Prof. Robert Baskerville's SOC: Books

Our differences should make us stronger, but a long-standing human failing is that those differences often drive people to make horrible decisions of prejudice, cruelty, and hate crime. Editor Jennifer Bussey carefully explores this explosive topic, through a collection of essays that present the history, occurrences, and factors that create hate crimes.

White Americans’ shared racism was basic to their decision to break away from Britain and unite as a new republican nation. Threats posed by George III to the American racial hierarchy in the critical year between the Battle of Lexington and Concord and the Declaration of Independence helped to convince reluctant patriots that independence was necessary for the preservation of their society. Thereafter white people’s confidence that neighboring colonies would remain dedicated to pursuing their interests at the expense of Indians and blacks undergirded their support for the military campaign against Britain and then the effort to create a national identity.

Discussions of race are inevitably fraught with tension, both in opinion and positioning. Too frequently, debates are framed as clear points of opposition--us versus them. And when considering white racial identity, a split between progressive movements and a neoconservative backlash is all too frequently assumed. Taken at face value, it would seem that whites are splintering into antagonistic groups, with differing worldviews, values, and ideological stances. White Bound investigates these dividing lines, questioning the very notion of a fracturing whiteness, and in so doing offers a unique view of white racial identity. Matthew Hughey spent over a year attending the meetings, reading the literature, and interviewing members of two white organizations--a white nationalist group and a white antiracist group. Though he found immediate political differences, he observed surprising similarities. Both groups make meaning of whiteness through a reliance on similar racist and reactionary stories and worldviews.On the whole, this book puts abstract beliefs and theoretical projection about the supposed fracturing of whiteness into relief against the realities of two groups never before directly compared with this much breadth and depth. By examining the similarities and differences between seemingly antithetical white groups, we see not just the many ways of being white, but how these actors make meaning of whiteness in ways that collectively reproduce both white identity and, ultimately, white supremacy.

As a steady source of juvenile delinquents and an incubator for future adult offenders, the youth gang has long been a focus of attention, from their origins and prevalence to intervention and prevention strategies. But while delinquent youth form gangs worldwide, youth gang research has generally focused on the U.S.



Youth Gangs in International Perspective provides a needed corrective by offering significant studies from across Europe, as well as Trinidad-Tobago and Israel. The book spans the diversity of the field in the cultural and scholarly traditions represented and methods used, analyzing not only the social processes under which gangs operate and cohere, but also the evolution of the research base, starting with the Eurogang Program's definition of the term youth gang. Cross-national and gender issues are discussed, as are measurement concerns and the possibility that the American conception of the youth gang is impeding European understanding of these groups. Among the topics covered:

• Gang dynamics through the lens of social identity theory.
• Defining gangs in youth correctional settings.
• Gang gender composition and youth delinquency.
• From Stockholm: a holistic approach to gang intervention.
• Gang membership as a turning point in the life course.
• The impact of globalization, immigration, and social process on neo-Nazi youth gangs.

Filling a critical gap in the literature, Youth Gangs in International Perspective will find a wide audience among criminologists, policymakers specializing in youth crime, and researchers and graduate students in criminology, political science, and youth studies.