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This book challenges the widely held conjecture that gangs represent ´the new face of youth crime´, repudiating claims which situate the gang at the heart of sexual violence, mass shooting and control of the illegal drugs trade and examining how better we might understand the violence of the street and the organisations that inhabit it.

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Introduction Welcome to gangland UK My goodness, how things have changed Themes So what is this all about? Part I: Gangland Claims and Gangland Realities 1. Gangs, Weapons and Violence 2.The Fists and the Fury: My Life in a Sea of Gangs Part II: On Gang Talk and Gang-Talkers 3. Deciphering Gang Talk Defining gang talk Reading gang talk as a language game The seduction of gang talk Unforeseen consequences Conclusion 4. Moral Panic and Industry Emergence From reality to gang-talking fantasy: reflections on the media inventory The journey back: reshaping reality in the image of gang fantasies The industrial logic of ´gang´ production Conclusion Part III: Getting Real about Violence 5. Arborealism and Rhizomatics: A Treatise The sedentary and the nomadic Arborealism Rhizomatics Back to the street Reading the street as rhizome Rhizomatic organisation Conclusion 6. Back to the Street Beyond the gang Street imperatives Instability, trauma and street life Conclusion 7. Continuities and Discontinuities in Urban Violence Street violence in the postwar period Continuities Discontinuities: on neoliberalism and its consequences Conclusion How to have a gang problem Koyaanisqutsi

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Simon Hallsworth is Professor of Sociology and Head of the School of Applied Social Sciences, University Campus Suffolk, UK. He has written extensively on punishment in modern society, the local politics of crime and community safety and more recently violent street worlds. His research interests include street violence and informal organisations, structural violence and the role of the state, penal change and development. His previous books include Street Robbery (2005) and The New Punitiveness: Issues Themes and Perspectives (2005).

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