Resisting and creating new voices

The Gangpedia is one of the three special features of the TRANSGANG project. The main purpose of the Gangpedia is the dissemination, in a collaborative platform on the internet, of the research results and the main concepts related, used or linked to the world of street youth groups.

In a first stage, the Gangpedia incorporated the main concepts of the TRANSGANG project, both theoretical (etic) and native (emic), in the “Gang Glossary”, a collaborative Wikipedia-like space within the platform. These terms are also compiled in the Concept Paper (CP) of the project, “La (Trans) Banda: Notes and questions for research with youth street groups” (Feixa et al., 2019), “a conceptual guide for research as a whole".
In the second stage, the Gangpedia has become a living space for the exchange of ideas, cultural practices and media analysis on the universe of youth street groups. Not only the experiences of researchers and young people in the cities studied in TRANSGANG are published in the Gangpedia; other groups and forms of social mediation with street youth groups are also published on the platform. Being a living space, the Gangpedia has undergone several changes, from its inception to its current online release. Originally thought as an internet encyclopedia on gangs and youth subcultures in Arab and Latino communities, today the platform is presented as a hybrid space, with collaborative encyclopedia and social network functionalities, open to diverse cultural experiences. Thus, the Wikipedia part ('Gang Glossary': encyclopedia with change control) and the social network part (user profiles, comments and the “like” system), are merged in the current thread of Gangpedia, its primary interface.
Open to youth and researchers (whether or not they are members of the TRANSGANG team), the www.Gangpedia.space website hosts content (video, music, writing) created by young gang members, researchers, and the community at large. The platform seeks to be a collaborative space that places street youth groups at the center of attention.