A Tour of Gang Ethnographies: Key Themes in Contemporary Studies around the World

This chapter offers a review of recently published gang ethnographies across four continents. Historically rooted in the United States, today the gang phenomena as well as gang ethnographies are subjected to processes of globalization. Europe, Latin America, and increasingly the Global South are emerging as important field sites for ethnographic research. Contemporary unprecedented levels of international migration, displacement, and deportation of people shape current gang ethnographies and have led to reconfigurations of century-old debates. Global forces also push the traditional boundaries of ethnographic field site across nation-state borders and into the online world. In the past two decades, the nationality, gender, as well as the disciplinary background of gang ethnographers has also dramatically diversified. Nonetheless, the visibility of gang ethnographies is still highly dependent of an ethnographers’ nationality and linguistic skills. Here Anglophone researchers as well as ethnographers associated with countries that are more affluent and universities still have a clear advantage over the majority of scholars of the Global South.

Supporting the President in a #NotMyPresident Context: Experiences of College-Aged Trump Supporters at a Southern University

In light of sexual misconduct allegations involving the former president of the United States, this study analyzes the reasons some university students provide for their continued support of Donald Trump. Relying on ten semi-structured qualitative interviews with college students who align with the president, this paper identifies three interrelated stages making up a model of support. First, students identify their conservative worldviews as helping to explain their initial support of Trump. Second, given the numerous accusations leveled against the president in the media, students readily use neutralization tactics to counter these narratives and rationalize their continued support. Finally, they feel vilified at their university and elsewhere for supporting Trump, and they find it necessary to conceal their opinions. Such experiences do not contribute to them questioning their beliefs. On the contrary, they lead to more entrenched and rigid support of the president. By identifying this three-stage process and applying neutralization theory to better understand it, this paper contributes to the existing sociological literature on the persistence of conservatism in the United States today.

Sociological Curiosity: Updating C. Wright Mills

C. Wright Mills’ famous essay, “The Sociological Imagination,” is the most frequently assigned reading in sociology syllabi in the United States today. However, the author of this article began to be concerned that Mills’ essay can seem dated to many. Here, the author stays true to Mills’ original ideas but updates some language and examples.

Rethinking Market Regulation

Rethinking Market Regulation: Helping Labor by Overcoming Economic Myths tackles the plight of workers who lose their jobs from mergers and outsourcing by examining two economic “principles,” or narratives that have shaped the perception of the economic system in the United States today: (1) the notion that the U.S. economy is competitive, making government market regulation unnecessary, and (2) the claim that corporations exist for the benefit of their shareholders but not for other stakeholders. Contrary to popular belief, this book demonstrates that many markets are not competitive but rather are oligopolistic. This conclusion undercuts the common refrain that government market regulation is unnecessary because competition already provides sufficient constraints on business. Part of the lack of competition has resulted from the large mergers over the past few years, many of which have resulted in massive layoffs. The second narrative has justified the outsourcing of millions of jobs of U.S. workers this century, made possible by globalization. The book argues that this narrative is not an economic principle but rather a normative position. In effect, both narratives are myths, although they are accepted as truisms by many people. The book ties together a concern for the problems of using economic principles as a justification for the lack of government intervention with the harm that has been caused to workers. The book’s recommendations for a new regulatory regime are a prescription for helping labor by limiting job losses from mergers and outsourcing.

Perceived Discrimination against Black Americans and White Americans

A widely-cited study reported evidence that White Americans reported higher ratings of how much Whites are the victims of discrimination in the United States than of how much Blacks are the victims of discrimination in the United States. However, much fewer than half of White Americans rated discrimination against Whites in the United States today to be greater or more frequent than discrimination against Blacks in the United States today, in data from the American National Election Studies 2012 Time Series Study or in preregistered analyses of data from the American National Election Studies 2016 Time Series Study or from a 2017 national nonprobability survey. Given that relative discrimination against Black Americans is a compelling justification for policies to reduce Black disadvantage, results from these three surveys suggest that White Americans’ policy preferences have much potential to move in a direction that disfavors programs intended to reduce Black disadvantage.

