Social Bandits Research Articles

LAMPIÃO, VINGADOR DO POVO: UMA ANÁLISE DOS CORDÉIS SOBRE O CANGAÇO

This work shows how the figure of Virgulino Ferreira da Silva (1888-1938), known as “the king of cangaço”, was most often heroicized in Brazilian cordel pamphlets. Based on this observation, made through the exhibition of excerpts from strings on the topic, social, historical and cultural aspects are presented and commented on that help explain this heroicization of Maria Bonita's (1911-1938) husband. To reach this aim, two theoretical constructs were particularly important for the development of our arguments: the concepts of “social bandit”, developed by the British historian Eric HOBSBAWN, and of “poetic revanchism”, developed by the French researcher Martine KUNZ. In addition to the two theorists, it is also worth highlighting the relevance that had for this research the names of Gustavo BARROSO (2012), Teoberto LANDIM (2005), Humberto MESQUITA (2021), Vera Figueiredo ROCHA (2015) and Francisco Jackson Martins VIEIRA (2012).

Modelul gazetăresc al banditului social în romanul tâlhăresc al secolului al XIX-lea

The popularity of the idea of social banditry is closely related to the socio-historical, economic and cultural context, and literature and history only record the reasons why the noble thief, in many variants the outlaw, become some of the central figures of the Romanian historical novel of the 19th century. The outlaw novel is detached from the literary body of the hajduk prose and proposes another series of motives for the actions of the main characters. Cruelty is no longer euphemized by the oversize of the noble character, and the passionate prowess, selfishness, and murder foreshadow the outlaw’s refuge in a society of outcasts, which opposes the official societal model. Through the character of the social outlaw, Panait Macri and Ilie Ighel propose another model of social bandit, the thief who, although initially occupying a privileged social position in the community to which he belongs, commits out of passion a gruesome crime, which will serve as an occasion for his exclusion from the community structure from which he claims. The social thief renounces the aura of vigilante or protector of the horned, and, yielding to the dark desires for the attainment of personal power and prosperity, becomes the embodiment of the evil to be feared, a hypostasis which does not make him repugnant in the collective imagination but, on the contrary, attractive.

Scales of subversion

Scales of subversion

Review: Drug Lords, Cowboys, and Desperadoes: Violent Myths of the U.S.-Mexico Frontier, by Rafael Acosta Morales

Review: <i>Drug Lords, Cowboys, and Desperadoes: Violent Myths of the U.S.-Mexico Frontier</i>, by Rafael Acosta Morales

Partisans go cyber: The hacker ethic and partisans’ legacy

The article discusses the role of hackers and hacktivists in modern hybrid conflicts, in particular the ‘localization’ patterns of hackerism, by focusing on the case of the Belarusian hacker group Cyber Partisans. The study shows the significance of the partisan movement for modern Belarusian identity and historical memory and discusses the attempts of appropriation of this topic by various political actors. The comparison between hacktivism and partisan warfare holds a certain heuristic potential, making it possible to build conceptual categories for the analysis of the hacktivists’ practices and their ethical norms. Parallels may be drawn between the hackers and partisans (along with more common analogies with the pirates and ‘social bandits’) to gain a better understanding of the historical and ideological roots of the hacker movement in the ethical sphere. One of the most famous interpretations of the concept partisan belongs to the German jurist and political theorist Carl Schmitt, whose approach accentuates the partisan’s connection with the local territory (the telluric nature of the partisan). An interesting way to compare the hacker and partisan ethic is to look at both of them from the game-related perspective. For example, the situations described in the ‘partisan’ literature have much in common with the prisoner’s dilemma — a popular game theory paradox. These situations of moral choice foster a particular kind of subjectivity which is closely entwined with keeping true and remaining loyal, a subjectivity that is apt to handle certain information with discretion and care. The study explores the heuristic potential of the concept nomos for the analysis of the partisan ethic and hacker ethic. The proposed concept nomos of the swamp develops Karl Schmitt’s ideas and can be applied to reveal the specifics of the partisan activity in Belarus and to analyze partisanship in connection to the historical and modern forms of ‘partisan’ hacktivism.

