The contributors to Cocaine analyze the contemporary production, transit, and consumption of coca... more The contributors to Cocaine analyze the contemporary production, transit, and consumption of cocaine throughout the Americas and the illicit economy's entanglement with local communities. Based on in-depth interviews and archival research, these essays examine how government agents, acting both within and outside the law, and criminal actors seek to manage the flow of illicit drugs to both maintain order and earn profits. Whether discussing the moral economy of coca cultivation in Bolivia, criminal organizations and drug traffickers in Mexico, or the routes cocaine takes as it travels into and through Guatemala, the contributors demonstrate how entire ways of life are built around cocaine commodification. They consider how the authority of state actors is coupled with the self-regulating practices of drug producers, traffickers, and dealers, complicating notions of governance and of the relationships between economic and moral economies. The collection also outlines a more progressive drug policy that acknowledges the important role drugs play in the lives of those at the urban and rural margins. Contributors. Enrique Desmond Arias, Lilian Bobea, Philippe Bourgois, Anthony W. Fontes, Robert Gay, Paul Gootenberg, Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, Thomas Grisaffi, Laurie Kain Hart, Annette Idler, George Karandinos, Fernando Montero, Dennis Rodgers, Taniele Rui, Cyrus Veeser, Autumn Zellers-León
This article employs a theoretical framework of disparate origin I term Structural Disorganizatio... more This article employs a theoretical framework of disparate origin I term Structural Disorganization to analyze the apparent inverse relationship between the emergence of inmate organization hegemony and the rate of serious inmate violence in California prisons demonstrated by over 3 decades of inmate violence data collected from 1975 to 2006, suggesting the mitigating effect of inmate organization structure on serious violence in the carceral community. While the limitations of the data available preclude definitive proof of causality in the positivistic sense, the structural disorganization framework provides an intriguing analytical perspective for the seeming anomaly in the data regarding the effects of inmate organization hegemony and rates of serious inmate violence. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications for the wider Kingpin Strategy employed by the US government and its proxies, followed by speculation on how the structural disorganization framework can be employed in future research and analysis to explain the relationship between organizational structures and rates of serious criminal violence in criminalized communities, both domestic and international.
This article provides a critical historical analysis of the formation and proliferation of some o... more This article provides a critical historical analysis of the formation and proliferation of some of the earliest and most well-known prison gangs in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and the conflicts between them. This analysis provides an alternative explanation for prison gang formation that contrasts with existing pathological perspectives on prison gangs by examining the role of the prison staff and administration in the formation and proliferation of prison gangs and the provocation of conflicts between them. The historical narrative and analysis is constructed from existing literature, qualitative research using both formal and informal interviews, and descriptive data acquired from CDCR Annual Reports.
It was the final speech of a long day, August 28, 1963, when hundreds of thousands gathered on th... more It was the final speech of a long day, August 28, 1963, when hundreds of thousands gathered on the Mall for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In a resounding cadence, Martin Luther King Jr. lifted the crowd when he told of his dream that all Americans would join together to realize the founding ideal of equality. The power of the speech created an enduring symbol of the march and the larger civil rights movement. King's speech still inspires us fifty years later, but its very power has also narrowed our understanding of the march. In this insightful history, William P. Jones restores the march to its full significance. The opening speech of the day was delivered by the leader of the march, the great trade unionist A. Philip Randolph, who first called for a march on Washington in 1941 to press for equal opportunity in employment and the armed forces. To the crowd that stretched more than a mile before him, Randolph called for an end to segregation and a living wage for every American. Equal access to accommodations and services would mean little to people, white and black, who could not afford them. Randolph's egalitarian vision of economic and social citizenship is the strong thread running through the full history of the March on Washington Movement. It was a movement of sustained grassroots organizing, linked locally to women's groups, unions, and churches across the country. Jones's fresh, compelling history delivers a new understanding of this emblematic event and the broader civil rights movement it propelled.
