Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables, figures and boxes
- Glossary
- About the author
- Acknowledgements
- Preface: living and working in the social field
- One Introduction
- Two Academic gangland
- Three The game, the stakes, the players: key concepts
- Four House rules, game rules and game strategies
- Five Players, positioning and keeping order
- Six Playing the game: generating and keeping your chips
- Seven Staying in the game – and playing to win
- Eight The game in action: habitus, street capital and territory
- Nine Learning the risks of the game: life in the landscape of risk
- Ten Surviving in the game
- Elven Creating the house advantage: the role of information
- Twelve Playing the queen: gender in the gang
- Thirteen The wheel of fortune: the sanctions repertoire
- Fourteen The street casino
- References
- Appendix A SW9 postcode
- Appendix B Lambeth key crime types
- Appendix C The Duluth Power and Control Wheel
- Appendix D Example of gang evolution and fracturing: organised crime
- Appendix E Approximate gang locations in SW9 (July 2011)
- Appendix F Timeline of known gangs in SW9
- Index
Elven - Creating the house advantage: the role of information
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 March 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables, figures and boxes
- Glossary
- About the author
- Acknowledgements
- Preface: living and working in the social field
- One Introduction
- Two Academic gangland
- Three The game, the stakes, the players: key concepts
- Four House rules, game rules and game strategies
- Five Players, positioning and keeping order
- Six Playing the game: generating and keeping your chips
- Seven Staying in the game – and playing to win
- Eight The game in action: habitus, street capital and territory
- Nine Learning the risks of the game: life in the landscape of risk
- Ten Surviving in the game
- Elven Creating the house advantage: the role of information
- Twelve Playing the queen: gender in the gang
- Thirteen The wheel of fortune: the sanctions repertoire
- Fourteen The street casino
- References
- Appendix A SW9 postcode
- Appendix B Lambeth key crime types
- Appendix C The Duluth Power and Control Wheel
- Appendix D Example of gang evolution and fracturing: organised crime
- Appendix E Approximate gang locations in SW9 (July 2011)
- Appendix F Timeline of known gangs in SW9
- Index
Summary
‘There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.’
Roger H. Lincoln
For all strategic actors in the gang social field, information is a critical daily necessity. For incumbents, quality, timely information provides what might be termed ‘house advantage’.
Information, specifically the flow and use of information, its exchange and transmission as a commodity, affects all actors in the social field:
‘To operate, you have to know what is what.’ (African male older)
Information exchange is crucially linked to the other fundamental field component: trust. Both Putnam (2000) and Coleman (1994) identify trust as a key component of social capital and Fukuyama sees trust as a basic source of social capital (Fukuyama, 1995, p 26). Field (2008, p 71) citing Dasgupta (2000, p 333) views trust as an attribute of groups and institutions that is often based on reputations, themselves mediated by third parties. This is a certainty within the social field of the gang. For Fukuyama, if members have a wide radius of trust, any externalities arising from this are more likely to be ‘positive and benign’. Conversely, a narrow radius of trust signifies potentially ‘negative externalities’ (Fukuyama, 2001, pp 8-10). This appears to apply to the social field of the gang, where trust is in short supply. Densley (2013) identifies problems of risk and vulnerability associated with generating trust and suggests that any doubts a gang may have about the trustworthiness of new recruits is addressed in part through the use of symbols. In this regard, he uses a novel application of signalling theory as a way of reinterpreting street codes and street reputation. In the social field of the gang, trust is tested daily, via relationships and instincts, but most importantly through sending and receiving information.
Community engagement
In the social field of SW9, the dealing and trading of information is a central tenet of enormous importance. Described as the first direct benefit of social capital, such trading facilitates access to broader sources of information while providing new opportunities to improve data quality, relevance and timeliness (Adler and Kwon, 2002, p 29). In so doing, it offers a method of community engagement and social control. For elders, information equates to ‘informational capital’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p 19).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Street CasinoSurvival in Violent Street Gangs, pp. 207 - 218Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2014