Jennifer Carlson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3743045 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jennifer Carlson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jennifer |
| FAMILY NAME | Carlson |
| SIGNATURE | CARLSON J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Arizona |
| ORCID | 0009-0003-6668-8565 |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 95 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Politics at the Gun Counter
How does gender shape how conservatives 'do partisanship'? This paper draws on interviews with a group of conservative Americans-gun sellers-during a year of record gun sales amid a global pandemic, civil unrest, and democratic instability. In 2020, gun sellers navigated an increasingly diverse clientele, including what they understood as an increase in liberal, progressive, and leftist gun buyers. This unique influx bucked decades-long trends of…
Merchants of the Right
Military veterans’ motivation and barriers to outdoor recreation participation
Outdoor activity benefits veterans’ sense of well-being, coping skills and affective experience while improving physical and mental health. Understanding military veterans’ motivation for and barriers to outdoor recreation allows healthcare providers to design interventions that help veterans achieve their healthcare objectives through outdoor activity, which may enhance treatment engagement and clinical outcomes. Veterans were surveyed about the…
Merchants of the Right
“I’m Not a Conspiracy Theorist, But…”
How does conspiracist thinking become appealing to its adherents, and with what political consequences? Drawing on fifty in-depth interviews with gun sellers from April 2020 to August 2020, this paper examines conspiracist thinking among US conservatives. We present a sociological account that follows historian Richard Hofstadter’s early account in theorizing conspiracist thinking as a “style” of politics on the Right. Turning to the sociology of…
Whiteness and Impunity
How do people who consider themselves law abiding mobilize against 'offensive' laws? Stated differently, how do people assert impunity? Although sociologists robustly document the unequal administration of American law, most focus on the production and legitimation of racial disparities through punishment rather thanimpunity. We use theories of Whiteness to analyze Virginia's Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions, illuminating how impunity is re…
Policing the Second Amendment
Police Warriors and Police Guardians
This paper draws on 79 in-depth interviews with police chiefs in Arizona, California, and Michigan to advance sociological understandings of race, masculinity, and policing. While the bulk of scholarship on public law enforcement focuses on urban settings, this paper juxtaposes police's perceptions of urban, suburban, and rural gun violence. It details how police chiefs construct criminal gun violence according to two overarching tropes: (1) gang…
Revisiting the Weberian Presumption
Focusing on police chiefs in three states, this study revisits the Weberian presumption of the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence. Seventy-nine interviews with police chiefs in Arizona, Michigan, and California allow for an examination of their understanding of gun policy. Analysis reveals that they selectively embrace two frames of the state’s relationship with legitimate violence: gun militarism for criminal gun activity associated with bl…
From Play to Peril
Objectives To examine how firearms‐related incidents are defined as social problems versus personal tragedies. This is achieved by examining a case of gun violence where the actors immediately involved are apparently blameless: child‐involved accidental firearms deaths and injuries. Specifically, we examine changing narratives of these incidents from the mid‐19th century to the present. Methods A database of 314 New York Times articles on child‐i…
The Hidden Arm of the Law
Responding to calls to "decenter" American penality beyond the carceral apparatus, this article ethnographically examines administrative process and dissects how it interlocks with criminal justice. To do so, it draws on an admittedly unusual, but theoretically generative, case: administrative gun boards, charged with issuing, denying, revoking, and suspending licenses to conceal carry a firearm. While scholars have examined gun ownership and gun…
Moral Panic, Moral Breach
This article examines local news coverage of two landmark self-defense shooting cases—the 1984 Bernhard Goetz case and the 2012 George Zimmerman case—to interrogate the racialized construction of crime and, specifically, extend moral panic theory to the contemporary context of racial colorblindness. Analyzing 542 local news stories, I find the Goetz case was framed as a moral panic, while Zimmerman coverage exhibited a moral breach. Unpacking wha…
Citizen-Protectors
"From gang- and drug-related shootings to mass shootings in schools, shopping centers, and movie theatres, reports of gun crimes fill the headlines of newspapers and nightly news programs. At the same time, a different kind of headline has captured public attention: a steady surge in pro-gun sentiment among Americans. A Gallup poll conducted just a month after the Newtown school shootings found that 74% of Americans oppose a ban on hand-guns, and…
Mourning Mayberry
