Antifa, Street Gangs, and the Importance of Group Processes

STEP is the Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act.

Pyrooz and Densley do not explore the implications for their argument of a recently published article in Justice Quarterly, with Pyrooz as senior author, which finds little overlap between gang members and members of terrorist groups (slightly less than 6%) (Pyrooz et al. 2018). Because the definition of terrorist groups emphasizes ideological commitments, the finding does not come as a surprise. Even the Blackstone Rangers, who engaged with what were then considered terrorists, did so primarily for financial gain rather than ideology. This finding suggests that ideological disillusionment may develop among gang members – perhaps collectively – and motivate violence and other criminal behavior. Exploration of processes by which such changes occur certainly warrant further study.

Andrew Abbott’s (2016) treatment of such issues is the most recent and radical challenge to traditional sociological research strategies in this respect. Described by Richard Swedberg (2017) as a “New Perspective,” Abbott’s brilliant exegesis of “Processual Sociology” does not reject particular methods of studying human behavior – indeed, by implication, it recognizes the validity of virtually every attempt to do so – but forces him to classify sociology as a humanistic rather than scientific discipline.