True to the
“outside-in” approach to social science that his colleagues at the University
of Chicago utilized, Thrasher’s study in The
Gang focused on understanding context in order to make sense of individual
and group behavior. Thrasher posits that the gang “is largely an adolescent
phenomenon” because adolescence is a liminal, interstitial stage between
childhood and adulthood. He highlights the importance of incorporation in
social institutions such as family structure (during childhood) and marriage
(during adulthood) to explain why gang membership from these age groups is not
common. Thrasher argues that the interstitial nature of adolescence, coupled
with what he calls “interstitial areas,” constitute the ideal breeding grounds
for gangs. While I do believe gangs form partly in response to institutional
failures of society, Thrasher’s depiction of slums as petri dishes for the
development of gangs can have negative – even classist and racist –
underpinnings.
Thrasher
contends that slums are spaces of “disorganization and decay,” making them
“favorable to the development of gang life.” According to him, the
disintegration of institutions such as family life, schools, and religion are
reasons why gangs are forming in these interstitial areas (this, of course,
espouses the youth-as-dependents and youth-as-objects-of-saving-and-study
representations). Thrasher calls the gang a “symptom” of disorganization in
society, and cites the difference in gang presence between more affluent areas
and slums as evidence. In places such as Minneapolis, which has the “best
resident districts and the better middle-class section,” gangs are nonexistent.
Thrasher points to areas like east sections of Los Angeles and industrial
cities like Chicago as “gang-lands.” He explains that these places are teeming
with gangs because they are economic, moral, and cultural frontiers. Even
though Thrasher did not mention it explicitly, these interstitial “gang-lands”
tend to be where low-income, immigrant families lived. Chicago was a global
city where many immigrants from Eastern Europe and African American migrants
from the South came to search for work. Therefore, when Thrasher calls these
areas “interstitial,” or areas in transition, one has to wonder what he
believed these slum communities were transitioning to and from. I wonder if
Park and Burgess’ idea of the “natural cycle” – the eventual assimilation of
people into the “greater American society” – influenced Thrasher’s perception
of what was “interstitial”. This is not to discount valid points that are found
in Thrasher’s study nor to deny the prevalence of gangs in these cities, but to
say that social organization is “underdeveloped” in low-income areas can lead
to negative representations and stereotypes about the residents of these
cities. This may kindle and perpetuate the representation of youth-as-a-dangerous
class in general, and urban youth as especially threatening in particular.
To be fair,
Thrasher mentions valid points about the disintegration of institutions leading
to low wages and unemployment as factors for gang formation. However, when he
captions a photograph of a group of young boys, “if it were located in a slum, this
group will probably be a ‘gang in embryo,’” (11) that can have problematic implications
in how inner-city youth are viewed.
It is interesting how Thrasher stigmatizes youth and the urban slums at the same time. He attempts to shed light on the reality of poverty, and we can not deny the truth that he displays. Yes, the poorer city (which is most disorganized in society) is more likely to have gangsters. But does this mean that all poor youth are gangsters? Of course not. It makes sense to say that naturally, gangsters are going to be adolescents because they are not old enough to be married with children, yet little children are too diminished to even know what a gang is. However, one can not dismiss the fact that adults form and participate in gangs too! Even though these adults are probably from the slums too or grew up in a disorganized society, the important thing to keep in mind is that context is everything. I think Thrasher believed in this importance too. However, because people saw how bad the urban neighborhood could get, they automatically associate all youth as naturally inclined to join gangs.
ReplyDeleteThrasher might as well have just explicitly stated that if you grew up in the slums, chances are, you are going to be in a gang. He looks at urban youth in such a narrow way; it was almost always the case that if you lived in the slums, and if you are a teenager, then you were a gangster. At the same time, though, I should understanding that data for youth violence and urban gangs are easily accessible.
ReplyDeleteI also really liked Priscella's point about adult gang members. It seems that all the negative attention is put on the teens; if Thrasher had been as impartial as he had thought, he would have discussed the topic in a more informative way.
Kristi made some great points about Thrasher's narrow scope of gang development. As Kristi stated above, many of Thrasher's depictions of gang development where "...conditions are favorable to its development.." insists that gangs, which can only be classified as so once the group is involved in hostility, are prevalent in the slums. Thrasher states that there are social factors involved, but by placing these interstitial groups into a negative category, it can perpetuate the idea of self fulfilling prophecy, as they did in the media posing for Jacob Rii's photos. Overall, I think that Thrasher’s findings of development of gangs in that time era shed light upon the problem of poverty and education.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, Kristi is right in warning against a simplistic assimilation of inner-city young residents to gang members simply on the grounds of their socio-economic background. Yet, I don’t believe Thrasher’s argument can be put aside this easily.
