Weapon-Carrying Among Young Men in Glasgow: Street Scripts and Signals in Uncertain Social Spaces

Holligan, Chris, McLean, Robert and Deuchar, Ross (2017) Weapon-Carrying Among Young Men in Glasgow: Street Scripts and Signals in Uncertain Social Spaces. Critical Criminology, 25 (1). pp. 137-151. ISSN 1205-8629

[img]
Preview
Text (Full text)
Holligan et al - Weapon-carrying among young men in Glasgow OA.pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.

Download (432kB) | Preview
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10612-016-9336-5

Abstract

Our work contributes through a cultural criminological perspective to a contextualised knowledge of street violence and its constructed meanings; uncertainty, familiarity and strangeness in spaces of urban disadvantage as perceived by Scottish white youths are examined. Youth criminal and anti-social behaviour associated with knife-carrying is widely reported and structures political and media discourses which classify street culture. In our article we argue that a particular symbolic construction of social space, as experienced and constructed by weapon-carrying young white men in Glasgow, informs the landscape of violence judged in terms of official statistics and fear of crime. Signal crime theory as a particular type of cultural criminology affords insights about why weapons are carried. Links with a hierarchical codification of consumer culture inform the findings and resonate with the penetration of capitalism in the lives of the marginalised street youth.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Social Space, Gang Member, Housing Estate, Place Attachment, Street Gang
Subjects: L900 Others in Social studies
Department: Faculties > Arts, Design and Social Sciences > Social Sciences
Depositing User: Paul Burns
Date Deposited: 13 Sep 2018 10:01
Last Modified: 01 Aug 2021 11:51
URI: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/35686

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics