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Digital capitalism troubles classical notions of contextual singularity and agential unity and destabilises delineations of online and offline realities. Following Floridi, this paper applies the concept of ‘onlife’ for the ‘new experience of a hypermediated reality’, and we contribute to the understanding of this experience by highlighting the socioeconomic entanglements of users’ self-expression and technological corporations’ profiteering. We introduce the notion of onlife intersectionalities, where intersectionalities are understood as the enactment of identities at the crossroad of gender, race, sexuality, class, etc., and add the dimension of commercial interest to better conceptualise dynamics of empowerment and exploitation. Thus, we suggest that onlife intersectionalities are enacted in and as flows of playbour that produce surplus value through playful activity. Seeking empirical substance for these conceptual relations, we turn to the case of women in online gaming. Focusing on three individual women gamers’ onlife trajectories and flows of playbour, we show how these interact differently for each gamer, leading to more play with higher rewards for some and more labour with less compensation for others. With this analysis, we illustrate the exploitation-cum-empowerment of human subjects under digital capitalism.

In the context of capitalist democracies, the contradiction between people's expectations of equality and the subordination they experience at work is intense. I argue that it is the defining experience of the contradiction between capitalism and democracy. Capitalism grants political rights to property owners, while democracy grants political rights to the citizens recognized as equals. They are thus regimes of government that distribute rights in dramatically different ways. This essay is grounded in the understanding that firms are best analyzed as “political entities,” and workers as “labor investors,” and have thus a legitimate right to bear on the government of their work life. Examining the history of how political entities have become democratic through the innovation of bicameralism provides a “real utopia”: economic bicameralism, that is, a set of patterns that may be applied to democratize and transition the corporate firm beyond capitalism.

Research has found that people’s perceptions of the extent to which authority figures behave in a procedurally just (or unjust) manner have powerful effects on a variety of outcomes. Procedural justice has been shown to influence people’s sense of obligation to obey and willingness to cooperate with the law and its agents, as well as people’s willingness to comply with the law and legal authorities. Yet very little research has examined the causal mechanisms through which the perceived fairness of procedures influences these outcomes. One possibility is that procedural injustice may trigger affective responses such as anger, frustration, or fear. In this study, we test the effects of three procedural justice conditions on a variety of outcomes using a laboratory-style experiment that simulates a police traffic stop. At the same time, we test the extent to which the relationships between procedural justice and these outcomes are mediated by people’s self-reported levels of anger. Our findings reveal that the treatment conditions had strong effects on self-reported anger, with the procedural justice condition decreasing anger, and the procedural injustice condition increasing anger. Moreover, the findings reveal that the treatment conditions also exerted indirect effects on all outcomes through anger. Taken together, these findings reinforce the importance of emotion in mediating the effects of procedural justice on a variety of outcomes during intergroup encounters.

Poor police–minority relations have spurred calls for police reform worldwide. In response, scholars have suggested procedural justice as a way police might improve this relationship. This study explores how situational and person-specific factors condition how minorities interpret procedural justice in vicarious police encounters. The study adopts a randomized experiment with 504 Muslims. In the experiment, an officer’s and Muslim suspect’s behavior were both varied between groups in a police encounter. Participants’ strength of identification with police was also measured. As expected, Muslim participants trusted the officer and complied more when the officer was depicted as procedurally just compared to procedurally unjust. However, this effect was moderated by the suspect’s behavior; the procedural justice effect on trust was weaker when the Muslim suspect was depicted as disrespectful toward police. Identification with police also moderated the procedural justice effect on trust and compliance; the procedural justice effect was stronger for Muslims who identified more strongly with police. Finally, identification further moderated the Officer x Suspect Behavior interaction effect; the interaction was accentuated for those who identified more strongly with police. These findings suggest that procedural justice does promote minorities’ trust in police and compliance, but situational and person-specific factors condition this.

Police administrators are looking for concrete pathways to fight the phenomenon of (ethnic) prejudice among members of the police force. Surprisingly, few studies have assessed the effectiveness of existing police ethics training programs on prejudice and social dominance orientation. Therefore, we assessed the impact of a 1-day training called the Holocaust, Police, and Human Rights (HPH) program on the attitudes related to ethnic prejudice and social dominance orientation of 223 members of the Belgian police. Analyses of three-wave panel data indicate that HPH training reduced ethnic prejudice and social dominance orientation. For ethnic prejudice, the reduced effects were maintained after 1 month in the follow-up study. However, the effect of training on prejudice was weaker for police officers who were more often exposed to victims and perpetrators of crime. No lasting effect of HPH training was found for social dominance orientation.

