Dying to live: Youth violence and the munpain

Bakkali, Y (2019) Dying to live: Youth violence and the munpain. The Sociological Review, 67 (6). pp. 1317-1332. ISSN 0038-0261

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Abstract

This article engages with accounts of the everyday experiences of young adults living in London who have been involved with road life (street culture) and how their narratives might help us to better understand issues of youth violence in the UK. Through an exploration of their experiences, this article argues that deeply embedded structural contradictions are leaving a generation of marginalised young people dying to live as they become locked in an existential struggle against a sense of malaise permeating many of their everyday experiences. These experiences of social suffering are conceptualised through ‘the munpain’. The munpain is a psychosocial concept which articulates the impact of structurally routed violence, inherent in late-modern neoliberal states, within the everyday lives of marginalised young adults living in a contemporary urban context. This article draws on interview data from two young men, Stephen and T, who have both been victims of knife crime and have spent much of their lives involved with youth groups self-identifying as gangs. In this article, I demonstrate some of the often unspoken struggles that saturate their lives. These experiences induce agentic responses as people seek to alleviate their suffering, at times affecting them in ways that lead to acts of violence. Moreover, I also laborate on the inductive methodological approach employed to denote how ‘the munpain’ was developed while working alongside marginalised young adults.

Item Type: Article
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0038026119842012
Dates:
DateEvent
7 March 2019Accepted
3 April 2019Published Online
Uncontrolled Keywords: gangs, munpain, road culture, violence, youth
Subjects: CAH15 - social sciences > CAH15-01 - sociology, social policy and anthropology > CAH15-01-02 - sociology
Divisions: Faculty of Business, Law and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences > Dept. Criminology and Sociology
Depositing User: Yusef Bakkali
Date Deposited: 28 Mar 2019 09:42
Last Modified: 03 Mar 2022 15:55
URI: https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/7316

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