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Abstract

This article suggests that participant observation and social network analysis are able to yield complementary perspectives on youth gangs. Participant observation over a long period yields systematically gathered observations and interview narratives. Such data may provide a close-up look at youth gangs at street level; however, participant observation has limitations that constrain its applicability in multisite research. Social network methods added to field research protocols can provide a behavioral and social structural vision of youth gangs. An analysis of egocentric social network data collected in a gang neighborhood casts doubton conventional conceptualizations of gangs as groups and gang boundaries. Compositional analyses of personal (egocentric) social networks of same-gang youth provide measures of peer influence processes beyond participant observation. Comparative analyses of opposite-gang adolescents’ egocentric networks show a wide overlap among intergang friends. The article links such findings to personal shifts in life course and adaptations to chronic poverty.

Keywords

social networks gang theory field methods ethnography

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