Police must rely on the public’s cooperation; however, youths’ views of police are historically low. To understand the dynamics of these intergroup relations, this study integrates two theoretical perspectives: the cognitive developmental perspective, which posits that age-graded cognitive enhancements enable children to begin critically evaluating police; and the group engagement model, which suggests that views of police impact law-related behavior. Utilizing a sample of 424 community youth (37.97% Hispanic/Latinx, 19.81% Native American), this study tested four novel hypotheses: H1: Age is negatively associated with youths’ willingness to cooperate (WTC) with police; H2: Age is negatively associated with normative alignment with police; H3: Normative alignment is positively associated with WTC; and H4: Normative alignment is more strongly associated with older youths’ WTC. All four hypotheses were supported. The article discusses the implications of both the integration of these theoretical perspectives and the findings for understanding the effects of these intergroup dynamics.

Communication between police and community is an inevitable part of policing. Core narratives—subjective, internal, sense-making processes that can shape behavior—that police officers hold related to communication can influence police–community interactions. There is no known research on core narratives related to police officer communication. To begin to fill the gap, this paper reports the analysis of in-depth interviews conducted to investigate how police officers understand police–community relations and the nature of encounters with community members. Communication emerged as an important theme. Five communication core narrative themes were identified: communication as central, advocacy, cover, withholding, and connection. Four of the core narrative themes were abstracted into two dimensions along which the characteristics of the communication varied. Understanding the core narratives influencing officer intergroup communication can help researchers and practitioners see the larger implications of communication, an essential component of policing and police–community relationships, and its connection to officer behavior.

In many communities, certain segments of the population do not have trust and confidence in the police. These issues are particularly intense in some impoverished minority communities in which people are more likely to fear the police than to trust them. Much can be learned about the patterned dynamics between police and communities from the study of intergroup relations generally, and intergroup communication more specifically. Unfortunately, these phenomena have not yet been well studied from an intergroup perspective. In this prologue to the special issue, “The Police and the Policed,” we introduce contemporary trends in police–community relations from an intergroup perspective, and we provide a brief overview of the articles appearing in the special issue. We close by highlighting key take-aways from this collection, articulating a vision for future research on police–community relations from an intergroup perspective.

Novelty and impact are key characteristics of the scientific enterprise. Classic theories of scientific change distinguish among different types of novelty and emphasize how a new idea interacts with previous work and influences future flows of knowledge. However, even recently developed measures of novelty remain unidimensional, and continued reliance on citation counts captures only the amount, but not the nature, of scientific impact. To better align theoretical and empirical work, we attend to different types of novelty (new results, new theories, and new methods) and whether a scientific offering has a consolidating form of influence (bringing renewed attention to foundational ideas) or a disruptive one (prompting subsequent scholars to overlook them). By integrating data from the Web of Science (to measure the nature of influence) with essays written by authors of Citation Classics (to measure novelty type), and by joining computational text analysis with statistical analyses, we demonstrate clear and robust patterns between type of novelty and the nature of scientific influence. As expected, new methods tend to be more disruptive, whereas new theories tend to be less disruptive. Surprisingly, new results do not have a robust effect on the nature of scientific influence.

It is well established that there are racial and gendered inequalities in murders of cisgender people. However, lack of data has hampered intersectional analyses of these factors for transgender people. Addressing that gap, this article presents findings from an original data set of murders of transgender people in the United States during the 30-year period from 1990 through 2019. Findings reveal that the gender and racial gaps in homicide of transgender people far exceed those of cisgender people. Transgender women are substantially more likely to be murdered than transgender men, and transgender women of color are murdered much more frequently than white transgender women. Attending to sexuality is also important because a substantial number of murders of transgender women occur in sexual interactions. However, transgender women of color are more likely to be killed while exchanging sex for money, whereas sex work circumstances are uncommon among white victims. I explain these patterns through what I term the matrix of violence, a structuring structure in which intersecting systems of stratification interact with necropolitical social institutions to facilitate certain types of violence while deterring others. In the conclusion, I use the findings to explore ways to reduce violence against transgender people.

