Dennis Rodgers, a CCDP Research Associate and Visiting Professor at the Graduate Institute, considers the socialisation of gang violence in Managua, Nicaragua, in a new article published by the Journal of Peace Research. Rodgers considers how the socialization of violence within a gang can evolve over time through a changing balance between different forms of individual agency, collective group dynamics, and contextual factors.

He notes how individual agency is most effective in transmitting specific practices of violence, including for example firearm use. At the same time, unless this knowledge is regularly renewed on a first hand basis, its second-hand transmission leads to it dissipating or becoming garbled. To this extent, individual forms of socialisation do not promote institutionalised forms of gang violence, which mainly rely instead on group dynamics. These however respond to contextual factors, and can be disrupted, including especially by the actions of more power violent groups such as organised crime or the Police.

An institutional memory of prior group dynamics can endure, however, and provide templates for new forms of gang violence, although this can take completely different forms, including crossing over into the virtual world, a new form of violence that should not be underestimated.

Find the article here.