Meme-ing Electoral Participation

In February 2016, the Washington Post characterized the presidential primaries as “the most-memed election in U.S. history.” During the election year, meme-ing related to the major candidates became hugely popular and engaged various groups of people who were not ordinarily involved in bipartisan political processes. As brief, to the point, and quickly modifiable visual-textual messages, Internet memes were a particularly apt way to illustrate the most contested hot-button issues that emerged during the 2016 presidential race. This article considers the phenomenon of meme-ing in relation to both the Republican and Democratic campaigns. In particular, it focuses on memes that called attention to the candidates’ contradictory or incongruous statements critiquing their policy positions. The article demonstrates the ways in which memes spoke to the intersection of electoral activism and cultural representations in several ways: they enabled users to rapidly take a stand on and react to developing political events in real time; they provided alternative parallel discourses to mainstream media viewpoints; and they enabled mobilizing voters outside of official political discourses. During the 2016 campaign, meme-ing served as an example of a politico-cultural discourse that exemplified the unusual election year in ways that conventional political analysis alone was not able to capture

On the ground and off

In the United States, prizefighting carries deep-seated meanings as an ethnically and racially delineated, class-based and gendered practice. At present, the sport is characterized by its ongoing ‘latinization’ corresponding to Latinos’ integration endeavors in urban USA. This article examines boxing as a locus for identity formations. Based on four years of ethnographic fieldwork with a community of Latino prizefighters in Austin, TX between 2000 and 2004, the research draws on life-story interviews conducted with the boxers, while their experiences are situated within a theoretical framework of the body in space and place. The fieldwork brings the research ‘onto the ground’ to the actual sites-such as the boxing gym, the weigh-in and the competition venue-where the athletes conduct their occupation on a daily basis. As professional boxing determines these worker-athletes’ physical prowess, it also shapes their identities, day-to-day survival and their very mode of being in the world

“Lord Save Us from Champions like This”: The Sonny Liston-Muhammad Ali Heavyweight Championship Bouts as Transnational Sporting Culture in 1960s Finland

The two championship bouts between Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali in 1964 and 1965 are among some of the most controversial events in the history of boxing. While their significance has been interpreted in the United States against the backdrop of the Civil Rights era, this article opens up a pathway for discussing transnational meanings and functions that African American heavyweight champions assumed in faraway lands, such as Finland. Contextualized within a Transnational American Studies research paradigm, the article considers the multiple ways in which Finnish media reporting made sense of and imposed significance on transnational sporting culture in the 1960s. The article argues that prizefighting served as a lens through which reporters negotiated Euro-American relations, national identity, and the global spread of professional sports at the expense of amateurism. In addition to providing a site for negotiating ethnic and racial differentiation, the primary sources analyzed show the ways in which prizefighting offered a locus for constructing performative, class-based sporting whiteness

Where Are ‘We’ in Transnational US Latino/a Studies?

The article considers various disciplinary, methodological, theoretical and ethical questions resulting from conducting transnational US Latino/a studies in practice. Drawing from research with a community of Latino prizefighters in Austin, Texas, it delineates academic discourses as spatially determined processes, demarcated by scholars’ institutional settings and individual agency in multiple geographic environments. The discussion suggests that being an ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ is not a rigid condition but necessarily malleable, contingent upon a range of factors that shape up broader knowledge formation processes in and out of academia. In lieu of a nation-based research paradigm, the article calls for contestations of shifting scholarly loci—spatial between-ness—for important strategic purposes. Such mobility may effectively allow adopting viewpoints that are not necessarily available for those who operate within fixed disciplinary, methodological and intra-group boundaries, while providing scholars with innovative new approaches to conduct Latino/a studies research from de facto transnational and interdisciplinary perspectives

Living with the Narcos: The “Drug War” in the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez Border Region