Albert Hirschman’s exit-voice paradigm provides a useful lens for analyzing the current neo-categorical phase of gender politics in which attention has shifted from the content of the binary gender categories to the structure of the gender category system. During this phase of categorical destabilization, exit from originally assigned categories—in bureaucratically recorded, statistically reported, and informally negotiated forms—has become culturally legitimate and institutionally supported in a broadening range of milieus. Hirschman’s paradigm brings into focus the selectivity of exit and its potentially—and paradoxically—stabilizing consequences for the traditional gender order. The increased ease and pronounced selectivity of exit can channel dissatisfaction with gender arrangements into exit rather than voice or—as exit may itself be a form of voice—into individualized, psychologically driven forms of voice. And the selective exit of gender-nonconforming individuals from originally assigned categories can reinforce the stereotypical associations of these categories with gender conformity.

In this article, I explore how risk transformed from being understood as a property of groups to being understood as a property of individuals by examining the history of public and private insurance in the United States. Rather than locate changes in how risk is managed in our society in the “great risk shift” that occurred with the emergence of neoliberalism, I suggest the individualization of risk in recent decades is only the latest instantiation of a recurrent conflict between security and freedom that has marked the evolution of capitalism. Seen from this longer historical perspective, the “personal responsibility revolution” appears not as the handiwork of neoliberal policymakers but, rather, as the unintended result of social movements that contested discriminatory practices in insurance markets. Thus, paradoxically, my account suggests that struggles against discrimination seeded the individualization of risk that is now the hallmark of neoliberal capitalism.

Sociologists have identified many ways that childhood inequalities promote social reproduction. These inequalities are not always explicitly linked to what children are taught about their position and direction in the world, what I term their social station. Extant case studies find that social station socialization has meritocratic underpinnings (e.g., elite boarding schoolers are taught they are the “best of the best”). But societal changes, including increased emphasis on identity in educational institutions’ and employers’ evaluative practices, raise the prospect of similar changes in childhood socialization. I conducted three years of observations in two racially diverse elementary schools—one upper-middle class, the other working class—supplemented by interviews with 101 students, teachers, and parents. Students were taught markedly different lessons about their social station, but neither school predicated this on meritocratic achievement narratives. Overall, children at the upper-middle-class school were taught to see themselves as always-already special because of their internal qualities. Children at the working-class school were taught to see themselves as conditionally good if they adhered to external rules. Variations were visible for Asian American girls at the upper-middle-class school and poor students and Black students at the working-class school. I discuss the importance of school socialization and the implications of discrimination, identity rhetoric, and individualism for social reproduction.

Building on cornerstone traditions in historical sociology, as well as work in environmental sociology and political-economic sociology, we theorize and investigate with moderation analysis how and why national militaries shape the effect of economic growth on carbon pollution. Militaries exert a substantial influence on the production and consumption patterns of economies, and the environmental demands required to support their evolving infrastructure. As far-reaching and distinct characteristics of contemporary militarization, we suggest that both the size and capital intensiveness of the world’s militaries enlarge the effect of economic growth on nations’ carbon emissions. In particular, we posit that each increases the extent to which the other amplifies the effect of economic growth on carbon pollution. To test our arguments, we estimate longitudinal models of emissions for 106 nations from 1990 to 2016. Across various model specifications, robustness checks, a range of sensitivity analyses, and counterfactual analysis, the findings consistently support our propositions. Beyond advancing the environment and economic growth literature in sociology, this study makes significant contributions to sociological research on climate change and the climate crisis, and it underscores the importance of considering the military in scholarship across the discipline.

Since the 1980s, three paradigms have dominated the historical study of commercial associations—class analysis, modernization, and “public sphere”/“civil society”—but all three are imbued with and insist upon a binary opposition between state and society. These paradigms produce an understanding of commercial associations as part of a Western-style “bourgeois public sphere,” itself part of “civil society,” standing in opposition to the state. These misinterpretations were only strengthened by the complete state-ification of commercial associations in China after 1949. Studies of the history of commercial associations, trapped in this theoretical pitfall, cannot produce convincing historical research, even with abundant empirical data, nor can they provide experiential models for the development of contemporary commercial associations. Instead, if we focus on practice, we discover that modern commercial associations were part of a “third sphere,” an in-between space within the paradoxical institutional framework of China’s highly centralized government and minimalist administrative system. The semiformal governance mechanism operative within the third sphere reflected the close relationship and mutual shaping at work between the state and local society rather than a binary opposition between them. Applying these insights on the history of commercial associations to the practices of contemporary “commercial consultative associations” allows us to see that the semiformal administrative traditions embedded in the “third sphere” continue to quietly operate, which has immense significance for the future development of commercial associations in China.

