Expertise

Race & Ethnicity, Identity Construction Processes, Identitarian Articulations, Sociology of Music

Biography

My central research topic is the social construction of identities. I try to theoretically and empirically understand how people construct their identifications to understand who they are and what they can do. My theoretical work attempts to decipher the complex relationship between narrative identities, social discourses, settings, objects, technologies, affects, and emotions, working in different assemblages. My empirical work has two distinct geographical locales: Argentina and the U.S.-Mexico border. In the case of Argentina, my work has dealt with the relationship between music and identity. I have studied how different musical genres have helped different kinds of people to construct valued social identities: how tango helped European immigrants to acculturate in xenophobic early twentieth-century Buenos Aires, how folk music did the same with immigrant mestizos from the countryside in the 1950s, how rock nacional was used by young people to resist a dictatorship that killed thousands of youngsters between 1976-1983; and how cumbia villera is used to negotiate gender relations among the more disfranchised inhabitants of Buenos Aires.

On the U.S.-Mexico border, my research deals with how people construct their ethnic, racial, national, regional, gender, class, and religious identifications in a complex environment where two different countries and cultures meet. 

Lately, I've been working on how law and order assemblages highly influence the probability of young African Americans being killed by the police. At a more theoretical level, I've been advancing the concept of "identitarian articulations" to understand how identifications are the product of particular social assemblages. I develop my teaching around these research interests. Therefore, I usually teach courses on identity theory, race and ethnicity, sociology of music, music in Latin America, and qualitative methods, with special emphasis on photo-elicitation, the main method I used in my research on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Curriculum ​Vitae

Selected Publications

• Podría ser yo. Los sectores populares urbanos en imagen y palabra. Second expanded edition with an additional book on the impact of the original book. Co-author: Elizabeth Jelín. Buenos Aires: Asunción Editora/Instituto de Desarrollo Económico y Social. 2018.
• Sound, Image, and National Imaginary in the Construction of Latin/o American Identities. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 2017. Co-editor: Hector Fernandez L’Hoeste. 
• Cantando los afectos militantes. Las emociones y los afectos en dos obras del canto folklórico peronista y marxista de los ’70. Buenos Aires: Academia Nacional del Folklore. 2017. Co-author: Carlos Molinero.
• Music, Dance, Affect and Emotions in Latin America. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 2017.
• Music and Youth Culture in Latin America: Identity Construction Processes from New York to Buenos Aires. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 2014.
• The Militant Song Movement in Latin America: Chile, Uruguay and Argentina. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 2014.
• Cumbia! Scenes of a Migrant Latin American Music. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Co-editor: Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste. 2013.
• Youth Identities and Argentine Popular Music. Beyond Tango. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Co-editor: Pablo Semán. 2012.
• Troubling Gender: Youth and Cumbia in Argentina's Music Scene. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 2011.  Co-author: Pablo Semán.
• Cumbia. Raza, nación, etnia y género en Latinoamérica. Buenos Aires: Editorial Gorla. 2011. Co-editor: Pablo Semán.
• Identidades fronterizas. Narrativas de religión, género y clase en la frontera México-Estados Unidos. Translated by Sandra Lauría, Maria Cecilia Ferraudi Curto and Julia Chindemi. Ciudad Juárez: El Colegio de Chihuahua-Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez. 2007. (Expanded Spanish translation of Border Identifications: Narratives of Religion, Gender, and Class on the U.S. Mexico Border).
• Border Identifications: Narratives of Religion, Gender, and Class on the U.S. Mexico Border. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.
• Identificaciones de región, etnia y nación en la frontera entre México-EU. Translated by Julia Valeria Chindemi. Ciudad Juárez: Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez. Colección Sin Fronteras, 2004. (Expanded Spanish translation of Crossing Borders. Reinforcing Borders).
• Ethnography at the Border. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
• Crossing Borders. Reinforcing Borders. Social Categories, Metaphors and Narrative Identities on the U.S.-Mexico Frontier. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000.
• Podría ser yo. Los sectores populares urbanos en imagen y palabra. Co-author: Elizabeth Jelín. Buenos Aires: CEDES/Ediciones de la Flor, 1987.

Courses Taught

• American Ethnicity
• Chicanos and American Society
• Chicanos in the Southwest
• Sociology of Pluralism in the Southwest
• Popular Culture
• Social Theory
• Classical Sociological Theory
• Contemporary Sociological Theory
• Theories of Identity
• Race and Ethnicity
• Sociology of Affect and Emotions
• Sociology of Music
• Sociology of Music. Nation, race, class and gender in Argentina and Brazil
• Music and Identity
• The Cultural Study of Music: What is Sociological About Music? Understanding Society Through Popular Music
• Doing Sociological Field Work
• Qualitative Methods
• Social Problems.
• Sociological Foundations
• Race and Ethnic Relations