For all strategic actors in the gang social field, information is a critical daily necessity. For incumbents, quality, timely information provides what might be termed ‘house advantage’.

Information, specifically the flow and use of information, its exchange and transmission as a commodity, affects all actors in the social field:

Information exchange is crucially linked to the other fundamental field component: trust. Both Putnam (2000) and Coleman (1994) identify trust as a key component of social capital and Fukuyama sees trust as a basic source of social capital (Fukuyama, 1995, p 26). Field (2008, p 71) citing Dasgupta (2000, p 333) views trust as an attribute of groups and institutions that is often based on reputations, themselves mediated by third parties. This is a certainty within the social field of the gang. For Fukuyama, if members have a wide radius of trust, any externalities arising from this are more likely to be ‘positive and benign’. Conversely, a narrow radius of trust signifies potentially ‘negative externalities’ (Fukuyama, 2001, pp 8-10). This appears to apply to the social field of the gang, where trust is in short supply. Densley (2013) identifies problems of risk and vulnerability associated with generating trust and suggests that any doubts a gang may have about the trustworthiness of new recruits is addressed in part through the use of symbols. In this regard, he uses a novel application of signalling theory as a way of reinterpreting street codes and street reputation. In the social field of the gang, trust is tested daily, via relationships and instincts, but most importantly through sending and receiving information.

Community engagement

In the social field of SW9, the dealing and trading of information is a central tenet of enormous importance. Described as the first direct benefit of social capital, such trading facilitates access to broader sources of information while providing new opportunities to improve data quality, relevance and timeliness (Adler and Kwon, 2002, p 29). In so doing, it offers a method of community engagement and social control. For elders, information equates to ‘informational capital’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p 19).