Claire Alexander's The Asian Gang - Case Study Example

Topic: A case study on Claire Alexanders "the Asian Gang" Claire Alexander’s “The Asian Gang” is an anthropological topic in which the Asian youth are perceived as ‘folk devil’ by British media and public. It states the routine life, social contacts, and future hopes and desires of the so called ‘gang members’. Claire supports a broader outlook on multidimensional identity of Asian youth, putting to challenge the set state rules on what should be and should not be the basis and justification of one’s identity in ‘the Asian Gang’ (Baumann, 2002). Alexander’s book analyses beautifully the social make-up and devilish behaviour of Asian men as members of the ‘Asian Gang’ with a misleading title. It is a new arrival on the meaning of racialised masculinity, a new reading on social make-up of identity. The picturisation of young Bengali men in London is as natural and realistic as could have been possible. According to the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, it is a ‘landmark in how to conduct social research’. Alexander has exposed beautifully the idea that Asian youth could be clothed in a singular Asian identity on the basis of ethnic features. Off late, there has been created propaganda on the emergence of Asian gang by the British press. Lower middle class of Asian youth have been associated with increasing militancy matching them to masculinities-in-crisis Asian, particularly Muslim young men found involved in violence, drug abuse, and crime because of their cultural background of opposition, chaos, and religious fanaticism. Alexander has challenged this assumption in her book. Through her research of three years, doing fieldwork with a group of Bangladeshi youth where they live in London, she has exposed the reality in interaction with representation, delving deep inside from the outer representation of masculinity and ethnicity to individual outlook, tarnishing the conservative thinking applied on these Asian communities and identities (Baumann, 2002). Alexander’s book does social analysis of the ‘Asian Gang’ with dedication. At a time when allegiance to a cause has been missing, Alexander book treats the so- called ethnographic clash with concern to social, political and historical scenario, under which both the ethnographer and researcher meet. The book describes an emerging moral fear in Britain over ‘The Asian Gang’. The word ‘gangs’ is not subjective in meaning; the title seems misleading. Alexander has been successful in painting the picture of young Bangladeshi men facing challenges while growing in London, getting focus and attention of the society at large through the book (Back, 2002). The Asian community has been in focus due to media projection of its racial angle. The urban chaos of summer 2001 in northern cities and violent clashes in the streets of Bradford, Burnley, and Oldham had further pumped up the moral panic, representing the Asian men as attacking mob. The British media projection of the events further added fuel to the fire in the minds of the public about the image of Asian men as trouble creators and criminals. Alexander has been successful in providing representational space to the feelings and expressions of the Asian men besides their advocates (Back, 2002). The book is one of its kinds in finding new schemes of criminalisation and not-so-simple harsh realities, provoking such criminal behaviour. The writer nowhere is found compromising the intricacy of the argument, appealing at the same time to different segment of people alike (Back, 2002). Alexander has shown great commitment to dialogic research, reflexivity and autobiography. It shows her inner strength to write on what other ethnographers just murmur about. Style throughout is clear and consistent. The writer has dedicatedly pursued the idea of dialogue in research, not surrendering to traditional academic conventions, not at the same time bypassing the significance of critique and judgement (Back, 2002). Book’s significance has also increased in the wake of 9/11 and resultant doubts on the Muslim community. It is a study of identity making that encourages understanding the complicated nature of identity process. It brings to light the misunderstandings in certain groups that need to be cleared (McConkey, 2003). The negative portrayal of typical Muslims, as projected by British media, as cultural collision with Western values, is presented as a danger to British society. Asians in Britain, otherwise, were highly misunderstood lot. Alexander claims the presence of double standards in differentiating Asians as Muslims and non-Muslims. Such divisions of Muslims as Pakistanis and Bengalis have harmed the interests of both. Muslims in general have been represented as aggressive, religious fanatics and dangerous. Alexander has selected for her project an all male youth group in South East London who are Bengali Muslims but not hardened practitioners of Islam. The essayist maps out these young men involved with representations that affect their identity, their fight with the imposition of labels they don’t feel at comfortable level (McConkey, 2003). The scenario of young men wandering around estates as an exercise in spreading violence through criminal gangs depicts negative characterisation. Alexander tests how these young men had been abused as ‘gangs’ by holding innumerable interview sessions with them and her own remarks thereafter. She doesn’t argue for their being not guilty but to know why they have been named ‘gangs’. The activities of these young are entered through their contacts with relatives, friends and their behaviour with their workers. There are stories of their revengeful attitude and aggressive reactions mostly related to their enmity with other groups (McConkey, 2003). Alexander has