“Palestine’s Robin Hood”: Abu‐Jildeh and the Making of a Social Bandit

AbstractThis study explores the history of Palestinian Arab outlaw Abu‐Jildeh (∼1900–1934), as a case study for constructing a social bandit image. Between May 1933 and April 1934, following several robberies and murders, Abu‐Jildeh was Palestine’s most wanted criminal. The British‐led Palestine Police Force’s failure to arrest the bandit, despite significant efforts, further enhanced Abu‐Jildeh’s public image, making him an Arab folk hero and symbol of resistance to the British Mandate government. The research used British archival sources, Palestinian Arab and Jewish press articles, memoirs, and oral history to propose a valid historical narrative and uncover the facts behind a typical social bandit myth. These enable retracing the actions of the three main actors in Abu‐Jildeh’s saga: the outlaw himself, the police hunting him, and the local Arab press, who glorified him. Seen in the context of contemporary Arab political and national climate in Palestine, the interplay between bandit, police, and press shows how an ordinary, “opportunistic,” criminal transformed into a national hero, regardless of his actions.

Babu Farari

This article, drawing on research carried out in the village of Jamgod (India, Madhya Pradesh), present the story of Babu Farari, an outlaw living and operating in this area in the 50s. First met during fieldwork as a legend about a local social bandit, the figure of Babu grew to acquire a deeper, three-dimensional complexity. His story has been reconstructed here from fragments of ethnography, interviews and conversations, and from information contained in the fieldnotes of Mayer, an anthropologist who did research in the same village when Babu Farari was active. This polyvocal narrative shows a “legend in the making” and provides insight into the way in which stories are embedded within wider social and political frameworks and how local history acquires meaning only in relation to contemporary social and political events. Indeed, details in the various narratives about Babu Farari’s life give rise to features of present-day local moral economies and folk ethics about State, power and the Self.

A Terror to the People: The Evolution of an Outlaw Gang in the Lower Midwest

The details of the heretofore unexamined Reeves Gang may serve as an important case study of violence and lawlessness in the Lower Midwest in the decades following the Civil War. Unlike the “social bandits” such as the Jesse James and Dalton Gangs of the Middle Border region, most outlaw gangs made little attempt to get along with locals. These groups ruled by fear and typically fell afoul of vigilante hangings and shootings— a one-act play, if you will. The Reeves Gang, the focus of this study, would come to be atypical, their tale turning into a three-act play, moving from petty crime to more sophisticated criminal activities, and then to an attempted life of normalcy. Though now long forgotten, several instances of the Reeves Gang’s violent activities, as well as their eventual capture, were to be found in newspapers across the nation at the time.

Fear and mockery: the story of Osale and Paulo in Tanganyika

ABSTRACT This article analyses the popular story of the two ‘social bandits’ Osale and Paulo who caused insecurity and fear in Tanganyika’s Usambara Mountains during the 1950s. By comparing various oral accounts of the story and supplementing the sparse archival material available, the paper reveals a narrative of multiple anxieties haboured by the residents of Shambaai during a time of rapid transformation under late colonial rule. As they reworked the racialized colonial hierarchy through their narratives, African story-tellers dealt with anxieties concerning settler colonialism, Mau Mau, land scarcity and the colonial administration’s disastrous soil conservation policy. The article demonstrates the importance of taking seriously oral histories for our understanding of African responses to the anxieties of the late colonial period. Furthermore, it sheds new light on the relations between white settlers and Africans in the Usambara Mountains in the light of the administration’s rigorous intervention into African agriculture.

Piracy, Pillage and Plunder in Antiquity: Appropriation and the Ancient World (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies) ed. by R.J. Evans, M. De Marre

