How Outlaws Win Friends and Influence People

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxvii

   PDF

2. Outlaws and Supporters

   • Tereza Kuldova

   Pages 1-27

3. Sublime and Power

   • Tereza Kuldova

   Pages 29-59

4. Sovereignty and the Political

   • Tereza Kuldova

   Pages 61-114

5. Sacred Order and Symbolic Immortality

   • Tereza Kuldova

   Pages 115-170

6. Solidarity and Sacrifice

   • Tereza Kuldova

   Pages 171-200

7. Back Matter

   Pages 201-214

   PDF

This book asks a critical question for our times: why do an increasing number of people support, admire and aspire to be outlaws? Outlaw motorcycle clubs have grown, spread and matured. Popular culture glamorizes them; law enforcement agencies fight them and the media vilify them. Meanwhile, the outlaw bikers exploit the current cultural and economic climate to attract new members. How Outlaws Win Friends and Influence People argues that the growth of these anti-establishment groups under neoliberalism is not coincidental, but inevitable. The book asks a critical question for our times: why do people today, in increasing numbers, support, admire and aspire to be outlaws? What needs and desires do the clubs satisfy? How do they win support and influence? Answering this is crucial if we are to successfully fight the social harms caused by these groups, as well as the harms that underlie their proliferation. Unless we understand the cultural dynamic at play here, our fight against these organizations will always take the form of a battle against the mythological Hydra: when one head is cut off, two more grow.

“Tereza Kuldova is a rebel with a cause - her new book is a razor-sharp critique of stereotypical conceptions of the ‘outlaw biker’ and provides refreshing insights into their subjective life-worlds”​ - Daniel Briggs, author of the award-winning Dead-End Lives.

• gangs
• motorcycle gangs
• biker gangs
• social harm
• organised crime
• state power
• sacrifice
• solidarity
• crime and society
• crime and deviance
• cultural politics
• social anthropology
• crime, media and culture

“I recommend this book not only to scholars and to admirers of outlaws and bikers, but also to academics who are trying to comprehend and challenge the contemporary political ecology, and to activists who are seeking to improve their political repertoire and image. For bikers have a lot to teach the left.” (Christina Jerne, Crime Media Culture, July 29, 2019)

• Department of Archaeology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

  Tereza Kuldova

Tereza Kuldova is a social anthropologist and Researcher at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, Norway. She is the author of Luxury Indian Fashion: A Social Critique (2016), editor of  Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs and Street Gangs: Scheming Legality, Resisting Criminalization (2018), and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Extreme Anthropology.

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