Where you from! Gang identity as performance

This article investigates how young people in an inner-city ecology invoke the relevance of gangs by demanding, "Where you from!" Such a challenge creates a lively venue for performing identity and emotional manipulation for both the instigator who offers the challenge and the respondent. Rather than conceptualizing young people as gang members and gangs as a static group, this analysis shows how the doing of gangs is strategic and context sensitive. Such an approach provides an alternative to conceptualizing identity, and especially gang identity, not as a fixed personal characteristic but as a sensual response to a moment's vicissitudes.