tried to broaden the horizon of her research beyond limited circumference but links in-between seem missing. As topic of study includes a group of teenager boys, most of them living on the same housing estate, the research project has become quite individualised as Alexander’s engrossment with them turns into friendship, she being a volunteer. The experience is not just personal but impacting enough on the thought process of the writer, who has an Indian birth mother but brought up by white parents, as such having no attachment with Asian community otherwise she would have been a part of. It doesn’t imply that Alexander has been less focused and objective but it has added to the complexity of the narrative (McConkey, 2003). Alexander has admitted the truth that to make the essay dialogic rather than monologic, she has tried to engross the teenagers in the intricacies of her project but it has been her own work, fully masterminded by her. She has been open to the advice of her co-workers in the youth group, reading the original document and explaining the happenings, including the details of which is not possible in a text. She has admitted to the book being ‘authored’ to a greater extent than it was expected. Due to this clean thought of including subjects and objects of study in her ‘fiction’, it has added to the chaos and complexity over the plot of the narrative-cum-story (McConkey, 2003). Alexander’s tryst with the topic could have been more praiseworthy, if it had been delivered to the reader in a more logical pattern. It would have saved the writing from being labelled as complex, making it easier to understand and comprehend, although some of its refinement might have vanished in that process. This easy understanding of the research project should be the primary purpose behind such a study. As academicians as well as individuals, there is a lot to learn theoretically and ethically, being a part of this vast society that might outcast these young men and other such groups who bear the brunt of misunderstanding due to perverse thinking and attitude of the people around them (McConkey, 2003). Alexander has raised the concerns of local people, different municipality and statutory services and many debatable aspects and traditions, which are unstable in the context of ‘problem’ orientated research project. The narrow focus has some advantages also. It has made possible to analyse situation of the system of sidetracking that should, otherwise be categorised general theories about political system or reification. It can be seen in the headlines of newspapers and media coverage of ‘Asian gang problem’; it can also be seen the ever-changing scenario of the Asian Youth Project; it gives readers an understanding of different struggles going on at a time and give preference to a particular issue, favouring ‘new solutions’. Reader may desire proper arrangement of events of these struggles for more logical power, material power, and policy power. The attention on the issues of youth project comes with many planned benefits of a single perspective: an explanatory tool to find the life world of probably outlined network of middle-men, making analysis possible to exhibit the theoretical focus of the research work. The author has successfully organised responsible and professional job of conducting research. Words like “gang”, “friends”, and “brothers” create jovial talks between researcher and those who know her, which, otherwise, could not have been captured but were there because of the known dedication to ‘flesh-and-blood theorisation and dialogic approach to the study and the process of writing’ (p.15). All talk is not self-dialogic’; it can not be called ‘unauthentic’ detail when informants talk to the researcher or with one another. Whatever is lacking in authenticity gets compensated through sufficient ideas and data (Baumann, 2000). One pregnant idea prevailing throughout her analysis in the book is the “significant tension between the assertion of individual action and the acceptance of collective responsibility . . . that undermines any straightforward notion of group identification” (Laidler, 2002: p. 116). Theoretical focus remains throughout; at the critical point of exposing and following three types of difference, taken care of by speeches, concerned authorities, as if withdrawing from responsibility: ethnicity, youth and masculinity. ‘Young’, ‘ethnic’ and ‘male’: what more could be asked to turn into a ‘societal problem’ by the problem searching media, and success finding public agencies. The combination of youth, ethnic difference and masculinity could have been given better treatment by paying attention to literature part of an otherwise, anthropological and ethnographic issue (Baumann, 2000). There is a Foucaultian note in Alexander treatment of cultural studies. As she informs the readers that the essay was written ‘to challenge residual claims to “Knowledge” and “Truth” in race research in Britain’(Alexander 2004: 147). It was more a desire to set the records on misrepresentations straight to the public and its perceptions on Asian youth. Her approach has been subjective, she has ‘chosen to write “fiction” ’, and has gone far ‘from an authenticist account towards one that is explicitly subjective, partial (in both senses, as fragmented and affectionate) and situated’ (2000: 227). Her research is lacking in giving due consideration to conventional sociology. Her essay doesn’t offer to discuss new issues on ethnic and race relations. The Asian Gang provides no clarification on research questions of (i) problem definition, (ii) problem selection, and (iii) conceptual degeneration (Banton, 2005). Alexander has tested theoretical and routine assumptions of Asian youth identities wrapped in the myth of ‘the gang’, creating space for rethinking, and ‘to bid