Drawing on long-term participant-observation in Philadelphia’s hyper-segregated Puerto Rican retail narcotics markets, we document the gendered contours of exploding cycles of firearm violence among young males striving to dominate street sales and the grief violence generates. Mothers and sisters intervene eloquently in court (and on the streets) defusing lethal violence. They clarify entangled chains of self-blame, promoting dialogue, accountability, and forgiveness. Although ambivalent about their own outlaw pasts, their ‘streetwise’ credibility increases their peacekeeping effectiveness. They prompt male perpetrators to publicly hold themselves accountable, express grief, and recognize the trauma of firearm violence, chronic incarceration, and frustrated aspirations for legal employment. Meanwhile, low-income women earn below-subsistence-level legal wages to support male kin emotionally and financially during lengthy prison sentences. We analyze the biographies of mothers and perpetrator sons through the political economy of US ‘necrogovernance’: Puerto Rican colonialism, null gun-control, diasporic hyper-segregation, mass incarceration, and punitive state responses to poverty/unemployment/addictions.
Mothers, sons, sisters and grief in the gangster economy: US necrogovernance in Philadelphia’s low-income Puerto Rican diaspora
International Sociology, 40 (3), 364-393. doi: 10.1177/02685809251334921.