Reviewed by: Piracy, Pillage and Plunder in Antiquity: Appropriation and the Ancient World (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies) ed. by R.J. Evans, M. De Marre Richard Alston Evans, R.J. and De Marre, M. (edd.) 2020. Piracy, Pillage and Plunder in Antiquity: Appropriation and the Ancient World (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies). London and New York: Routledge. Pp. xiv + 245. ISBN 978-1-138-34100-5. £115.00. The focus of this collection is elusive. I began with Clifford Ando's introduction (pp. 1-8) and Seth Richardson's essay on Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia (pp. 9-26) and thought that the book was about bandits and, potentially, pirates. Matthew Trundle (pp. 27-37) provides an essay on mercenary service and Athenian state structures before Richard Evans's treatment of [End Page 268] state finances and raiding with a focus on Syracuse (pp. 38-59). Alex McAuley (pp. 60-83) shifts attention to Seleucid colonisation and issues of identity. Roman Roth's argument follows (pp. 84-96), focusing on coastal colonies as manifestations of Roman naval power and policy. He suggests that pirates lurked in the colonial walls. Aaron Beek (pp. 97-114) considers Rome's habit of calling its enemies 'pirates', seeing them more as mercenaries. This is followed by Stephen Harrison's paper on Tibullus (pp. 115-28), which transitions the volume to a more literary focus, with John Hilton's paper on the rebellious boukoloi in Leucippe and Clitophon (pp. 129-44) and Martine de Marre's consideration of the female Circumcellions, who are in the tradition of morally bad, rural and poor heretics (pp. 145-69). The volume finishes with two papers on reception topics. The first from Eve MacDonald and Sandra Bingham (pp. 170-84) points to tropes of piracy which came to justify imperial expansion in modern North Africa and finally comes Liliana Carrick-Tappeiner's consideration of Classical motifs in the hyper-masculine King Solomon's Mines (pp. 185-202). This shifting focus reflects an essential slipperiness of the subject. The terms 'pirate' or 'bandit' are often applied in modernity and antiquity, but rarely after a carefully consideration of the sociological and political characteristics of the individual or group so labelled. Such terminology is descriptive and invective. One who called Domitian a latro (Plin. Ep. 1.12; Suet. Dom. 12), could not plausibly have been claiming that the Roman emperor conformed to the same sociological categories as the Cilician bandits or the Cretan pirates. But if invective is in play, are we looking principally at elite social discourses tarring the socially and politically marginal with a label reinforcing their externality? For historians of antiquity, the problem is worsened by linguistic issues. Inevitably, we are translating 'bandit' or 'pirate' across multiple languages, sociological settings and moralizing practices. Can the supposed roaming bands of heretics in North Africa be meaningfully compared with Hellenistic mercenaries or Bronze Age herders? Is there anything that connects other than a translated word? Within the comparative historical and anthropological literatures, the category of bandit is not particularly homogeneous. Ando's introductory survey goes back to Brent D. Shaw's work, mostly from the 1980s and 1990s.5 Shaw wrestled with this definitional problem, particularly in his long article on 'Bandits in the Roman Empire', which collated a multiplicity of reports of bandit activity. Lurking behind Shaw's engagement was a cross-disciplinary initiative, 'bandit studies' which drew inspiration from the pioneering work [End Page 269] of Eric Hobsbawm (not in the bibliography here). Hobsbawm invented the terminology of the 'social bandit' drawing on an experience of near contemporary banditry as a form of armed resistance.6 Bandit studies looked to recuperate the stories of low-level, low-class resistance as evidence for mostly agrarian social conflict. For Marxist-inspired historians, the bandit, or the primitive rebel, offered evidence of class struggle before modern political ideology. But as Hobsbawm well knew, the social bandit was not a straightforward figure. In places, the social bandit was mythologized and romanticized. Robin Goodfellow became a very bourgeois bandit in Romantic and modern receptions. In the Mediterranean, the klephts, armatoles, and pallikari of the nineteenth-century Balkans metamorphosed into nationalistic icons, defenders of anti...

La imagen inestable de Manuel Lozada. Entre la historia política y la política de la historia

&lt;p&gt;Manuel Lozada, jefe militar de “las fuerzas de los Pueblos Unidos del Nayarit” que entre 1858 y 1873 mantuvo una autonomía de facto sobre el territorio que se convertiría en el estado de Nayarit, ha sido representado de diversas maneras según las generaciones de historiadores, intelectuales y antropólogos que se han interesado en su estudio, ya sea como el Tigre de Álica, indio precursor del agrarismo, bandolero social mestizo y católico, líder del conservadurismo popular o como un Cristo transgresor, según la perspectiva indígena. Con base en una revisión de las obras y registros más representativos en la construcción y transmisión de su memoria —que es al mismo tiempo un recorrido por los enfoques y modelos teóricos con los que los actores del medio rural del México decimonónico han sido abordados en los últimos 150 años— destacaremos dos aspectos. El primero, que el conocimiento histórico sobre este personaje se ha desenvuelto en la articulación diversa y cambiante entre historia y política; y el segundo, que dichas representaciones ponen en evidencia modos de relación con el sector al que es asociado, que ha sido de tipo excluyente, de asimilación y paradójico. Proponemos que éstas se sostienen hasta el presente y hacen de su imagen una figura inestable.&lt;/p&gt;

Crime, bandits, and community: how public panic shaped the social control of territory in the Ottoman Empire