This study uses in-depth interviews and participant observation with gun carriers in Michigan to examine how socioeconomic decline shapes the appropriation of guns by men of diverse class and race backgrounds. Gun carriers nostalgically referenced the decline of Mayberry America-a version of America characterized by the stable employment of male breadwinners and low crime rates. While men of color and poor and working-class men bear the material …
Subjects of stalled revolution
This article suggests that looking at the ways in which subjects relate to and internalise gender norms is a fruitful way to explore socially constructed differences between masculinity and femininity in the U.S. Throughout this article, I am in dialogue with Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity as I focus on practices of subject formation that I denote as 'logics' of subject formation. I propose several key ways to distinguish a femin…
Mourning Mayberry
This study uses in-depth interviews and participant observation with gun carriers in Michigan to examine how socioeconomic decline shapes the appropriation of guns by men of diverse class and race backgrounds. Gun carriers nostalgically referenced the decline of Mayberry America-a version of America characterized by the stable employment of male breadwinners and low crime rates. While men of color and poor and working-class men bear the material …
Moral Panic, Moral Breach
This article examines local news coverage of two landmark self-defense shooting cases—the 1984 Bernhard Goetz case and the 2012 George Zimmerman case—to interrogate the racialized construction of crime and, specifically, extend moral panic theory to the contemporary context of racial colorblindness. Analyzing 542 local news stories, I find the Goetz case was framed as a moral panic, while Zimmerman coverage exhibited a moral breach. Unpacking wha…
Revisiting the Weberian Presumption
Focusing on police chiefs in three states, this study revisits the Weberian presumption of the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence. Seventy-nine interviews with police chiefs in Arizona, Michigan, and California allow for an examination of their understanding of gun policy. Analysis reveals that they selectively embrace two frames of the state’s relationship with legitimate violence: gun militarism for criminal gun activity associated with bl…
Subjects of stalled revolution
This article suggests that looking at the ways in which subjects relate to and internalise gender norms is a fruitful way to explore socially constructed differences between masculinity and femininity in the U.S. Throughout this article, I am in dialogue with Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity as I focus on practices of subject formation that I denote as 'logics' of subject formation. I propose several key ways to distinguish a femin…
The Hidden Arm of the Law
Responding to calls to "decenter" American penality beyond the carceral apparatus, this article ethnographically examines administrative process and dissects how it interlocks with criminal justice. To do so, it draws on an admittedly unusual, but theoretically generative, case: administrative gun boards, charged with issuing, denying, revoking, and suspending licenses to conceal carry a firearm. While scholars have examined gun ownership and gun…
Police Warriors and Police Guardians
This paper draws on 79 in-depth interviews with police chiefs in Arizona, California, and Michigan to advance sociological understandings of race, masculinity, and policing. While the bulk of scholarship on public law enforcement focuses on urban settings, this paper juxtaposes police's perceptions of urban, suburban, and rural gun violence. It details how police chiefs construct criminal gun violence according to two overarching tropes: (1) gang…
Whiteness and Impunity
How do people who consider themselves law abiding mobilize against 'offensive' laws? Stated differently, how do people assert impunity? Although sociologists robustly document the unequal administration of American law, most focus on the production and legitimation of racial disparities through punishment rather thanimpunity. We use theories of Whiteness to analyze Virginia's Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions, illuminating how impunity is re…
Politics at the Gun Counter
How does gender shape how conservatives 'do partisanship'? This paper draws on interviews with a group of conservative Americans-gun sellers-during a year of record gun sales amid a global pandemic, civil unrest, and democratic instability. In 2020, gun sellers navigated an increasingly diverse clientele, including what they understood as an increase in liberal, progressive, and leftist gun buyers. This unique influx bucked decades-long trends of…
Subjects of stalled revolution
This article suggests that looking at the ways in which subjects relate to and internalise gender norms is a fruitful way to explore socially constructed differences between masculinity and femininity in the U.S. Throughout this article, I am in dialogue with Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity as I focus on practices of subject formation that I denote as 'logics' of subject formation. I propose several key ways to distinguish a femin…
Citizen-Protectors