Taking Steven Vertovec's concept of Superdiversity as a starting point, this special issue examines the dynamic interaction of diversity variables in the field of sport and migration issues. The articles published this Speical Issue span from studies on sports labor migration ( sports as migration) to consideration of the role sport plays in the everyday lives of disparate groups of migrants ( sport in migration). Considering the contemporary diversification of migration, we argue that it is more relevant than ever to expand the empirical focus of research in sports and migration issues, but also the breadth of theoretical and methodological approaches utilized. To this end, we illustrate the value of postcolonial theory and intersectionality as theoretical frameworks that can focus on multiple axes of differentiation along with structuring conditions that impact sports and migration issues. Further, we call for researchers in the field to consider the value of methodologies that are novel to their work such as participatory action research and approaches that avoid methodological nationalism.

Using unconditional basic income (UBI) as its empirical prism, this article offers new impetus to the foundational debate within critical theory as to whether and how redistribution and recognition can relate productively to each other. We explore the possibility of redistributive solidarity, arguing that unconditional and universal redistribution may be a means of furthering the recognition of different subjectivities that are not solely defined by their productive relations of labor. Seeing such redistributive solidarity as a potential but not necessary outcome of UBI, we develop a typology of existing UBI experiments that divide these according to whether they seek to affirm or transform the current social order based on principles of growth or degrowth. Surveying these four types of UBI, we find that the envisioned form of economic redistribution shapes the potential for social recognition. While the relationship is one of utopian potential rather than causal necessity, UBI may indeed enable redistributive solidarity.

This is a republication of Judith N. Shklar’s paper “Rights in the Liberal Tradition” first published in an issue of Colorado College Studies in 1992. This is the first time the piece has been made digitally available. Edward Hall and Matt Sleat provide a brief foreword to the essay.

Pandemic modelling functions as a means of producing evidence of potential events and as an instrument of intervention that Tim Rhodes and colleagues describe as entangling science into social practices, calculations into materializations, abstracts into effects and models into society. This article seeks to show how a model society evinced through mathematical models produces a model not only for society but also for citizens, showing them how to act in a certain model manner that prevents an anticipated pandemic future. To this end, we analyse political speeches by various Norwegian ministers to elucidate how various model-based COVID-19 responses enact a ‘model citizen’. Theoretically, we combine Rhodes et al.’s arguments with Foucault’s concepts of law, discipline and security, thus showing what a model society might imply for the model citizen. Finally, we conclude that although the model society is largely informed by epidemiological models and liberal biopolitics that typically place responsibility on individual subjects, sovereign state power remains manifestly present in the speeches’ rhetoric.

The last 15 years have seen a remarkable set of changes in the global business environment. Established companies and start-ups alike have been subjected to some fundamental shifts in the very way that we conceptualize business. Together with some generational challenges we have seen myriad calls for a new narrative about business. And, even more recently, the COVID pandemic has reinforced a number of these shifts and led to even more fundamental change. The purpose of this essay is to outline these challenges to the dominant narrative about business and to suggest that it is no longer a useful way to think about value creation and trade (business).

The uncertainties relating to the COVID-19 pandemic continue to pose extraordinary challenges to policymakers worldwide. The recent lifting of restrictions in China raised the spectre of another wave of infections beyond its borders, which has thankfully not occurred, so far. Now, three years after the pandemic emerged, policy assumptions and responses are being re-evaluated—from whether the virus emerged as a laboratory leak, to whether vaccines have efficacy, to whether Sweden’s laissez-faire approach was superior to other countries’ ambitious interventions. We examine India’s experience with COVID-19—impressionistically—to draw larger lessons for policymakers. India’s responses were a mix of hits and misses. Some measures helped contain the pandemic and assisted those in need. Other measures seemed performative—geared towards garnering glory on the global stage. Together, they throw light on the challenges of coping with a crisis in real time.

