Becoming the ‘Baddest’:Masculine Trajectories of Gang Violence in Medellín

Con base en 40 entrevistas de historias de vida con miembros de las pandillas de Medellín, Colombia, la presente investigación argumenta que muchos jóvenes se unen a las pandillas con el fin de emular y reproducir identidades masculinas que se consideran localmente ‘exitosas’. La acumulación de ‘capital masculino’ por parte de las pandillas, con sus significantes materiales y simbólicos de hombría, acompañados de demostraciones y manifestaciones estilísticas, lleva a los jóvenes a percibirlas como espacios de éxito masculino, lo cual impulsa la reproducción social de las pandillas. Una vez vinculados a la pandilla, se vuelven cada vez más ‘malos’, haciendo uso de la violencia para defender los intereses de la pandilla a cambio de capital masculino. Los líderes de las pandillas, conocidos localmente como los duros, tienden a ser los más malos. El ‘proceso de empandillamiento’ no debe entenderse como un comportamiento juvenil aberrante, sino más bien como un comportamiento lógico y práctico, dado que se percibe a la pandilla como un espacio aspiracional de formación de identidad para jóvenes que llegan a la mayoría de edad en un momento en que las condiciones estructurales de exclusión conspiran contra ellos

Towards a Theory of Change for Social Cohesion and Community Safety in Jamaica

In the decade preceding 2009, Jamaica was ranked among the top three countries for homicide worldwide, with the highest rate in the Caribbean; double the region’s average rate of 30 per 100,000 population. There have been fluctuations in this rate, which dipped significantly 2009-2011, but according to 2012 statistics Jamaica is still ranked 7th globally for homicide (UNODC, 2014). Jamaica’s long-term development plan and roadmap towards prosperity, Vision 2030, envisages an environment where Jamaica is the place of choice to live, work, raise families and do business. This, however, requires a safe and secure environment

Breaking bad: recognising the role of masculinities can help prevent gang formation in Latin America and the Caribbean

Drawing on his research in Trinidad & Tobago, Belize, and Colombia, Adam Baird argues that only by understanding the multiple roles of masculinites in driving gang formation in Latin America and the Caribbean will we stand a chance of tackling chronic urban violence

Entender a las pandillas de América Latina: una revisión de la literatura

Este artículo tiene como objetivo brindar una visión general del conocimiento existente sobre las pandillas en América Latina. Ofrece una revisión de la literatura publicada basada en estudios empíricos primarios y comienza por las dos literaturas más desarrolladas hasta el momento en Centroamérica y Brasil y luego se considera la literatura de otros países de la región. Identificamos temáticas transversales importantes entre estudios, así como varias temáticas emergentes y proponemos una agenda para futuras investigaciones

Miniaturized atmospheric ionization detector

A small scintillator-based detector for atmospheric ionization measurements has been developed, partly in response to a need for better ionization data in the weather-forming regions of the atmosphere and partly with the intention of producing a commercially available device. The device can measure both the count rate and energy of atmospheric ionizing radiation. Here we report results of a test flight over the UK in December 2017 where the detector was flown with two Geiger counters on a meteorological radiosonde. The count rate profile with height was consistent both with the Geigers and with previous work. The energy of incoming ionizing radiation increased substantially with altitude.Comment: Proc 18th Conference on Atmospheric Electricity, Nara, Japan, June 201

Breaking Bad? Gangs, masculinities and murder in Trinidad

The murder rate in Port of Spain, Trinidad, rose dramatically around the turn of the millennium, driven overwhelmingly by young men in gangs in the city’s poor neighborhoods. The literature frequently suggests a causal relationship between gang violence and rising transnational drug flows through Trinidad during this period. However, this is only part of a complex picture and misses the crucial mediating effect of evolving male identities in contexts of pronounced exclusion. Using original data, this article argues that historically marginalized “social terrains” are particularly vulnerable to violence epidemics when exposed to the influence of transnational drug and gun trafficking. When combined with easily available weapons, contextually constructed male hegemonic orders that resonate with the past act as catalysts for contemporary gang violence within those milieus. The study contributes a new empirical body of work on urban violence in Trinidad and the first masculinities-specific analysis of this phenomenon. We argue that contemporary gang culture is a historically rooted, contextually legitimated, male hegemonic street project in the urban margins of Port of Spain