"From gang- and drug-related shootings to mass shootings in schools, shopping centers, and movie theatres, reports of gun crimes fill the headlines of newspapers and nightly news programs. At the same time, a different kind of headline has captured public attention: a steady surge in pro-gun sentiment among Americans. A Gallup poll conducted just a month after the Newtown school shootings found that 74% of Americans oppose a ban on hand-guns, and…
Mourning Mayberry
This study uses in-depth interviews and participant observation with gun carriers in Michigan to examine how socioeconomic decline shapes the appropriation of guns by men of diverse class and race backgrounds. Gun carriers nostalgically referenced the decline of Mayberry America-a version of America characterized by the stable employment of male breadwinners and low crime rates. While men of color and poor and working-class men bear the material …
Moral Panic, Moral Breach
This article examines local news coverage of two landmark self-defense shooting cases—the 1984 Bernhard Goetz case and the 2012 George Zimmerman case—to interrogate the racialized construction of crime and, specifically, extend moral panic theory to the contemporary context of racial colorblindness. Analyzing 542 local news stories, I find the Goetz case was framed as a moral panic, while Zimmerman coverage exhibited a moral breach. Unpacking wha…
From Play to Peril
Objectives To examine how firearms‐related incidents are defined as social problems versus personal tragedies. This is achieved by examining a case of gun violence where the actors immediately involved are apparently blameless: child‐involved accidental firearms deaths and injuries. Specifically, we examine changing narratives of these incidents from the mid‐19th century to the present. Methods A database of 314 New York Times articles on child‐i…
The Hidden Arm of the Law
Responding to calls to "decenter" American penality beyond the carceral apparatus, this article ethnographically examines administrative process and dissects how it interlocks with criminal justice. To do so, it draws on an admittedly unusual, but theoretically generative, case: administrative gun boards, charged with issuing, denying, revoking, and suspending licenses to conceal carry a firearm. While scholars have examined gun ownership and gun…
Police Warriors and Police Guardians
This paper draws on 79 in-depth interviews with police chiefs in Arizona, California, and Michigan to advance sociological understandings of race, masculinity, and policing. While the bulk of scholarship on public law enforcement focuses on urban settings, this paper juxtaposes police's perceptions of urban, suburban, and rural gun violence. It details how police chiefs construct criminal gun violence according to two overarching tropes: (1) gang…
Revisiting the Weberian Presumption
Focusing on police chiefs in three states, this study revisits the Weberian presumption of the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence. Seventy-nine interviews with police chiefs in Arizona, Michigan, and California allow for an examination of their understanding of gun policy. Analysis reveals that they selectively embrace two frames of the state’s relationship with legitimate violence: gun militarism for criminal gun activity associated with bl…
Policing the Second Amendment
“I’m Not a Conspiracy Theorist, But…”
How does conspiracist thinking become appealing to its adherents, and with what political consequences? Drawing on fifty in-depth interviews with gun sellers from April 2020 to August 2020, this paper examines conspiracist thinking among US conservatives. We present a sociological account that follows historian Richard Hofstadter’s early account in theorizing conspiracist thinking as a “style” of politics on the Right. Turning to the sociology of…
Whiteness and Impunity
How do people who consider themselves law abiding mobilize against 'offensive' laws? Stated differently, how do people assert impunity? Although sociologists robustly document the unequal administration of American law, most focus on the production and legitimation of racial disparities through punishment rather thanimpunity. We use theories of Whiteness to analyze Virginia's Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions, illuminating how impunity is re…
Merchants of the Right
Military veterans’ motivation and barriers to outdoor recreation participation
Outdoor activity benefits veterans’ sense of well-being, coping skills and affective experience while improving physical and mental health. Understanding military veterans’ motivation for and barriers to outdoor recreation allows healthcare providers to design interventions that help veterans achieve their healthcare objectives through outdoor activity, which may enhance treatment engagement and clinical outcomes. Veterans were surveyed about the…
Merchants of the Right
Politics at the Gun Counter
How does gender shape how conservatives 'do partisanship'? This paper draws on interviews with a group of conservative Americans-gun sellers-during a year of record gun sales amid a global pandemic, civil unrest, and democratic instability. In 2020, gun sellers navigated an increasingly diverse clientele, including what they understood as an increase in liberal, progressive, and leftist gun buyers. This unique influx bucked decades-long trends of…
Political science (12 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Criminology (8 works) · Gun Ownership and Violence Research (7 works) · Politics (6 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (4 works) · Gender Studies (4 works) · History (4 works)