Theorising Gangs: Towards a Critical Realist Moral Theory of Youth Gangs

Abstract

This chapter, Theorising Gangs, Paul Andell and David James set out to answer a number of questions. If, for example, different groups of young people, involved in similar types of offending in different places, describe themselves differently, should we call them all ‘gangs’. And, can we accept that what the young people say about the gang, or indeed what the academics, police officers and social workers who investigate or work with gang members say, represents ‘the truth’ about gangs. Their answer to both questions is ‘yes but’. The ‘but’ says that while the accounts these young people and professionals give describe their day-to-day, ‘common-sense’ understandings of their world social, scientist must also investigate the unobservable social, economic and cultural structures and processes that account for the emergence, persistence and the distinctive characteristics of gangs and gang crime in particular settings. Having questioned whether our research into gangs and gang crime can ever be wholly ‘objective’, the authors suggest that such objectivity is probably unattainable because research, and the researchers, invariably bring a moral and empathetic dimension to their analyses.