Drug Court Recidivism in the Rural Midwest: A 3-Year Post-Separation Analysis

Substance abuse continues to be a pressing social problem in the United States today. As the country battles an opioid epidemic, many jurisdictions have adopted the problem-solving court model in response. These specialized courts, known as drug courts, offer a rehabilitative approach to offender management. Drug courts balance substance abuse rehabilitation with community-based supervision and operate with the philosophy that addressing the addiction will result in a decrease in criminal offending. The current study examines the recidivism rates for 50 participants who have been separated (i.e., completed or terminated) from one rural drug court program in the Midwest for at least 3 years. Findings indicate that successful completion of drug court is associated with decreases in misdemeanor offending, and more importantly, decreases in felony offending. While preliminary, the findings of this research provide support for the drug court model in the rural Midwest. Further research in this area is highly recommended.

(Re)Made in America: Survivorship after the Shoah

Until the l970s, ‘survivor’ referred predominantly to individuals who outlived others in the aftermath of disaster, or stood to inherit the remains of an estate; it was not imbued with evaluative connotations. In the United States today, however, survivorship abounds with positive meanings. This transvaluation rests on three intersecting trajectories that together transformed survivorship from denoting that one sustained or was spared a hardship to signifying a superior social status. The first trajectory follows the aftermath of the Shoah, when survivors acquired moral authority as victims of and public witnesses to a new violation, ‘crimes against humanity’. The second tracks the stigmatization of the term ‘victim’ in American public discourse. A consequence of struggles over the welfare state and other progressive policies, victimhood is now associated less with specific harms or injuries, and more with the supposed negative attributes of the victim herself. The third traces how survivorship became integral to the recuperative strategies of new therapeutic disciplines addressing the traumatized – from war veterans and rape victims to cancer patients. These three processes coalesced to create and legitimize a hierarchical opposition between ‘victims’ and ‘survivors’, transforming these terms into political categories and emblems of personal and group identity. In this essay, I argue that the victim/survivor binary constitutes one juncture where neoliberalism converges with Trump-era populism.

Need for Nurse Practitioner Fellowships in Ophthalmology in the USA

Medical attention to vision impairment and associated eye care complications are a vital component of daily living and overall well-being. In the United States today, the physician to patient deficit places great strain on the availability of medical attention tenable to patients nationwide; in terms of specialty medicine, this deficit is even more widespread. The field of ophthalmology faced the same physician to patient deficit in 2020, a grim reality that has left many states void of ophthalmic care, rending millions of aging individuals without domestic eye care. The implementation of trained, ophthalmic nurse practitioners (NPs) can fill the needs of this deficit; however, efficient, accredited, and board-approved American ophthalmic fellowships and residencies that secure proper ophthalmic NP transitions from academia to clinical practice are nonexistent. Though scant, evidence-based literature presents sound findings that support the efficacy and benefit for superior patient outcomes with care provided by ophthalmictrained NPs, offering a viable, long-term solution to the need for ophthalmic medical providers across all states without mitigating patient care, emphasizing the great need for the implementation of ophthalmic NP residencies and fellowships to ensure the continuity of impeccable ophthalmic care for all populations.

Violence, Social Movements, and Black Freedom Struggles

George Floyd’s murder by police on 26 May 2020 set off a cycle of struggle that was notable for its size, intensity, and rate of diffusion. Starting in Minneapolis, the uprising quickly spread to dozens of other major cities and brought with it a repertoire that included riots, arson, and looting. In many places, these tactics coexisted with more familiar actions like public assemblies and mass marches; however, the inflection these tactics gave to the cycle of contention is not easily reconciled with the protest repertoire most frequently mobilized during movement campaigns in the United States today. This discrepancy has led to extensive commentary by scholars and movement participants, who have often weighed in by considering the moral and strategic efficacy of the chosen tactics. Such considerations should not be discounted. Nevertheless, I argue that both the dynamics of contention witnessed during the uprising and their ambivalent relationship to the established protest repertoire must first be understood in historical terms. By considering the relationship between violence, social movements, and Black freedom struggles in this way, I argue that scholars can develop a better understanding of current events while anticipating how the dynamics of contention are likely to develop going forward. Being attentive to these dynamics should in turn inform our research agendas, and it is with this aim in mind that I offer the following ten theses.