Negotiating pathways to manhood: Violence reproduction in Medellin's periphery. Exploring habitus and masculinity to explain young men's decisions to join armed groups in poor urban neighbourhoods of Colombia

In recent years urban violence has become understood as a 'reproduced', multi-causal and socially generated phenomenon. Less is understood about why young men reproduce the majority of this violence. This thesis uses original empirical data based on thirty-two life-histories of youths living in two poor and violent neighbourhoods in Medellín, Colombia. It argues that urban violence is reproduced by male youths because it is linked to 'masculinity'; that is, the process of 'becoming men' where youths strive to fulfil productive or 'successful' models of masculinity. These processes are related to contexts of poverty, inequality and exclusion, so this thesis does not reduce the generation of urban violence to masculinity alone. Rather, understanding masculinity provides us with further insight into the reproduction of violence. This thesis further argues that male youths are disposed by their habitus - after Pierre Bourdieu - to negotiate a pathway to manhood that largely reflects traditional masculine values in their context. Striving to achieve prevailing versions of manhood contributed to some of these youths joining armed groups, such as gangs. The gang acted as a mechanism to fulfil their dispositions to become men, by providing them with a way to perform a version of 'successful' masculinity. This is prevalent in urban contexts of exclusion and high levels of social violence, because there are limited opportunities to achieve legal and dignified versions of manhood, whilst there are significant opportunities to join the local gang. The youths interviewed that did not join gangs tended to come from families that taught them to reject violence at a young age, whilst supporting them in pursuing alternative pathways to manhood. Youths that joined gangs tended to have more problems at home and often had family members already in gangs.ESRC, and University of Bradfor

Near BPS Skyrmions and restricted harmonic maps

Motivated by a class of near BPS Skyrme models introduced by Adam, Sánchez-Guillén and Wereszczyński, the following variant of the harmonic map problem is introduced: a map φ:(M,g)→(N,h)φ:(M,g)→(N,h) between Riemannian manifolds is restricted harmonic if it locally extremizes E2E2 on its View the MathML sourceSDiff(M) orbit, where View the MathML sourceSDiff(M) denotes the group of volume preserving diffeomorphisms of (M,g)(M,g), and E2E2 denotes the Dirichlet energy. It is conjectured that near BPS skyrmions tend to restricted harmonic maps in the BPS limit. It is shown that φφ is restricted harmonic if and only if φ∗hφ∗h has exact divergence, and a linear stability theory of restricted harmonic maps is developed, from which it follows that all weakly conformal maps are stable restricted harmonic. Examples of restricted harmonic maps in every degree class R3→SU(2)R3→SU(2) and R2→S2R2→S2 are constructed. It is shown that the axially symmetric BPS skyrmions on which all previous analytic studies of near BPS Skyrme models have been based, are not restricted harmonic, casting doubt on the phenomenological predictions of such studies. The problem of minimizing E2E2 for φ:Rk→Nφ:Rk→N over all linear volume preserving diffeomorphisms is solved explicitly, and a deformed axially symmetric family of Skyrme fields constructed which are candidates for approximate near BPS skyrmions at low baryon number. The notion of restricted harmonicity is generalized to restricted FF-criticality where FF is any functional on maps (M,g)→(N,h)(M,g)→(N,h) which is, in a precise sense, geometrically natural. The case where FF is a linear combination of E2E2 and E4E4, the usual Skyrme term, is studied in detail, and it is shown that inverse stereographic projection R3→S3≡SU(2)R3→S3≡SU(2) is stable restricted FF-critical for every such FF