This longitudinal study is based on official Los Angeles Unified School District records, and exa... more This longitudinal study is based on official Los Angeles Unified School District records, and examines the educational trajectories of an entire cohort from sixth grade to high school graduation. It finds that reclassification from English Language Learning to mainstream English classes was associated with a variety of positive outcomes (passing the ninth grade, passing the exit exam, etc).
This article examines how civil religion reworks state/citizen relations among the formerly incar... more This article examines how civil religion reworks state/citizen relations among the formerly incarcerated. Participant observation and interviews were collected at two sites: FORCE (Fighting to Overcome Records and Create Equality), a civic group of formerly incarcerated persons and former gang members, and Community Renewal Society, a larger, interfaith civic group that provided institutional backing for FORCE. Data collection occurred over 18 months, as the two groups utilized faith-based community organizing to advance legislative reform (Illinois House Bill 5723/3061) expanding the sealing of criminal records. Findings suggest that faith-based community organizing, together with formerly incarcerated persons' use of " redemption scripts, " can facilitate empowering social integration. Whereas research on religion in the postincarceration experience has focused on rehabilitation and reentry programming, our findings suggest that civil religion can facilitate empowering social integration. Civil religion enables collective and political action by de-privatizing personal narratives.
Using ethnographic data from Los Angeles, this article examines how two distinctive faith-based p... more Using ethnographic data from Los Angeles, this article examines how two distinctive faith-based programs—Homeboy Industries and Victory Outreach—drew upon masculine bodily displays and practices to facilitate recovery from gang life. First, recovery's body projects negotiated masculine bodily displays from gang member to "family man" or "man of God" by reshaping malleable facets of men's embodiment. Second, leaders protected reformed gang embodiment from the risk of being interpreted as a failed masculinity by emasculating active gang embodiment. Lastly, because some subjects had difficulty overcoming rigid facets of masculine gang embodiment—such as drug addiction—recovery provided bodily practices for reshaping and redirecting rigid facets of embodiment. Whereas emerging research on gang exit has built upon functionalist-oriented life-course and role-exit perspectives of crime desistance, this article suggests that embodied, masculine contests are fundamental to the phenomenological realities of gang recovery. Recovering gang members deepen commitment to exit from gang life not by being passively legitimated as "family men" or "men of God," but by actively using bodily displays and practices to construct new, masculine moral universes.
This longitudinal study is based on official Los Angeles Unified School District records, and exa... more This longitudinal study is based on official Los Angeles Unified School District records, and examines the educational trajectories of an entire cohort from sixth grade to high school graduation. It finds that reclassification from English Language Learning to mainstream English classes was associated with a variety of positive outcomes (passing the ninth grade, passing the exit exam, etc).
This article examines how civil religion reworks state/citizen relations among the formerly incar... more This article examines how civil religion reworks state/citizen relations among the formerly incarcerated. Participant observation and interviews were collected at two sites: FORCE (Fighting to Overcome Records and Create Equality), a civic group of formerly incarcerated persons and former gang members, and Community Renewal Society, a larger, interfaith civic group that provided institutional backing for FORCE. Data collection occurred over 18 months, as the two groups utilized faith-based community organizing to advance legislative reform (Illinois House Bill 5723/3061) expanding the sealing of criminal records. Findings suggest that faith-based community organizing, together with formerly incarcerated persons' use of " redemption scripts, " can facilitate empowering social integration. Whereas research on religion in the postincarceration experience has focused on rehabilitation and reentry programming, our findings suggest that civil religion can facilitate empowering social integration. Civil religion enables collective and political action by de-privatizing personal narratives.
Using ethnographic data from Los Angeles, this article examines how two distinctive faith-based p... more Using ethnographic data from Los Angeles, this article examines how two distinctive faith-based programs—Homeboy Industries and Victory Outreach—drew upon masculine bodily displays and practices to facilitate recovery from gang life. First, recovery's body projects negotiated masculine bodily displays from gang member to "family man" or "man of God" by reshaping malleable facets of men's embodiment. Second, leaders protected reformed gang embodiment from the risk of being interpreted as a failed masculinity by emasculating active gang embodiment. Lastly, because some subjects had difficulty overcoming rigid facets of masculine gang embodiment—such as drug addiction—recovery provided bodily practices for reshaping and redirecting rigid facets of embodiment. Whereas emerging research on gang exit has built upon functionalist-oriented life-course and role-exit perspectives of crime desistance, this article suggests that embodied, masculine contests are fundamental to the phenomenological realities of gang recovery. Recovering gang members deepen commitment to exit from gang life not by being passively legitimated as "family men" or "men of God," but by actively using bodily displays and practices to construct new, masculine moral universes.
Uploads
Papers by Edward Flores
Books by Edward Flores