While the recent conceptualization of hegemonic masculinity allows for the emergence of multiple masculinities, a significant ambiguity remains in theorizing the relationships between hegemonic and ''alternative'' forms of masculinity. In the relatively newly institutionalized sport of mixed martial arts (MMA), the relationship between the two polarized, competing technical styles-striking and submissionappears to demonstrate the competition between hegemonic and marginalized masculinities. This article argues that the distinction is predicated on the process of maintaining and negotiating a specific form of hegemonic masculinity that interacts with East Asian masculinities that are often feminized, yet selectively authorized by their white American counterpart. This article provides a theoretical discussion of marginalized masculinities identified in MMA and challenges the perceived characteristics of hegemonic masculinity-particularly its singularity and impenetrability-by suggesting a more relational, antiessentialist approach.
Gang activity and membership were noted to be significantly related to financial rewards. As such, gang membership and gang activity should also be understood from an economic perspective. In this article, Pierre Bourdieu's framework of capital is used to analyze two separate samples of Latino and Asian gang members. Stark contrasts in socioeconomic backgrounds are recorded among the two samples of gang members, and gang membership and activities are also noticeably dissimilar. Accessibility to economic, cultural, and social capital is argued to affect gang membership and activities. The results suggest that the availability of legitimate and illegitimate capital greatly affects the trajectory and the length of gang involvement. Also, gangs provide significant material and social capital for the respondents of the study.
Keywordsgangs; Asian; Latino; Bourdieu; capital Gang research has experienced notable advancement throughout the twentieth century. A great deal of understanding on gangs, gang members, and the favorable social conditions that generate gangs has been analyzed through a variety of theoretical assumptions and strategies: alienation and conflict with mainstream society (Lopez and O'Donnell
This paper examines the organizational structure and operations of Taiwanese organized crime and youth gangs in Southern California. In-depth interviews were used as the principle method of research. In contrast to transnational criminal conspiracy claims and the La Cosa Nostra model of vertically integrated organizations, our findings suggest that these criminal groups consist of discrete local Taiwanese youth gangs which operate as largely independent economic units that show no substantive and operational ties to criminal organizations in Taiwan. The formation of Taiwanese criminal organizations and gangs in Southern California is primarily governed by the availability of financial opportunities. Furthermore, both the inter-gang relations and intra-gang structures exhibit a distinct form of contractor arrangement which consists of market-like weak ties that are simultaneously circumscribed by the criminal embeddedness. We argue that that these economic weak ties, which seem to render conventionally understood criminal organizational boundaries administratively less meaningful, still function as an operationally significant governance mechanism of the organizational structures of American Taiwanese youth gangs. In addition, the paper discusses the implications that the embeddedness has on the somewhat paradoxical and incoherent organizational structure.
This study investigates the availability of health insurance, access to health care, and health care information dissemination among low-wage Chinese immigrants in Southern California. Pierre Bourdieu's capital analysis is used as the major theoretical strategy to examine health care information dissemination and its relations to access to health care. Our findings reveal a severe shortage in health care coverage among low-wage Chinese immigrants. The lack of coverage is partially explained by the lack of employment with employer-provided health insurance within the Chinese ethnoburb. Results also suggest significant capital deficits among low-wage Chinese immigrants. Despite the possession of social capital, network closure caused by the language barrier negatively affected the flow of health care information from mainstream American society into the low-wage Chinese immigrant community.
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