Social bandit

Social bandit or social crime is a term invented by the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm in his 1959 book Primitive Rebels, a study of popular forms of resistance that also incorporate behavior characterized by law as illegal. He further expanded the field in the 1969 study Bandits. Social banditry is a widespread phenomenon that has occurred in many societies throughout recorded history, and forms of social banditry still exist, as evidenced by piracy and organized crime syndicates. Later social scientists have also discussed the term's applicability to more modern forms of crime, like street gangs and the economy associated with the trade in illegal drugs.

Hobsbawm's key thesis was that outlaws were individuals living on the edges of rural societies by robbing and plundering, who are often seen by ordinary people as heroes or beacons of popular resistance. He called it a form of "pre-historic social movement", by contrast with the organized labour movement. Hobsbawm's book discusses the bandit as a symbol, and mediated idea, and some of the outlaws he refers to are Pancho Villa, Lampião,Ned Kelly, Dick Turpin, Juraj Jánošík, Sándor Rózsa, Billy the Kid and Carmine Crocco, among others. The colloquial sense of an outlaw as bandit or brigand is the subject of the following passage by Hobsbawm:

The point about social bandits is that they are peasant outlaws whom the lord and state regard as criminals, but who remain within peasant society, and are considered by their people as heroes, as champions, avengers, fighters for justice, perhaps even leaders of liberation, and in any case as men to be admired, helped and supported. This relation between the ordinary peasant and the rebel, outlaw and robber is what makes social banditry interesting and significant ... Social banditry of this kind is one of the most universal social phenomena known to history.

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