does many of the same things he criticizes lindy hoppers for doing, like buying clothes to dress ... more does many of the same things he criticizes lindy hoppers for doing, like buying clothes to dress like African American steppers and modeling his dancing after theirs. For reasons unclear to me, he simply interprets his choices through a more sympathetic lens. The book ends on a hopeful note, but the mechanisms he proposes for non-exploitative cross-cultural engagement are undertheorized. He never explains exactly how being thoughtful allows one to move from minstrelsy to respectful mimicry; neither am I convinced that being liked by black people makes the difference; and no doubt there are very talented white entertainers whose performances are fairly described as cultural appropriation. The only difference I could discern between them and him is that, in the latter case, it’s him. He was trapped, I think, by his own navel gazing. Reduced to only two data points— himself and his girlfriend—Hancock can only conclude that somehow they were uniquely able to transcend, by virtue of their own specialness, the cultural, historical, and structural forces that uphold racial domination. This, when it comes down to it, is the very definition of asociological. A good candidate for the defining assumption of sociology, after all, is that none of us are that special.
Contemporary graffiti is a distinctly, if not exclusively, urban phenomenon; flowering over the p... more Contemporary graffiti is a distinctly, if not exclusively, urban phenomenon; flowering over the past few decades from the social and cultural complexities of city life, it cannot be understood outside its urban context. Here we offer an interpretation of graffiti as a fluid urban practice, based in large part on our many years of writing graffiti in cities around the USA and beyond. In particular, we attempt to develop a situated spatial analysis of graffiti—to map graffiti’s engagement with the urban environment through an analysis of the spots that writers choose for painting graffiti. This grounded theory of graffiti spots supplements existing understandings of graffiti as a subcultural endeavor and urban phenomenon, and emphasizes the liquidity of urban space and its meaning. It also directly counters the simplistic assumptions about graffiti and the city embedded in the ‘broken windows’ model of crime and crime control.
The contributors to Cocaine analyze the contemporary production, transit, and consumption of coca... more The contributors to Cocaine analyze the contemporary production, transit, and consumption of cocaine throughout the Americas and the illicit economy's entanglement with local communities. Based on in-depth interviews and archival research, these essays examine how government agents, acting both within and outside the law, and criminal actors seek to manage the flow of illicit drugs to both maintain order and earn profits. Whether discussing the moral economy of coca cultivation in Bolivia, criminal organizations and drug traffickers in Mexico, or the routes cocaine takes as it travels into and through Guatemala, the contributors demonstrate how entire ways of life are built around cocaine commodification. They consider how the authority of state actors is coupled with the self-regulating practices of drug producers, traffickers, and dealers, complicating notions of governance and of the relationships between economic and moral economies. The collection also outlines a more progressive drug policy that acknowledges the important role drugs play in the lives of those at the urban and rural margins. Contributors. Enrique Desmond Arias, Lilian Bobea, Philippe Bourgois, Anthony W. Fontes, Robert Gay, Paul Gootenberg, Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, Thomas Grisaffi, Laurie Kain Hart, Annette Idler, George Karandinos, Fernando Montero, Dennis Rodgers, Taniele Rui, Cyrus Veeser, Autumn Zellers-León
This article employs a theoretical framework of disparate origin I term Structural Disorganizatio... more This article employs a theoretical framework of disparate origin I term Structural Disorganization to analyze the apparent inverse relationship between the emergence of inmate organization hegemony and the rate of serious inmate violence in California prisons demonstrated by over 3 decades of inmate violence data collected from 1975 to 2006, suggesting the mitigating effect of inmate organization structure on serious violence in the carceral community. While the limitations of the data available preclude definitive proof of causality in the positivistic sense, the structural disorganization framework provides an intriguing analytical perspective for the seeming anomaly in the data regarding the effects of inmate organization hegemony and rates of serious inmate violence. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications for the wider Kingpin Strategy employed by the US government and its proxies, followed by speculation on how the structural disorganization framework can be employed in future research and analysis to explain the relationship between organizational structures and rates of serious criminal violence in criminalized communities, both domestic and international.