This study conceptualizes carceral violence to include the intimate sphere, highlighting a form of systemic racialized-gendered violence I term intimate carceral violence, which consists of two distinct violent effects of carcerality on relationships in Black communities: prisonized romance and coercive carceral care. I conducted qualitative interviews with 31 criminal-legal system–impacted Black women aged between 18 and 65 years in Southern California. Findings revealed that their romantic precarity included the challenge of finding partners due to the encroachment of the carceral state on Black communities. This study establishes how women engage in intimate carceral labor to mitigate their experiences of intimate carceral violence. I focus on the hidden work of managing an intimate partner’s emotions and behavior engendered by incarceration.

While philosophy has been defined as a critical endeavour since Plato, the critical potential of rhetoric has been mostly overlooked. In recent years, critique itself – as a means of enlightenment and emancipation – has come under attack. While there have been various attempts to renew and strengthen critical theory and practice, rhetoric has not yet played a part in these attempts. Addressing this lacuna, the article argues that rhetoric can function as a critical force within philosophy. The rhetorical perspective confronts the claim to rational discourse and universal knowledge with the contingency of philosophical languages, means of representation, and social practices. Moreover, it allows us to think of critique as an activity of a subject that is at the same time constituted and transformed by it. This opens up the possibility of a rhetorical philosophizing that meets its critical standards by taking into account both the conditions of its own speaking and what it must exclude as its ‘other’ in order to function.

Against the backdrop of the changing meaning of the “Chinese” language in Hong Kong, this article explores how Mandarin, once an unproblematic link to a nebulous Chinese nation for Hongkongers, now reflects anti-mainland sentiments. In the 1970s, Hong Kong Chinese who fought against English colonial oppression embraced Cantonese as their de facto Chinese language even as some conceded the broader allure of Mandarin. As the popularity of Cantonese rose, the appeal of Mandarin lingered but did not result in its higher currency. In the period leading up to the 1997 handover, while the colonial government did not mandate the study of Mandarin, its economic practicality surged, especially as the reform era engineered tremendous opportunities for Hongkongers in the mainland. Ironically, as Hongkongers have registered enhanced Mandarin proficiency, mounting resentment toward Mandarin in the city over the past two decades has come to represent a response to intensifying mainland control over Hong Kong.

Recent work on communities of color has elaborated on the concept of system avoidance, which is the avoidance of institutions that keep formal records, such as banks, hospitals, and law enforcement. In this paper, I provide a feminist intersectional analysis of system avoidance by examining whether and how kinship structures shape crime reporting to the police within the “master” categories of race, gender, and class. Using the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) 2002–2019, I show that among Latinx and white respondents, women are more likely than men to report personal experiences of violence to the police only if they have children living in the home. Among Black respondents, however, women are more likely than men to report personal experiences of violence to the police regardless of whether or not they have children. Household income and relationship to perpetrator further shape these associations, the most telling of which is that Latinas are no more likely than Latinos to report violence to the police when they know the offender. By examining crime reporting data through the lens of family structure, this study sheds light on a “paradox of protection,” the thin line in which women alternatively call the police to protect their families from violence, or refrain from calling the police to protect their families from criminalization.

In this introduction to the Special Issue on Race, Gender, and Violence, we go back to the roots of intersectionality and foreground an intersectional lens in our examination of violence against women and non-binary people of color. We argue that it is important to address the persistent “epistemic violence” resultant from silencing the most marginal, by featuring works that call attention to and examine violence against groups subjected to the “interlocking oppressions” of race, class, gender, and sexuality. The articles in the Special Issue re-directs the sociological analysis of violence to foreground scholarship that engages in the gendered and racial appraisal of violence. Studies included in the issue also foreground sexuality, which has largely been neglected in the intersectional analysis of violence. In so doing, we nod to both the past and the future of intersectionality in studies of violence.

Mental health literacy (MHL) is a significant component in understanding mental health disparities in vulnerable populations. Due to the unique structure and pressures of American college sport, attention to student-athletes’ MHL is critical, especially now that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is requiring member institutions to offer mental health services to their athletes. Utilizing online surveys of both athletes ( N = 205) and non-athlete students ( N = 205), this paper offers a descriptive look at the MHL of student-athletes. We found that both athletes and non-athlete students had above average levels of MHL, but high rates of mental health stigma. With a foundation in contact theory, the paper provides recommendations on how to utilize student-athletes’ mental health knowledge to decrease mental health stigma and increase MHL campus wide.

