Most Wanted: The Popular Culture of Illegality - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9463727523 ISBN 13: 9789463727525

Publisher: Amsterdam University Press, 2019

Synopsis

In contexts of insecurity and inequality across the world, criminal groups have developed into powerful, state-like organizations. Marginalized citizens in search of protection and support may look to criminal leaders, gangs and mafias rather than to politicians and state agencies. Providing residents with forms of social welfare, security and resolutions for dispute, these criminal organizations have taken on the functions and symbols of the state. But criminals’ positions of power are not only rooted in their social provisioning role, or even in the use of fear and force. *Most Wanted* illustrates how popular culture is producing the socio-political authority of bosses, gangs and cartels through discussions of Italian, Japanese and Russian mafias, and of criminal groups in Brazil, Ghana, Jamaica, and the United States. The essays collected here analyze different forms of visual, material and performative culture, including street art, film, video games, dance parties, popular music and various everyday objects.

About this title

About the Author

[Rivke Jaffe](https://www.uva.nl/profiel/j/a/r.k.jaffe/r.k.jaffe.html) is Professor of Urban Geography at the Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development Studies at the University of Amsterdam. [Martijn Oosterbaan](https://www.uu.nl/medewerkers/MOosterbaan) is Associate Professor at the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 9463727523
• ISBN 13: 9789463727525
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128
• Editor: Jaffe PROF. DR. Rivke, Oosterbaan Martijn