Police violence, corrupt cops, and the repudiation of stigma among underclass residents in Mexico City

Current Sociology, Ahead of Print.
The relationship between police corruption and violence is well established in Latin America. Those with less power in poor communities often adapt their actions to serve their group interests in response to constraints placed on them by law enforcement. Using ethnographic and qualitative methods, we probe the effect of corrupt police behavior on the stigma of arrest and imprisonment by members of impoverished neighborhoods in Mexico City. Using an interpretive approach, we find that widespread corruption and police violence has indirectly mitigated the negative effects of the stigma or arrest and incarceration by what we term the repudiation of stigma. For the subjects in our study, the adjustment to pervasive corruption has led amelioration of the social stigma associated with arrest and incarceration among those with whom they share similar biographies of experience. More generally, repudiation of stigma highlights the ability of the marginalized to deflect the social consequences of being arrested and having a criminal record.

Young women’s sexual agency, relationality, and vulnerability: The Israeli case study of “attacking”

Sexualities, Ahead of Print.
The sexual agency of young women is constructed within various discourses that articulate multiple and conflicting social imperatives, such that they need to account for their sexual and social vulnerability while expressing their sexuality. This paper uses a common Israeli heteronormative youth practice called “attacking” to analyze young women’s sexual agency. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 39 young women aged 18–23, it explores how young women express their sexual agency while managing their vulnerability. Analyzed using a theory of vulnerability, our findings point to unique forms of relational agency that support young women’s subjective sexual expressions. The findings highlight the duality and ambiguities that young women face in spaces of “attacking,” showing how their agency is supported relationally by emerging alliances based on joint vulnerability. Based on these findings, this paper challenges the dichotomy between social forces and agency and establishes a conceptualization of relational agency with regard to young women’s sexuality.

Playing with straight lines and queer times: Children engaging with romantic love within and beyond heteronormative temporalities

Sexualities, Ahead of Print.
This article explores how life schedules and life courses that are organized chronologically become part of normalized heterosexuality in children’s conversations and play. The analysis draws on ethnographic data from a Swedish preschool, focusing on situations where children engage with themes such as romantic love, kisses and weddings. Queer temporal perspectives are applied to challenge how normativity and norm-challenging are perceived, not least in relation to how desirable futures for children are displayed. The article shows that children engage with love discourses in ways that both reproduce and challenge heteronormativity and linear temporalities in normative life course and life schedules.

Replace, absorb, serve: Data scientists talk about their aspired jurisdiction

Current Sociology, Ahead of Print.
How do data scientists frame their relations with domain experts? This study focuses on data scientists’ aspired professional jurisdiction and their multiple narratives regarding data science’s relations to other fields of expertise. Based on the analysis of 60 open-ended, in-depth interviews with data scientists, data science professors, and managers in Israel, the findings show that data scientists institutionalize three narratives regarding their relations with domain experts: (a) replace experts, (b) absorb experts’ knowledge, and (c) provide a service to experts. These three narratives construct data scientists’ expertise as universal and omnivorous; namely, they are relevant to many domains and allow data scientists to be flexible in their claim for authority.