In Los Angeles and elsewhere in the United States, gangs demonstrate a profound interrelationship between street life, mass incarceration, gang cartographies, and the development of meaning, which together act as a form of totemism. Long used in anthropology, the concept of totemism remains powerful analytically because of its ability to describe how intentional oppositions are hinged to surrounding environments. Gang writing allows members to infuse themselves into neighborhoods by spatializing the tie of sympathy between signature, person, and landscape. Gang totemic practices originate from similarity in form as well as shared history, and from the contradiction of knowing a system is constructed while continuing to treat it as if it were primordial. Showing how social meaning is tied to the built environment contributes to decolonizing discourses by further eroding the binary between nature and culture. When combined with critical frameworks that look at power and inequality, the concept of totemism may be revitalized in a manner that respects local understandings, is distilled to its essential component parts, and gains relevance across wide swaths of ethnographic cases. The framework of totemism enables understanding of how urban environments become a locus of gang sentiment, moving away from simplistic ideas of gang territoriality. [gangs, totemism, prison, graffiti, critical structuralism]

中文翻译：

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帮派涂鸦作为图腾主义

在洛杉矶和美国其他地方，帮派展示了街头生活、大规模监禁、帮派制图和意义发展之间的深刻相互关系，它们共同构成了一种图腾崇拜。在人类学中长期使用，图腾主义的概念在分析上仍然很强大，因为它能够描述有意的反对如何与周围环境联系在一起。帮派写作允许成员通过将签名、人物和景观之间的同情联系空间化，将自己融入社区。帮派图腾实践源于形式上的相似性和共同的历史，源于知道一个系统被构建，同时继续将其视为原始系统的矛盾。通过进一步侵蚀自然与文化之间的二元性，展示社会意义如何与建筑环境联系起来有助于非殖民化话语。当与关注权力和不平等的批判框架结合时，图腾主义的概念可能会以尊重当地理解的方式重新焕发活力，被提炼成其基本组成部分，并在广泛的民族志案例中获得相关性。图腾主义的框架有助于理解城市环境如何成为帮派情绪的场所，摆脱帮派领土的简单化观念。[ 被提炼为它的基本组成部分，并在广泛的人种学案例中获得相关性。图腾主义的框架有助于理解城市环境如何成为帮派情绪的场所，摆脱帮派领土的简单化观念。[ 被提炼为它的基本组成部分，并在广泛的人种学案例中获得相关性。图腾主义的框架有助于理解城市环境如何成为帮派情绪的场所，摆脱帮派领土的简单化观念。[帮派、图腾主义、监狱、涂鸦、批判结构主义]