The transmission of crime as work in Turkey: Identification and strategic mutuality
| Author | Boran Ali Mercan |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1748895820978465 |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895820978465
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2022, Vol. 22(4) 542 –558
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895820978465
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The transmission of crime as
work in Turkey: Identification
and strategic mutuality
Boran Ali Mercan
Ankara University, Turkey
Abstract
Bourdieusian criminology has produced useful concepts such as the street-criminal field, capital
and habitus. In employing these concepts, this article demonstrates the importance of the criminal
role model-image, such as the respected career criminal, as an ego-ideal among lower class
youths who identify with these role models, acquiring bodily and mental criminal dispositions
using the results of ethnographic research conducted in a run-down district in Ankara, the capital
of Turkey. Focusing on a non-Western context with an original theoretical articulation, this
article further suggests that the affective relationship between these disadvantaged lower class
youths and respected older criminals lubricates the youths’ formation of criminal habitus and
likewise constitutes a ‘strategic mutuality’ flowing through certain practices in the street-criminal
fields. The original finding lies in revealing a strategic affinity transmitting knowledge of criminal
techniques and skills across generations, and further making crime as work a reliable source of
income for disadvantaged youths.
Keywords
Affect, identification, strategic mutuality, street-criminal culture
Introduction
Bourdieusian criminology has sought to understand and explain street-criminal subculture
by yielding useful concepts such as ‘street culture’ (Bourgois, 2003), ‘street capital’
(Harding, 2014; Sandberg, 2008), ‘criminal capital’ (Mercan, 2019), ‘street habitus’
(Fraser, 2013), ‘street social capital’ (Ilan, 2013) and ‘street field’ (Shammas and Sandberg,
2016). Despite their enriching criminological conceptualisations, the affective dimension
Corresponding author:
Boran Ali Mercan, Faculty of Political Science, Ankara University, Cemal Gürsel Bulvarı, 06590 Cebeci
Ankara, Turkey.
Email: mercan@politics.ankara.edu.tr
978465CRJ0010.1177/1748895820978465Criminology & Criminal JusticeMercan
research-article2020
Article
Mercan 543
of street habitus is rarely discussed (Fraser and Matthews, 2019). Bourdieu’s philosophi-
cal anthropology, however, points out the importance of ‘the search of recognition’ as an
ontological outset of the subject’s whole social drama: Bourdieu’s one of the last oeuvres,
Pascalian Meditations (2000), towards the end of his life, reveals an explicit predilection
for psychoanalytical categories and themes as mentioning ‘a narcissistic organisation of
the libido’ and ‘an object of desire’ to explicate the formative conditions of agency in
social fields (Bourdieu, 2000: 166; see also Wacquant, 2007, 2016). Conceptualised as
‘the quantum of libidinal energy’ by psychoanalytically inflected discourse theorists
(Glynos and Stavrakakis, 2008: 268), affect thus not only partakes in Bourdieu’s thought
as a source of ‘investment’ in social fields but also appears as a distinct analytic in crimi-
nology to which the researchers should pay attention (Mercan, 2020a).
Drawing on Bourdieu’s late psychosocial elucidation, this article places a premium on
the affective role of a significant Other as an ego-ideal among lower class youths for
acquiring bodily and mental criminal dispositions, precipitating the formation of a local
criminal subculture and the cultural transmission of crime as work. In other words, the
article casts light on the affective moment of criminal habitus formation through the
search of recognition, symbolic identification and the transformation into an agent of
criminal fields. In so doing, it focuses on a group of lower class youth offenders in the
non-Western context of Ankara, the capital of Turkey, with specific emphasis on the
psychoanalytical category identification in shaping criminal habitus. In two previous
articles, I discussed the process of becoming a professional criminal through the explora-
tion of ‘conative’ and ‘cognitive’ constructs of criminal habitus, whereby the subject
acquires bodily and mental criminal dispositions (Mercan, 2020c), drawing attention to
the importance of the affective component of criminal habitus and symbolic identifica-
tion with the model-image of criminal social types in Turkey (Mercan, 2020b). However,
these papers examined the life experiences of a group of ex-offenders who had ended
their criminal careers before 15 years. The psychosocial narratives provided by these
retired offenders indicated a symbolic identification with the Turkish subcultural model-
image of the kabadayı [strongman] social type, generating physical gratification from
the ethos of gayrimeşru [illegitimate] cultural consumerism, the respect of peers and the
interest of women.
Detailing the findings of ethnographic research conducted in 2014, this article focuses
on the discourse of active youth offenders as opposed to retired ones, involved in burgla-
ries and the drug business, and residing in Keçiören, a recently declined, lower class
district of Ankara. The evidence suggests that in similarity to the discourse of the offend-
ers who retired before 15 years, youth offenders continue to identify with the model-
image of the infamous criminal or older brother teaching them criminal cultural codes
and techniques, thereby communicating a culture of crime as work. This piece’s original
finding regards the affective relationship between these parts, easing the youths’ forma-
tion of criminal habitus and, moreover, forging the strategic criminal enterprise-partner-
ship running throughout certain repertoires, which I term ‘strategic mutuality’ in the
street-criminal field. Before I discuss the nature of this mutuality, I will explain the psy-
chosocial moment as determined by Bourdieusian criminology, before discussing the
research site and methods used in this article.
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