Citation

Venkatesh SA. Am. J. Sociol. 1997; 103(1): 82-111.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1997, University of Chicago Press)

DOI

10.1086/231172

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This essay draws on long-term ethnographic data to analyze the shifting relations between street gangs and their broader community. The essay focuses on one particular moment in the evolution of a ghetto-based street gang, namely its attempt to "corporatize" by accumulating revenues in underground economies, in order to demonstrate that neither the structure nor the practices of the street gang can be understood apart from the social organizational context of the larger community it inhabits.