Glasgow gangs - Russian gangs
Thinking Allowed
BBC
4.4 • 997 Ratings
🗓️ 18 May 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Glasgow & Russian gangs: Laurie Taylor explores their origins, organisation and meaning in two strikingly different cultures. He talks to Alistair Fraser, Lecturer in Criminology and Sociology at the University of Glasgow, whose fieldwork with young Glaswegian men, demonstrates that gangland life is inextricably bound together with perceptions of masculinity and identity and the quest to find a place in the community. They're joined by Svetlana Stephenson, a Reader in Sociology at London Metropolitan University, who found that Russian gangs, which saw a spectacular rise in the post Soviet, market economy in the 1990s, are substantially incorporated into their communities, with bonds and identities that bridge the worlds of illegal enterprise and legal respectability.
Alistair Fraser was in the final shortlist of six for this year's BSA/Thinking Allowed Ethnography Award.
Producer: Jayne Egerton.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is a Thinking Aloud Podcast from the BBC and for more details in our terms of use and much, |
| 0:06.2 | much more about thinking aloud. Go to our website at BBC.co.uk. UK. You know, I don't know of any musical chords that are quite so compelling, so evocative |
| 0:21.2 | at those notes from Westside Story. |
| 0:23.0 | Now, of course, Bernstein's music is extraordinarily exciting in its own right, |
| 0:26.7 | but what that music also immediately brings to my mind |
| 0:29.7 | is another thrilling aspect of the stage show that I first saw in the West End over 50 years ago, |
| 0:36.0 | the dynamic choreography by Jerome Robbins, the exhilarating sight of those two upper |
| 0:41.4 | west side gangs, the sharks and the jets engaged in a passionate |
| 0:46.0 | dancing duel. |
| 0:58.0 | Well it was only when I grew up and found myself giving university lectures on subcultural theory that I realized I could only talk about the true nature of gangs if I first dispossessed my students of the romantic images that they'd acquired from such popular culture. |
| 1:09.5 | I remember explaining that the gangs they'd read about in London or in Manchester or in Glasgow |
| 1:15.0 | were according to careful research unlikely to have clear-cut names like sharks or jets. |
| 1:21.0 | Neither are they likely to have obvious leaders like Tony or Bernardo or |
| 1:25.2 | possess a distinctive uniform or an obvious hierarchy or a determinate membership. |
| 1:31.4 | Not that this news ever really seemed to reach the mass media, which still reveled, and still does revel in talk of gangs and gang warfare. |
| 1:39.0 | Even a recent briefing from the Metropolitan Police spoke of there being 225 recognised street gangs in London |
| 1:46.0 | composed of around 3,600 gang members. |
| 1:50.1 | And if that is true for London then surely what might expect to find a similar phenomenon in Glasgow, |
| 1:54.3 | a city long associated with aggression and with tribalism. |
| 1:58.4 | Well, I can now discover the reality because I'm joined by Alistair Fraser, who's the author of an ethnography based on a |
| 2:04.4 | de-industrialised working-class Glasgow community. |
| 2:07.0 | A study called Urban Legends Gang Identity in the post-industrial city. And Alister, who's currently lecturer in criminology and sociology at the University of Glasgow. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.