for the place of politics and love in the research process’ (2000: 251). A writing lacking in truth and knowledge can not be acclaimed as research but Alexander has let her story pass into the field of sociology and has been successful in adding sociological knowledge about local unities (2000: 171); talks between senior and junior Bengali boys (2000:179–83); and show of ‘respect’ to elders (2000: 149, 178–80, 185), which could be interlinked to research on honour and shame. For example, teenager boys take it insulting to their elders to smoke cigarettes in front of them. Such notices are general and could be easily verified through another research (Banton, 2005). The concept of race leading to the discussion on racism, finds mention as ‘writing race’ in Claire Alexander’s work. The word is used in different contexts and meanings – as a sign of concern for others (2000:3); as a leading idea, uniting a list of moral panics; and as an equivalent word for moral and social degeneration. Again on that page, it is stated that images of urbanisation and Asian youth are racialised. One of the boys, Hanif, in one of the passages, calling proper names to point groups or sections his known persons are called Bengalis or blacks, but remarks that some of his friends ‘find it hard to mix in with other races’ (2000: 142). When there is a tussle with a specific boy, it is not acclaimed as ‘a race thing’ (2000: 101). It depicts the usage of the word ‘race’ in general term as a name used to specify a group. Alexander has used this word in larger contexts, as believed by the school, the police, and the press that there is a ‘gendered/racial hostility’ (2000: 104); that Muslim youth are ‘raced’ (2000: 234); that ‘race’ means imperceptible masculinity (2000: 234). Black men are denied opportunities because of the stigma of race (2000: 235). Alexander blames highly raced American formulation getting imported into British society, labelled as ‘the gang’ (2000: 238) (Banton, 2005). One cannot justify the usage of ‘writing race’ by Alexander in theory as well as in political context. Academic writers like Alexander are lacking in comprehending the meaning of the vocabulary of race properly in political context. Alexander has treated the concept of ‘ethnicity…not a mobilizing force’ (2000: 167). The different connections in the chain of ethnicity around which collective ethnic action revolves, needs to be recognised. Experiences and interests could be common; they should not be taken as belonging to collective ethnic origin. Ethnicity is not abstract, compelling people to behave in unison. It needs to consider matching qualities to the writer’s claim that the book ‘explores the process of identity formation’ (2000: 23). The idea of identity has been researched earlier also showing its complex nature. People have distinct self concepts related to their past, present and future, linking to their family relations, friends and enemies. From sociological point of view, the concept of identity is one among a family of concepts, like the concept of role and its resultant rights and duties. They are used to be observed, not things to be stated. The different meanings of the word identity can be synchronized by concentrating on a specific question, like ‘how do the self-concepts of Bengali boys differ from those of other boys’? Claire Alexander’s too much dependence upon this word identity reminds the assumption of Wittgensteinian philosophy that to interpret a society is to know its concepts (Banton, 2005). The author agrees at the end of the book that ethnographic encounter should not have been carried out because of its debasing philosophy and political cheating. Alexander makes it quite clear that it is not that easy but her conclusion in itself is an effective defense of what she has been successful in attaining in the ‘contact zones’ of her South London ethnography. It could be a perfect place to defend the research issue, which is reflexive in itself but keeping the issue of dialogue with criticism. The essay on Asian Gang touches a new high on how to carry on social research, bypassing the present outbreak in Anthropology and Sociology, named as ‘epistemological hypochondria’ by Clifford Geertz. The book is worth reading in classrooms as well not only because of the issues raised but also as a sample of ethnographic work in future. References Back, Les. (2002). Claire E. Alexander, The Asian Gang: Ethnicity, Identity and Masculinity. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 367 (1). Retrieved Saturday, May 19, 2007 from http://find.galegroup.com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/itx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=EAIM&docId=A87017629&source=gale&srcprod=EAIM&userGroupName=utoronto_main&version=1.0. Banton. (2005). Three current issues in ethnic and racial studies. The British Journal of Sociology, 56 (4). Retrieved Saturday, May 19, 2007 from http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2005.00086.x Baumann, Gerd. (2002). Book Reviews. Alexander, Claire E. The Asian gang: ethnicity, identity, masculinity. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Retrieved Saturday, May 19, 2007 from http://scholarsportal.info.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/pdflinks/07041609332302627.pdf Laidler, K.J. (2002). Review The Asian Gang: Ethnicity, Identity, Masculinity by Claire E. Alexander. Contemporary Sociology, 31(2), 211. Retrieved Saturday, May 19, 2007 from http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094 3061%28200203%2931%3A2%3C211%3ATAGEIM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3 McConkey, Jane. (2003) Reviews The Asian Gang: Ethnicity, Identity, Masculinity Claire E. Alexander. The Global Review of Ethnopolitics, 2 (3-4) 109-124. Retrieved Saturday, May 19, 2007. Read More