Gangs in Rio

Gangs have always been a challenge to a states government. In Rio de Janeiro slums have always been dangerous because of the amount of the amount of gang members going around with guns, knives and many other weapons. There are many ways to understand these gangs; many believe that they do it for respect while others believe they do it because they have no other choice. In the movie “City of God” we can see the lives of many gang members that live in the slums. With many different sociologist perspectives we can comprehend various aspects of these gangs. Symbolic interactionist, Conflict theorist and Feminism theory are all different sociological perspective that will be discussed in this essay. First of all, Rio de Janeiro is known for their dangerous slums. Many would automatically think violence when It comes around that neighbourhood. To begin with, Symbolic interactionist focus on the subjective aspect of the social life, they base their perspective on the image they have of humans rather than the image they have on the society. One of the key aspects of the perspective is; we are influenced by culture and social processes, such as social norms. In the movie “City of God”, we can see that many people join the gangs because it has almost become part of their culture to be gang members. Symbolic interactionist would be interested in the way the gang grows very quickly. We can see in “City of god” or even in “News from personal war” that kids join the slums army at a really young age because of the amount of people that are part of it. Taking example on the Runts in the “City of God” movie, we can see that these young kids are mostly influenced by the older dealers fame and money. I believe that symbolic interactionist would be interested in how the kids from the movie “News from the personal war” don’t see anything wrong in their violent acts. They believe that they are doing nothing but positive for their society. By bringing back