ABSTRACT This study explores the role of crime, bandits and public panic in 19th-century Ottoman society by using archival documents and employing a comparative perspective. In addition to the social bandit concept of Eric Hobsbawm, there is an introduction of two new banditry forms in this study: opportunist bandits and imagined bandits. The comparison of different bandits clarifies that social bandits and opportunist bandits aggravated public panic and produced imagined bandits. Hence, public panic and the dissent of local people unveiled through rumours about the imagined bandits. The exploration of different forms of bandits in the Ottoman Empire is a response to the vexed issue concerning the challenges in the social control of territories in a multiethnic and multi-religious empire. This study provides new conceptual tools with which to rethink the spatial dimensions in the emergence of bandits. It shows that spatial factors in the social control of territory can be influenced by the reaction of local people from bottom to top and, in doing so, the spatial factors can determine the response of state authority. The present study, therefore, unveils the power relationship in the social control of territory whether it is manifested by physical force or public panic.

New social bandits? A comparative analysis of gangsterism in the Western and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa

Gang violence has been extensively highlighted as an issue of national concern in South Africa. Gangs also pose concerns about the social contexts of the communities in which they are found. The Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces have had the most prolific occurrences of gangsterism. Here gangs have demonstrated unique characteristics that set them apart from gangs in other areas. This article examines the context of gangsterism in the selected provinces by means of a comparative analysis. The purpose is to provide some strategies for effective intervention. The discussion also interrogates how or why intervention efforts may have failed and what could be improved in order to strengthen the chances of success of future interventions in affected communities.

A katábasis de Orfeu no Brasil, por Cacá Diegues

O mito de Orfeu foi reelaborado diversas vezes pelo cinema brasileiro. Procura-se contrapor a &lt;em&gt;katábasis&lt;/em&gt; produzida por Cacá Diegues a de Marcel Camus, com &lt;em&gt;Orphée Noir&lt;/em&gt; (1958), em dois momentos, em &lt;em&gt;A cidade grande&lt;/em&gt; (1966) e &lt;em&gt;Orfeu&lt;/em&gt; (1999). Argumenta-se que o bandido social e o traficante de drogas são personagens centrais para a produção de distintas composições do inferno feitas por Diegues.

Mule Drivers in Nineteenth-Century Lebanon: from local social history towards Global History

Abstract: This article makes the case for a project in the making: a study of the social transformation of the countryside as it joins the global market over the long nineteenth century, told as a collective biography of the mule drivers of Ottoman Lebanon - those obscure peasants who, owning one or a few mules, made their livelihood in the transport of goods and persons rather than work the land. Over the first half of the century, these actors mobilized for revolts while a village-based economy turned to cash-crop agriculture and the central government built a new state apparatus that would insure its survival within global capitalism, rendering the peasants' situation ever more precarious. From the 1860s to the First World War, as local resources were diverted to feed European industry and local petty-trade networks came undone, when elites at all levels struggled to assert their control over labor and resources, these same muleteers turned into social bandits - smugglers who defended the peasant against the state's taxation and the capitalists' extraction. Some of them accumulated wealth and ultimately integrated an emerging middle class. The projected account makes two historiographical interventions. (a) Within the history of the modern Middle East, it argues that the region's confessional tensions are tied to developments that are characteristic of capitalism over the period - namely, the rise of a new kind of state and the loss of control over resources by local actors at the margins. This approach pushes against purely culturalist explanations, attempting to wed culturalist and materialist stances. (b) Conversely, by drawing parallels with other mounted rural bandits in the Anatolian and Romanian hinterlands of the Ottoman Empire, as well as with the gauchos in Latin America, ox-cart drivers in India, and rickshaw pullers in China, this local history speaks to a global history of capitalism. Reducing the scale of analysis to reveal the subjectivity of local actors, and linking the cultural norms that shape agency to objective structural transformation that can be compared across contexts, this project challenges histories of capitalism that ignore the countryside or the global South and thereby produce a sanitized account characterized by secular politics and a liberal culture.

