Co - Culture / Gangs

A gang is a group of reoccurring individuals or close partners with a high potential leadership in a certain organization, taking control over territory in a specific area by either identifying themselves as to whom they are or claiming control, engaging individually or collectively in violence or other forms of illegal action. To become a part of gang in today’s world you show your loyalty by committing such crimes as murder, robbery and/or theft in order to be accepted as a member of its group [1].

From one of the five Hofstede’s dimensions, Individualism and Collectivism has a vast area for when it relates towards gangs. Collectivism in general has more strength than an individual within a certain gang. There are many ways you can show how gangs are collective rather than being individual for themselves. In many cases, gangs consider themselves to be a family or a group; each different gang have their own family and/or groups where many are represented with either controlling certain territories or what is widely known as symbols [2]. Most people in the society see gangs as a road to death; this is where groups are formed within gangs to stay together, each group share their own relationships between each other some even consider individuals to be brothers and sisters [2]. Being collective within a gang is a major area for the groups, whether there will be large sum of groups of small, each have different perspective of their surroundings but take them on in a equal manner which they choose to follow leading to creating a stronger bond overtime. Loyalty is a fundamental source for gangs; individuals are tested against each other whether they can take care of members of their own protecting one another from violence that gets u...

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...o judge people around them to show whom they are and that people should be aware of them. These small fragments can show really how masculine a gang can be visualized [2].

Within gangs there will be less femininity, as many do not intend to show sympathy for others or prefer to be equal between one another. Although there is sometimes a case where members who have been in a gang/group for a long period of time start to take on things at a different perspective, where they express themselves to show manliness quality of life. Those are the very few members who realize that being in a gang gets them no more but put in a prison for days, months and or years. Overall to sum up the differentiation between the both masculinity has more power over femininity when relating to gangs as the majority of them portray themselves through conduction violence against one another.