This brief for the common person is seen in his fascination with
social banditry in Latin America.
Hacking and
social banditry in Gaza The situation in Gaza is so absurd, for lack of a better word, that a Palestinian student in Algeria who became involved in professional hacking was prosecuted by the Algerian authorities.
Touching on a wide spectrum of themes and time periods, they reflected the breadth of his interests and curiosity: pre-colonial history and politics,
social banditry, the role of women in palace politics, 'feudalism' in Malay society, the Japanese interregnum, post-war Malay nationalism and politics, ethnicity, imperialism, communism, political parties, Malay rulers, nation-building, history and memory, human rights, textbook controversies, and Malaysian historiography.
For example, the famous Jerilderie letter not only mythologises Ned as literate, but also reveals how later films celebrate
social banditry. By contrast, none of the early films include references to this letter, thus 'ensuring] that their felonious and illiterate depiction of Kelly is not muddled'.
Gaunson's analysis is informed by Eric Hobsbawn's
social banditry thesis, and he utilises a wealth of primary evidence, drawn from the films, media reports, sketches, songs and books.
According to Eric Hobsbawm's well-known study of criminality in precapitalist and agrarian societies, "
social banditry" was a form of class struggle and often a precursor or accompaniment to peasant revolutions.
Social banditry was an alternative and even a response to the rigid hierarchical world of the elite.
In many ways this book opens up the question of the place of bushranging in nineteenth century New South Wales by addressing it from the perspective of Eric Hobsbawm's concept of
social banditry. It also reflects some of the problems raised by Hobsbawm in any analysis of rural criminality when it runs up against middle-class views of Australian history, in which the rural criminal is still often seen as some sort of threat.
Referenced by literature, the mass media, and Afro-Brazilian culture,
social banditry emerges in Rio de Janeiro in the figure of the malandro, and in Brazil's arid Northeast in the figure of the cangaceiro.
The concept of
social banditry was introduced by the historian Eric Hobsbawm (1969) in the study of European social history.
We found things out that led us to notions such as the moral economy,
social banditry, the criminalization of custom, agrarian commoning, and the hegemonic function of law, terms and concepts which are still doing their work.