A heritage ‘trailscape’: tracking the exploits of historical figures – an Australian case study

ABSTRACTOne of the many distinct problems encountered in tracking the exploits of historical figures such as folk heroes – especially in their guise as tourist icons – is engagement, not only with the principal routes and trails taken by them, but also with the minor pathways and the many small-scale rural settlements, meeting grounds, base camps, and replenishment stopovers which serviced their lifestyle. An aggregation of these trails and servicing points would contribute significantly to determining, firstly, the regional operational areas of such folk heroes (including highwaymen, outlaws, social bandits, and bushrangers) and secondly, a potential pattern for history-linked and heritage-based regional tourism. It is likely that in responding to the meanderings of the folk hero, the spatial pattern would conform more to the idea of a ‘themescape’ than to other linear-like configurations, and the outcome could be envisaged and interpreted as a ‘trailscape’. Using as a case study the story of the Australian folk hero Edward (Ned) Kelly, this paper experiments with ‘ways of looking at the evidence’ and of interpreting and engaging with the ‘trailscape’ which is a hallmark of the overlapping spheres and clusters of the hero’s activities.

Heroes of our time. The figure of the drug-trafficker in Colombian narcotelenovelas

This paper examines the representation of drug traffickers in Colombian narcotelenovelas. While the Colombian official discourse treats these characters as the embodiment of evil and cruelty, narcotelenovelas treat them as models of social mobility in countries characterized by social injustice. The figure of drug trafficker (narcotraficante) represented in Colombian TV series is constructed at the intersection of two myths: the ancient myth of the social bandit, a brave macho man who steals from the rich and gives to the poor, and the contemporary myth about the capitalist entrepreneur (a self-made man) who rises from poverty and marginality to a position of power and wealth.

Conflicting obituaries: the Abyssinian ‘outlaw’ Debeb as treacherous bandit and romantic hero in late nineteenth-century Italian imagination

In 1886 the Abyssinian chief Debeb became a public figure in Italy as a rapacious colonial bandit. However, over the next five years he acquired additional public personas, even contradictory ones: as acondottieroally, a ladies’ man, a traitor, a young Abyssinian aristocrat and pretender to an ancient throne, a chivalrous warrior, and a figure representing the frontier and an Africa mysterious and hidden to Europeans. Upon his 1891 death in combat, he was the subject of conflicting Italian press obituaries. For some commentators, Debeb exemplified treacherous and deceitful African character, an explanation for Italy's colonial disappointments and defeats. However, other commentators clothed him in a romanticised mystique and found in him martial and even chivalrous traits to admire and emulate. To this extent his persona blurred the line demarcating the African ‘other’. Although he first appeared to Italians as a bandit, the notion of the bandit as a folk hero (the ‘noble robber’ or ‘social bandit’, Hobsbawm) does not fit his case. A more fruitful approach is to consider his multi-faceted public persona as reflecting the ongoing Italian debate over ‘national character’ (Patriarca). In the figure of Debeb, public debates over colonialism and ‘national character’ merged, with each contributing to the other.

The ‘rhinofication’ of South African security

The rhino-poaching crisis in South Africa raises questions about whether it should be tackled through judicial processes or by the application of hard-power methods. The poaching of wildlife has traditionally been met with a harsh response to send a clear message of punitive deterrence. While the reaction of the South African authorities has been no different, the contemporary threat posed by poaching intersects with, and is complicated by, wider concerns such as border security and immigration. In many respects, this has led to what can be termed the �rhinofication� of South African security. South Africa has a long political tradition that relies on force rather than dialogue, negotiation and reform. Yet, the hard-power response to protect the rhino and other large fauna, though necessary at one level, often runs up against the economic frustrations and temptations of a large, predominantly black, under-class, which for generations has been excluded from wildlife management and conservation by white �exceptionalism�. Poachers are thus transformed through their counter-cultural actions into what Eric Hobsbawm termed �social bandits�. While this social chasm lies at the heart of the �rhino wars�, it is clear that in practical terms the lack of a political/poaching settlement in the form of a racially inclusive conservation strategy almost certainly guarantees their continuation.

The Lonely Hero and Chechen Modernity: Interpreting the Story of Gekha the Abrek

This essay interprets the Chechen ballad (illi) of the social bandit Gekha (d. 1898) in the context of Chechnya's encounter with colonial modernity. Gekha's illi elucidates the interface between anticolonial resistance and masculine identity in late nineteenth-century mountainous Chechnya. Through a close reading of this work, I demonstrate how the poverty of the paradigmatic Chechen hero informs an aesthetics of defeat that motivates much Chechen folklore. An analysis of the illi in terms of the Chechen folkloric tradition is followed by a translation of a Russian transcription of this narrative made by the Chechen Bolshevik revolutionary and intellectual Aslanbek Sheripov in 1918.