Emotions and hyper-masculine subjectivities: the role of affective sanctioning in Glasgow gangs

Abstract

Micro-interaction dynamics of affective sanctioning have received insufficient attention when exploring the emergence of masculine identities and practices among gang members. Our aim is to provide an analytical approach that places affective sanctioning at the heart of explanations of local masculine subjectivities. We demonstrate affective sanctioning as a key method through which gang members facilitate successful face-to-face interaction via the constitution of shared group status markers as collective 'goods'. Using empirical data contrasting two types of Glasgow gang groups, we show that, albeit sharing contexts in which similar structural determinants operate, each embodies idiosyncratic modes of masculine identity, characterised by distinct hyper-masculine traits, which in turn constitute the group's boundaries. Our primary focus is on the dynamics that maintain the group, rather than those that create it, and hence on how group markers emerge and are maintained by the constitutive force of individuals' mutual susceptibility to affective inter-valuation practices. Here the acts of recognition and honouring, and dishonouring are the most socially significant affective sanctioning mechanisms. Our methodological investigation rests on an 'intrinsic' structuralist approach which prioritises micro-situational data over wider structural arrangements. We contrast this with 'extrinsic' models which dominate current gang scholarship and which tacitly view individuals as socialised 'from the outside'. Our methodology and findings have profound implications for practitioners who must start from a recognition that individuals operate within the constraints of their emotionally bound group.

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