From South Central to Southside

Adam Baird is a Researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. He is the coeditor of Paz, paso a paso: Una mirada a los conflictos colombianos desde los estudios de paz.

“From South Central to Southside is a hugely important book offering a fine-grained and engagingly written study of the Bloods and Crips in Belize, a country generally overlooked by gang studies. In it, Adam Baird does something few gang researchers manage to do-he weaves together a proper political economy of violence that links structural factors like the enduring legacies of colonialism and slavery, transnational migration, and oligarchic politics with the everyday experience of poverty, gendered brutality, and police repression. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand gang dynamics in Belize andeverywhere.”-Dennis Rodgers, Research Professor in Anthropology and Sociology and Director of the European Research Council’s GANGS project at the Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland “Baird’s examination of the complex web of factors shaping gang culture in Belize is groundbreaking. By integrating ethnographic research with a deep dive into colonial history, Baird provides us with a rich understanding of the foundations for Belizean gangs, as well as the spikes of violence that often surround them. But what sets his analysis apart is his exploration of ‘transnational masculinity’ and its widespread implications for both Belize and the region writ large. From South Central to Southside helps us better place gangs in the larger context of the corrosive, hypermasculine behavior that accompanies gang activity, making it required reading for anyone trying to tackle this difficult problem.”-Steven Dudley, cofounder of InSight Crime, and author of MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang "Baird’s heartfelt, long-term, applied ethnography demonstrates how gangs of young men shape hybridized chaos in contemporary urban Belize. Drawing on voices from the streets and comparative experiences with gangs across Latin America, Baird explores chronic vulnerability among men in Belize City.... [He] argues that better outcomes will demand real and deep sociocultural change across the nation.... [T]he argument is impassioned and empathetic.... Summing Up: Recommended."-Choice "The work is...extremely well structured, researched, and written. It is derived from [Baird's] field research trips in Belize."-C/O Futures"An illuminating study about gangs and systemic inequality."-Library Journal "From South Central to Southside engages with the experiences of marginalized young men typically viewed as perpetrators, rather than as victims.... Readers will discover that Baird’s findings and arguments are consistent with studies of gangs and urban violence elsewhere in the Americas. The fact that relevant research evidence exists but tends to be disregarded is frustrating, but it makes From South Central to Southside an edifying read."-ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America "As Adam Baird’s rich and nuanced book South Central to Southside makes clear throughout, gender, along with race and class, is a key determinant in [Belize's] violence and its historical, socio-economic, and cultural origins.... [A] thoroughly grounded, highly readable, and empathetic analysis."-International Feminist Journal of Politics "I find myself thinking repeatedly about Adam Baird’s book months after having read it, pained by the vulnerability of the Belizeans he presents and the global colonial and ongoing imperial and neoliberal political economic forces he picks apart. He forces us to confront both the local and the global political economic forces implicating all of us."–From the foreword by Philippe Bourgois, author of Righteous Dopefiend