Gangs aren’t as territorial as you may think according to the latest research on gangs in one anonymous towns in the United Kingdom by Judith Aldridge et al of the University of Manchester (yes – I reckon this was the towns too!). The research took place over two years using a range of methods such as observations, interviews and focus groups.

The research argues that the idea of the ‘territorial postcode gang’ is a myth – Aldrige says there were many ways that this stereotype was contradicted – for example, there was no consensus amongst gang members about where their ‘territory’ ended and the neighbouring gangs ‘territory’ began – which suggests that territory is not that important to them.

So where does this stereotype come from? – Aldrige argues that orginally in the 1980s and 1990s territory was important to local gangs – there was considerable ‘hanging around on streets’ to sell drugs in particular localities.

Now we have mobile phones, drug dealing gangs do not have to ‘hanging about outside’ to sell drugs – the sellers disappear, they are not on the streets and not getting caught. However, the  problem is that the popular public and police conception is that any group of youths hanging about on the streets is likely to be in a gang – and so we end up with a situation where ordinary kids get policed as if they are gang members while the actual gang members are left alone to deal their drugs from home.

Peter Squires (some interesting links to papers on this site) adds to the idea that the ‘myth of the territorial gang’ partly stems from the police – pointing out that police forces tend to operate in specific localities and like to pin groups down and identify them – in some cases, it was the police who even gave gangs in certain areas names – and this is the kind of easy to understand image that the media was happy to go along with.

At one point Squires cites an infamous case  of the Boston Operation Ceasefire’ (the link is praising the operation!) – when America police intervention in gang violence may have helped to ‘expand the gang’ The police essentially tried to tackle intergang violence by clearly demarcating what they saw as rival gang areas and preventing gangs from entering the territories of rival gangs. The problem was that anyone who was now in one or the other areas came under suspiscion of being a gang member, which may have exacerbated the gang problem in this city.

So this measured piece of research isn’t suggesting that the police and the media label and create gangs but it is saying that the police and the media have the power to create the myth that gangs are more territorial than they actually are and that in certain cases they can actually generate territorial conflicts with their interventions.

Excessive drinking is now a normal part of forging and maintaining friendships – according to this latest piece research with 80 young people aged 18-25.

Apparently, many young people cannot imagine alternative ways of getting people together other than through drinking; and most don’t consider the health risks, which is probably linked to the fact that most exessive drinkers expect to severly cut down drinking when they are older.

For A level students this is an extremely good illustration of the ‘context dependency of deviance’ – binge drinking is simply not seen as deviant for young people – but in the context of adults and wider society – it is!

Having considered the meaning of binge drinking for young people (nice bit of intereactionist, empathetic research there), the author goes on to hypothesise about why young people drink to excess. Some of the reasons include –

1. (as the author of the report says.)… ‘with the increasing consumption of alcohol in the UK in recent decades, getting drunk together has become an established part of the experience of young adulthood – in other words, people do it because it is normal.’ When something becomes normal, it becomes less shameful to do it.
2. It is something to do with the ‘special status’ of youth – as an in-between phase – so when you’re young you can justify drinking excessively as something you do in your ‘liminal phase’ of life – it’s OK because you won’t be doing it when you’re in your 30s and have kids – unless you’rE like me and ‘ave it large every Friday of course (Joke!) 
3. There are a lack of credible opportunities for young people to get together and socialise – most obviously in terms of ‘sober’ physical spaces (link to Left Realism here!)
4. The drinks/ night club industries have managed to colonise youth-space – marketing cheap drinks to young people, especially at weekends, and thus helping to create a binge drinking culture
5. Finally, it is because drinks are so cheap –  young people don’t measure their maximum potential consumption in terms of units – but in terms of cost!

So binge drinking is normal – how would you interpret it? –

a. Go down the interpretivist/ post-modern route – and see binge drinking as something young people just do because it’s fun, giving them something to talk about next week, as something that’s an expression of freedom, as a a life enhancer? Moreover, if it’s just a life phase, who really cares?

B. Or The consensus route – do you take the increase in binge drinking as a sign of social decline – as an indicator of youth being disempowered, drinking because their lives are too controlled; and indicator of their lack of opportunity to do anything meaningful and  creative?

C. Or the more Marxist route  – do you see it as a reflection of the evil drinks corporations manipulating youth – invading youth culture and normalising binge drinking in a quest for profits?

D. Probably most importantly – do you remain scepitcal and question the validity of the research – how do they define ‘excessive’… how representative a sample is 80? etc…

If nothing else – this research illustrates how you can interpret something in numerous ways…