In Event: Theoretical Criminology Panel: Psychosocial and Cultural Criminology

Abstract

Although not explicitly termed, psychosocial criminology operates within a problem-solving perspective in that it argues individuals invest in certain behaviors and/or discourses over others for their latent, psychically reparative, functions. In this sense, psychosocial perspectives could be said to converge with British subcultural approaches, except that individuals encounter and attempt to resolve “problems” of the psyche rather than contradictions within social structures. This paper applies this slightly revised understanding of psychosocial criminology to the youth street gang. It argues that gang subcultures function to assuage psychic anxiety in their enactment of an affirming ritually maintained communitas. Not neglectful of social structure, as emphasized by British subcultural theorists, however, this paper argues that structural marginalization gives rise to forms of anxiety, which given certain features of an individual’s biography, may lead them to attempt a resolution, at an experiential level, in investment in gang subculture. Although cultural criminological and psychosocial perspectives have been developed separately, this paper concludes with an argument that an understanding of emotions, which traverse conscious and unconscious realms, is key to integrating these two exciting new fields of inquiry.

Author

• Kevin Moran, CUNY Graduate Center