Juvenile Gangs in Paris: Toward a Structural Analysis

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Abstract
In contrast with studies focused on the "delinquency" aspects of juvenile gangs, this article is based on the assumption that juvenile gangs are a normal phenomenon and that they have a particular historical significance. Juvenile subcultures, far from being pathological, re-establish a kind of cultural diversity in a world threatened with uniformization. This diversity is organized among Parisian juvenile gangs in a number of variants, both opposed and complementary to each other, which define their crucial relations with their environment, the society at large, their common past and uncertain future, and their mutual relationships. The evolution of Parisian juvenile gangs shows that their current diversity must be related to their past common style when, in 1956, they were influenced by certain American movies. Torn between integrating tendencies, both positive (official teen-age culture) and negative (officially defined juvenile delin qtiency), and tendencies to disintegration, gangs maintain their identity mainly by strengthening, through ideology and/or behavior, the conflicts which oppose them to the legitimations of normative society. This observation and others make it possible to reformulate the classic oppositions between subculture and social structure, individual and group, etc. The methodology here proposed suggests that, behind the arbitrary appearance of subcultural varieties, a logic operates which organizes their mutual relation ships and explains their meaning.

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