Post Industrial Chicago Gangs

Frozen Assets. Diego Rivera 1931

Coleccion de Delores Olmedo

 

Outside the Wall by Felix Padilla and Lourdes Santiago

This is the story of the wife of a gang member and her struggle for dignity and respect. A vivid look at the importance of the drug economy and the impact of prison on male and female gang members.

1993. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press

Angel's Town: Chero Ways, Gang Life, and Rhetorics of the Everyday by Ralph Cintron

This book is a study of Chicago area Latino gangs in the past few years. The author has accepted an appointment to UIC in English starting in the fall of 2000.
1997. Boston. Beacon Books

The Gang as an American Enterprise by Felix Padilla

This important study is one of the first to reconceptualize gangs from delinquent groups to participants in the informal economy. Absolutely essential reading.
1992. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press

 

 

There Are No Children Here: The story of two boys growing up in the other America.by Alex Kotlowitz

The most stirring portrait of growing up in Chicago's projects and a more realistic picture of gangs than that drawn by most gang researchers. This book shows the heighs to which journalism can rise.
1991 New York: Anchor Books

Gangs: Public Enemy Number One by the Chicago Crime Commission

This is one of the best examples of stereotyping gangs as organized crime. It frames gangs narrowly within a law enforcement focus, with little if any economic or social context. Read it, it won't hurt you if have a critical, questioning mind.
 

"The Gang in the Community" by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh In Gangs in America: Second Edition, ed. Ronald C. Huff

This is a study of gangs in chicago's housing projects and their influence on the community. It describes gangs with economic and social functions much different than law enforcement or media stereotypes. Also see Jeff Fagan's article in the same volume.

1996 Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

Other Important Texts

Abu-Lughod, Janet L. 1999. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America's Global Cities. Minneapolis: Minnesota, MN.
Block, Carolyn Rebecca, and Richard Block. 1995. "Street Gang Crime in Chicago." Pp. 202-210 in The Modern Gang Reader, edited by Malcolm Klein, Cheryl Maxson, and Jody Miller. Los Angeles: Roxbury.
Block, Carolyn Rebecca, Antigone Christakos, Ayad Jacob, and Roger Przybylski. 1996. "Street Gangs and Crime." : Research Bulletin: Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority.
Block, Richard, and Carolyn Rebecca Block. 1992. "Homicide Syndromes and Vulnerability: Violence in the Chicago Community Over 25 years." Studies on Crime and Crime Prevention 1:61-87.
Commission, Chicago Crime. 1995. "Gangs: Public Enemy Number One." : Chicago Crime Commission.
Commission, Chicago Crime. 1997. "The New Faces of Organized Crime." : Chicago Crime Commission.
Conquergood, Dwight. 1994. "Homeboys and Hoods: Gang Communication and Cultural Space." Pp. 23-55 in Group Communication in Context: Studies of Natural Groups, edited by Lawrence R. Frey. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Curry, G. David, and Irving A. Spergel. 1988. "Gang Homicide, Delinquency, and Community." Criminology 26:381-405.
Glick, Ronald. 1990. "Survival, Income, and Status: Drug Dealing in the Chicago Puerto Rican Community." in Drugs in Hispanic Communities, edited by Ronald Glick and Joan Moore. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Glick, Ronald, and Joan Moore (Eds.). 1990. Drugs in Hispanic Communities. New Brunswick: Rutgets University Press.Hagedorn, John M. 1998. "Post-Industrial Gang Violence." Pp. 457-511 in Youth Violence, edited by Michael Tonry and Mark H. Moore. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Howell, James C. 1996. "Youth Gangs, Homicides, Drugs and Guns." : National Youth Gang Center, Tallahassee, Florida.
Jackson, Pamela Irving. 1995. "Crime, Youth Gangs, and Urban Transition: The Social Dislocations of Postindustrial Economic Development." Pp. 139-153 in The Modern Gang Reader, edited by Malcolm W. Klein, Cheryl L. Maxson, and Jody Miller. Los Angeles: Roxbury.
Kotlowitz, Alex. 1991. There Are No Children Here: The story of two boys growing up in the other America. New York: Anchor Books.
Massey, Douglas S. 1990. "American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass." 96:329-357.
Padilla, Felix. 1992. The Gang as an American Enterprise. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Padilla, Felix M., and Lourdes Santiago. 1993. Outside the Wall: A Puerto Rican Woman's Struggle. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers.
Sanchez, Reymundo. 2000. My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King. Chicago: Chicago Review Press.
Skogan, Wesley G. 1989. "Communities, Crime, and Neighborhood Organization." 35:437-457.
Skogan, Weley G. 1990. Disorder and Decline: Crime and the Spiral of Decay in American Neighborhoods. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Spergel, Irving A. 1984. "Violent Gangs in Chicago: In Search of Social Policy." 58:199-225.
Spergel, Irving A. 1995. The Youth Gang Problem: A Community Approach. New York: Oxford University Press.
Suttles, Gerald. 1990. The Man-Made City: the land-use confidence game in Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Venkatesh, Sudhir Alladi. 1996. "The Gang in the Community." Pp. 241-256 in Gangs in America: Second Edition, edited by Ronald C. Huff. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Venkatesh, Sudhir Alladi. 1997. "The Social Organzation of Street Gang Activity in an Urbn Ghetto." American Journal of Sociology 103:82-111.
Venkatesh, Sudhir Alladi. 2000. American Project: The rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wilson, William Julius. 1978. The Declining Significance of Race. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Wilson, William Julius. 1984. "The Black Underclass." 8:88-99.
Wilson, William Julius. 1985. "Cycles of Deprivation and the Underclass Debate." Social Service Review 59:541-559.
Wilson, William Julius. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Wilson, William Julius. 1991. "Poverty, Joblessness, and Family Structure in the Inner City: A Comparative Perspective." in Chicago Urban Poverty and Family Life conference, edited by William Julius Wilson. Chicago, Illinois.
Wilson, William Julius. 1991. "Public Policy Research and The Truly Disadvantaged." in The Urban Underclass, edited by Christopher Jencks and Paul E. Peterson. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institute.
Wilson, William Julius. 1991. "Studying Inner-City Social Dislocations: The Challenge of Public Agenda Research." American Sociological Review 56:1-14.
Wilson, William Julius. 1996. When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Wilson, William Julius, and Robert J. Sampson. 1995. "Toward a Theory of Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality." in Crime and Inequality, edited by John Hagan and Ruth D. Peterson. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.