Gangs and the Civilizing Process

• In Event: Exploring Criminology and its Controversies in Historical Context

Abstract

Norbert Elias's Eurocentric history provides convincing evidence that a leviathan in the form of a strong central state with a monopoly on taxation and the use of force, is the outcome of the medieval struggle over land and power among competing warlords. Yet such an analysis of the human condition impoverishes the imagination. Archaeological and anthropological evidence has found many indigenous groups living sustainably, for thousands of years, without a central state apparatus. While the civilizing process brought about a more constrained, less precariously violent society in the West, it masked and ornamented the violence perpetrated against those deemed less civilized. Yet this designation of “less civilized” ironically derives from their lack of a need for a central state, as they developed forms of social organization not founded on violence. This presentation places Norbert Elias’s The Civilizing Process into dialogue with David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything, exploring their relevance for understanding outbursts of gang activity from Haiti to Gaza to Chicago. One might argue that greater ontological security might be found in a return to the roots of the enlightenment, in the influence of “the unusually brilliant Wendat statesman named Kandiaronk” (Graeber and Wengrow, 2021:49).

Author

• Robert Garot, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY