Keywords

• In this article the author reflects on fifteen years of criminological field work with the New York street organization called the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation (alkqn). During this time the group has grown from a local street corner society in Chicago to an organization that now spans three continents and is present in at least twelve countries. This growth provokes three basic questions: What explains the extraordinary growth of a group that was not much more than a local youth street gang half a century ago? How does the global trajectory of the group fit into the frameworks of global gang theory? And how can we refine that theory to accommodate the case of this group? To answer these questions the author critically engages the gang-globalization trajectory through the observed practices and situated analyses of the global alkqn. After outlining six major theses in the criminological literature on gangs and globalization
• he compares how these theses relate to the global journey of the alkqn and the anomalies that arise in the case of this group. He argues that in line with Burawoyâ€
• ™
• s concept of extended case study
• global gang theory needs to be developed to take into consideration outcomes that do not accord with new forms of socio-political and cultural resistances and new conditions for the emergence of such groups and their practices