Scholars have increasingly recognized the sociocultural impacts of gentrification on Black residents. However, the gentrification literature lacks a theoretical model on the nuanced ways gentrification socially and culturally displaces longstanding Black residents. Limited attention has been given to factors that moderate social and cultural displacement. This article introduces a Theoretical Model of Gentrification-Induced Social and Cultural Displacement and Place Identity among longstanding Black residents based on extant theories and literature. Black neighborhoods’ changing character was theorized as a precipitating factor leading to residents’ negative experiences. Five types of experiences were theorized as contributing to social and cultural displacement: (1) confronting changing neighborhood norms, (2) “othering,” (3) losing social connections, (4) encroaching, and (5) witnessing the erasure of what was. The theoretical model further advances knowledge by explicating how place identity may moderate longstanding Black residents’ social and cultural displacement experiences. Implications for future research and equitable development for historically Black communities are provided.

We can distinguish two liberal paradigms that stand in opposition to each other. Liberalism as non-domination seeks to eliminate identities resulting from domination and oppression and hindering the emancipation of individuals. Liberalism as recognition holds that ‘the idea of a human world without identities makes no sense’ (Appiah) and considers identities to have their source in individual liberty and to provide the grounds for pluralism. The two liberal paradigms come to largely different results regarding the role of the state and civil society. The paradigm of non-domination tends to enforce individual rights, if necessary against a hostile cultural and religious context. The paradigm of recognition defends mostly individual liberties, if necessary at the expense of certain individual rights. Liberalism stands here in front of a major dilemma: Either it protects individual rights in the sense of freedom as non-domination, or it defends individual liberties in Isaiah Berlin's tradition of negative liberty– in too many cases and in too many parts of the world, liberalism, understood in the terms presented here, cannot have it both ways. This review article argues that the liberal paradigms of non-domination and recognition are complementary; liberalism is about both recognition and non-domination. Following policy recommendation can be drawn: (1) Democratic institutions (parliament, political parties and constitutional courts) and democratic rights (right to vote, right of assembly and freedom of speech) are most efficient in fighting domination. (2) Although social identities are not fixed and open to change, they cannot be engineered by the state or civil society organizations and grow out of some form of social consensus. (3) The consensus around identities takes place within the pluralist public and civil sphere of a community. (4) While the support in the development of individual capabilities by the state is effective against domination, also history and collective memory help to overcome the traumatic experience of domination. (5) Systemic transformation requires the support from below, notably from the civil society, and is based on individual liberties.

The erasure of marginalized people, especially LGBTQ+ people, is commonplace in sport. As sport has become more commercialized, even at grassroots and youth levels), one group that has become even further marginalized and dehumanized are sports officials. Understanding the intersection of marginalized identities is important; as such, this study examined how homophobia and transphobia interplay with the sports officiating profession. Semistructured interviews with 16 self-identified LGBTQ+ referees revealed a series of organizational and social factors that led officials to either pass as non-LGBTQ+ or to come out as LGBTQ+, leading to the development of the LGBTQ+ Referee Identity Management Process Model. Implications for better supporting LGBTQ+ officials to promote higher levels of retention and career satisfaction are presented.

In this article we focus on missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people in “Canada.” We theorize narratives that police employ to respond to this violence. Using a broad data sample of testimonies across “Canada,” this article contributes to understanding how police (in)actions make sense of, justify, and dismiss violence against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people. We draw from 48 in-depth semi-structured interviews with Indigenous peoples in Toronto and other “Canadian” cities and 219 testimonies from the Canadian National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (NIMMIWG). The analysis finds that police repeatedly use similar frames (topics), styles (linguistic and behavioral strategies), and storylines (narratives) to respond to violence against Indigenous peoples. While framing Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people as deviants helps police make sense of and explain violence against them, the use of verbal and behavioral strategies (indifference, callousness, and lack of information) and storylines (“they were [insert pathologizing frame]” and “there’s nothing we can do”) allows police to dismiss and justify acts of violence. We argue that the frames, styles, and storylines employed by police perpetuate violence. Police (in)actions are fundamental to achieving settler colonialism’s ideological and material dimensions.