During the years 2008-2012, the El Paso, Texas-Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua border region between the United States and Mexico saw a wave of violence that occurred as a result of the so-called “drug war” between the Juárez and Sinaloa drug cartels. As the criminal organizations began recruiting local gangs for their enforcement strategies, the violence soon spiraled beyond the context of the drug trafficking industry, generating mayhem and social decay throughout Ciudad Juárez. In four years, the death toll in the city amounted to 10,882, with 3,622 bodies in 2010. This article discusses the impact of the violence in the region as experienced by border residents and in relation to policy responses by the U.S. and Mexican governments. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews conducted in January-May 2010 with members of the border community, it focuses on the interviewees’ experiences in 2010. The discussion of violence is contextualized as a global crisis, with ramifications upon urgent issues of citizenship and political and human rights across national boundaries

Meme-ing Electoral Participation

In February 2016, the Washington Post characterized the presidential primaries as “the most-memed election in U.S. history.” During the election year, meme-ing related to the major candidates became hugely popular and engaged various groups of people who were not ordinarily involved in bipartisan political processes. As brief, to the point, and quickly modifiable visual-textual messages, Internet memes were a particularly apt way to illustrate the most contested hot-button issues that emerged during the 2016 presidential race. This article considers the phenomenon of meme-ing in relation to both the Republican and Democratic campaigns. In particular, it focuses on memes that called attention to the candidates’ contradictory or incongruous statements critiquing their policy positions. The article demonstrates the ways in which memes spoke to the intersection of electoral activism and cultural representations in several ways: they enabled users to rapidly take a stand on and react to developing political events in real time; they provided alternative parallel discourses to mainstream media viewpoints; and they enabled mobilizing voters outside of official political discourses. During the 2016 campaign, meme-ing served as an example of a politico-cultural discourse that exemplified the unusual election year in ways that conventional political analysis alone was not able to capture.</p

“On the Ground and Off: The Theoretical Practice of Professional Boxing”

In the United States, prizefighting carries deep-seated meanings as an ethnically and racially delineated, class-based and gendered practice. At present, the sport is characterized by its ongoing ‘latinization’ corresponding to Latinos’ integration endeavors in urban USA. This article examines boxing as a locus for identity formations. Based on four years of ethnographic fieldwork with a community of Latino prizefighters in Austin, TX between 2000 and 2004, the research draws on life-story interviews conducted with the boxers, while their experiences are situated within a theoretical framework of the body in space and place. The fieldwork brings the research ‘onto the ground’ to the actual sites-such as the boxing gym, the weigh-in and the competition venue-where the athletes conduct their occupation on a daily basis. As professional boxing determines these worker-athletes’ physical prowess, it also shapes their identities, day-to-day survival and their very mode of being in the world.</p

“The Latinization of Boxing: A Texas Case-Study”

This article probes into the latinization of boxing through a case-study based in Austin, Texas. With a focus on men and women boxers' everyday experiences, the article discusses the growing popularity of boxing in the Texas state capital within the regional dynamics of the Southwest. It first examines the amateur boxing tradition in East Austin at large; it then looks into the careers of a community of Latino boxers who began boxing there from the 1970s onward; and finally, it discusses the professional boxing boom that started in town in the mid 1990s. Drawing from interviews conducted with the Austinite Latino boxers from 2001 to 2004, my attempt is to show how these particular athletes understand their early influences and possibilities, as shaped by their surrounding socio-economic realities, and how they construct and recreate their personal lives, careers, and identities within the sport’s everyday culture. In so doing, the article demonstrates that boxers’ agency makes it possible to question various established power relations within one’s own everyday spaces. It also enables challenging one’s  geographic boundaries—any ostensibly “assigned” place vis-à-vis an “aspired” place in  society—as it offers access to spaces which would ordinarily be out of the reach of those in societal “margins.” Ultimately, calling attention to these unsung heroes of the pugilistic profession—the large bulk of non-heavyweight, grassroots fighters, who hardly ever become contenders or world champions—connects boxing in the actual places where the sport is organized on an everyday level to academic discourses at large.    the last decade has seen a remarkable boxing boom in town: fight cards have emerged from back-alley clubs to such central sporting venues as the Austin Convention Center or the Frank Erwin Center at the University of Texas, with local shows broadcast on</p