This article provides a critical historical analysis of the formation and proliferation of some o... more This article provides a critical historical analysis of the formation and proliferation of some of the earliest and most well-known prison gangs in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and the conflicts between them. This analysis provides an alternative explanation for prison gang formation that contrasts with existing pathological perspectives on prison gangs by examining the role of the prison staff and administration in the formation and proliferation of prison gangs and the provocation of conflicts between them. The historical narrative and analysis is constructed from existing literature, qualitative research using both formal and informal interviews, and descriptive data acquired from CDCR Annual Reports.
It was the final speech of a long day, August 28, 1963, when hundreds of thousands gathered on th... more It was the final speech of a long day, August 28, 1963, when hundreds of thousands gathered on the Mall for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In a resounding cadence, Martin Luther King Jr. lifted the crowd when he told of his dream that all Americans would join together to realize the founding ideal of equality. The power of the speech created an enduring symbol of the march and the larger civil rights movement. King's speech still inspires us fifty years later, but its very power has also narrowed our understanding of the march. In this insightful history, William P. Jones restores the march to its full significance. The opening speech of the day was delivered by the leader of the march, the great trade unionist A. Philip Randolph, who first called for a march on Washington in 1941 to press for equal opportunity in employment and the armed forces. To the crowd that stretched more than a mile before him, Randolph called for an end to segregation and a living wage for every American. Equal access to accommodations and services would mean little to people, white and black, who could not afford them. Randolph's egalitarian vision of economic and social citizenship is the strong thread running through the full history of the March on Washington Movement. It was a movement of sustained grassroots organizing, linked locally to women's groups, unions, and churches across the country. Jones's fresh, compelling history delivers a new understanding of this emblematic event and the broader civil rights movement it propelled.
does many of the same things he criticizes lindy hoppers for doing, like buying clothes to dress ... more does many of the same things he criticizes lindy hoppers for doing, like buying clothes to dress like African American steppers and modeling his dancing after theirs. For reasons unclear to me, he simply interprets his choices through a more sympathetic lens. The book ends on a hopeful note, but the mechanisms he proposes for non-exploitative cross-cultural engagement are undertheorized. He never explains exactly how being thoughtful allows one to move from minstrelsy to respectful mimicry; neither am I convinced that being liked by black people makes the difference; and no doubt there are very talented white entertainers whose performances are fairly described as cultural appropriation. The only difference I could discern between them and him is that, in the latter case, it’s him. He was trapped, I think, by his own navel gazing. Reduced to only two data points— himself and his girlfriend—Hancock can only conclude that somehow they were uniquely able to transcend, by virtue of their own specialness, the cultural, historical, and structural forces that uphold racial domination. This, when it comes down to it, is the very definition of asociological. A good candidate for the defining assumption of sociology, after all, is that none of us are that special.
Contemporary graffiti is a distinctly, if not exclusively, urban phenomenon; flowering over the p... more Contemporary graffiti is a distinctly, if not exclusively, urban phenomenon; flowering over the past few decades from the social and cultural complexities of city life, it cannot be understood outside its urban context. Here we offer an interpretation of graffiti as a fluid urban practice, based in large part on our many years of writing graffiti in cities around the USA and beyond. In particular, we attempt to develop a situated spatial analysis of graffiti—to map graffiti’s engagement with the urban environment through an analysis of the spots that writers choose for painting graffiti. This grounded theory of graffiti spots supplements existing understandings of graffiti as a subcultural endeavor and urban phenomenon, and emphasizes the liquidity of urban space and its meaning. It also directly counters the simplistic assumptions about graffiti and the city embedded in the ‘broken windows’ model of crime and crime control.
Uploads
Papers