Since the 1789 publication of his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African. Written by Himself, Olaudah Equiano’s identity has confounded critics. While competing accounts of his origins certainly raise questions, his autobiography is best read, not as a reflection on transatlantic slavery, but as a retrofuturistic speculation of a future that never was. Within the vein of Africana science fiction and futurism, we can elucidate the ways Equiano self-styled his identity, using Beth Coleman’s notion of race as technology to hypothesize an innovative heuristic of global blackness that situated his identity in concurrent systems of Black being. Through this lens, we can also better understand how critics’ historicization of Equiano’s account reify current notions of Black identity.

In conversation with Ferreras’s proposal for economic bicameralism, the current article makes the case for a more direct confrontation between conceptions of economic democracy and the realities of racial capitalism. In particular, it considers how efforts to expand power and voice for workers must contend with the racial hierarchy that marks the socioeconomic division of labor and the related use of racial distinctions to thwart labor solidarity. Focusing on the American context, the argument draws inspiration from the work and vision of two key figures in the unfinished struggle for Black liberation, W. E. B. Du Bois and Fannie Lou Hamer. After recapping core elements of Ferreras’s proposal, the article briefly examines the historical evolution of racial capitalism, starting with its roots in slavery and conquest. It then considers how movements agitating for greater worker power have intervened within this landscape. Against this backdrop, it draws lessons for how economic bicameralism might fit within a broader set of struggles that challenge racial capitalism as it exists today.

In this article, I argue that there can be an intersection between the rise and development of sports fandom, national identity, as well as political ideology. I contend that the rise of nationalist sports fandom can be driven by the emergence of the nationalist democratic movement. With an ongoing nationalist democratic movement against a cultural dominant “other” as the context, sports fandom becomes a container for nationalism and a reactive form of resistance against the dominant “other” who endangers them. Fans who have a stronger sense of “self” national identity and more political experience in the movement would see sports fandom as a subtle means of catharsis to counter the threat. I showcase the idea using the rise of collective fandom in the Hong Kong men's national football team in recent years as an example. I will trace how the development of the democratic movement and nationalism in Hong Kong paralleled the blossoms of the Hong Kong (men's) national football team (HKNFT) fandom over the last few years, and how the HKNFT fandom was transformed gradually into a reactive form of resistance against threats to political autonomy of Hong Kong and attempts of cultural assimilation from China. Multiple sources of data, including an onsite survey, focus group interviews, individual interviews, and secondary historical works will be utilized to support my arguments.

Based on qualitative phenomenological research alongside village dwellers in Lebanon, this article identifies village-ness – an experience of being labelled as ‘non-urban’ with an upbringing and habitus considered to be ‘of the village’ – as difference and lack. I accordingly argue for the recognition of a hierarchization between those considered ‘city people’ and ‘village people’ in mainstream Lebanese imaginary that establishes experiences of discrimination, prejudice, and assault. Developing this, the article explores participants’ understandings of transformation improving these conditions. (Western-style) education, (capitalist) employment, (modern) technology, and a deepened connectivity to the city emerge as key variables in this respect. This change, my analysis shows, is conceptualised as ‘becoming urban’ understood as ‘becoming modern’, where Modernity is specifically framed as a Western-centric formation with discourses of ‘civility’, linear time, ‘development’, and ‘progress’ dominant. Accordingly, the article posits that the construction, inferiorisation, and assault of village-ness is a key site of the establishment and (re)production of a Eurocentric ‘urban modernity’ at the level of everyday lived experiences. Recognising that this phenomenon extends far beyond Lebanon, I posit the need to seriously bring the ‘urban question’ into anti/post/decolonial thought.

Mexican drug trafficking organizations have experienced rapid attrition resulting in a continual need for personnel since 2006. However, the process by which these criminal organizations absorb new members remains obscure. In this article, we report on the social context of recruitment and motivational pathways into Mexican drug trafficking organizations through in-depth interviews with current and former cartel members ( N = 79). We find that recruits are motivated by aspirations of financial success and notions of masculinity, but also influenced by attachment to social groups and jointly shared experiences that we term a collective trajectory. We argue that individual decisions to join criminal organizations are viewed in collective terms, or being connected with members of their immediate social group. We conclude with the applications of challenges of collective trajectory for sociological criminology.