ReplyDeleteThe very premise of the First Chicago School and its human ecology model is that what happens in a city is the consequence of group interactions at that same level. People’s race, mental health, education and social background do not matter as much as the urban space per se, which is perceived to be a site of competition. Following this reasoning, the social status and well-being of a group within a city would be strongly correlated with the number of years spent in a given neighborhood. New or recent immigrants would have to start competing for urban space with no ground, however small, to claim from other more-settled groups. The model defended by Park, Burgess or Thrasher is therefore not inherently racist or socially deterministic, it simply defers greatly to the study of the history of the physical establishment of people on a given territory. For instance, they do not believe that the crime level of a neighborhood depends on the character or culture of its inhabitants but on the location itself: even when the population and ethnic distribution are affected, the crime rate remains virtually untouched.
Young people do not turn to gangs because they belong to a racial minority or because they are poor, they do however find in gang associations a means of establishing themselves as part of a community. Since the rules and institutions of mainstream society are too opaque and underrepresented in their everyday life, they seek another form of social organization of which they would at least understand the rules and through which they would get a chance to be part of a group that shares their quotidian struggles.
I agree with Kristi’s observation that Thrasher’s link between slums and gang development seems to perpetuate today’s image of urban inner city youth as dangerous and prone to becoming gang members. However, to go one step further, I also think that this image is more perpetuated by people who read Thrasher’s observations and then forget that Thrasher wrote this article nearly 90 years when cities—and their inhabitants—were vastly different from what they are today. Degradation of social organization, especially within lower-income neighborhoods, arguably has persisted to today and may still be a valid explanation for the formation of gangs. Indeed, the most gang-filled neighborhoods Thrasher observed may even be similar in socio-economic status or racial composition to today’s gang-filled neighborhoods. Still, I would argue that the “slums” of today and the youth who live in these slums operate in a very different context than those Thrasher observed, given the social, cultural, economic, and technologic differences between then and now; I do not think the youth of today’s inner-city Chicago and East Los Angeles are quite the same as those in Thrasher’s “economic, moral, and cultural frontiers.” Therefore, even if the “specific conditions” that Thrasher claimed would result in gangs could be found today, these conditions are inextricably altered and shaped by factors (like media, the Civil Rights Movement, research advancements, immigration laws, etc.) that did not exist at the time this article was published. To make an assumption about today’s low-income neighborhoods solely based on Thrasher’s observations of a completely different time period would indeed confirm Kristi’s fear that Thrasher’s findings can have classist and racist implications.
ReplyDeleteI really like how you called out thrasher. Many of his points although one might think were valid were very far fetched when it came to the evidence that was involved. He seems to make an observation that many youth that are in gangs are also from the slums so he ties that in together. What does need to be taken into account though is that Thrasher wrote this almost 90 years ago. Beliefs were different back then. Although I would argue that the image of who lives in the slums has not changed all that much.
ReplyDeleteOverall Thrasher had some very valid points that he makes throughout his piece. It is quite unfortunate that most of the relevance of these arguments are drowned out by his very narrow vies on youth, but then again this was written when mentality like this was the norm and socially accepted.
Kristi brings up excellent points in her blog. I especially enjoy how she makes the link between his generalizations about gangs forming in the slums of cities to the implicitly, yet racially charged underpinnings of such generalizations. And though I don't believe the word was invented then, I am learning about modern (also known as symbolic) racism, which applies here. In my stigma and prejudice class we are learning that modern racism is when the social norm is to not be racist (which doesn't apply during Thrasher's days), so instead people become implicitly racist by directing their prejudice not at the "out-group" specifically, but to aspects of the out-groups' experience, culture and environment.
ReplyDeleteKristi intelligently widens her scope to consider what was going on in America at the time. People from all walks of life entered metropolitan areas such as Chicago and New York during this period. With the social science boom during the era moderating the relationship between an influx of new cultures and the "youth-as-objects-of-saving" phenomenon, little else could be expected. What I find most peculiar about all of this is that we still handle youth in metropolitan areas through this lens. I wonder what the real motivation behind all of this is?