Louis E Esparza | California State University, Los Angeles (original) (raw)

Papers by Louis E Esparza

Societies Without Borders, 2012

Emails written by activists mobilized by organizations affiliated with the tea party and supporti... more Emails written by activists mobilized by organizations affiliated with the tea party and supporting anti-immigrant legislation illustrate two primary kinds of tea party activists. Most activists articulate economic grievances and employ paralogical argumentation that, for them, resolves real grievances with anti-immigrant state policy. A smaller set stands against illegal immigration, a priori. Surprisingly, we also find that this email mobilization attracted a significant number of counter-protest emails. We conclude that tea party activists have channeled energy originating from legitimate grievances into scapegoating immigrant groups in Arizona in the campaign to support SB 1070. On the tenth anniversary of SSF, we hope the article also illustrates the continued importance of organizations such as Sociologists Without Borders and its scholarly interventions in behalf of human rights objectives in the United States and abroad.

Sociology and Human Rights: A Bill of Rights for the Twenty-First Century

A t the 2004 meetings of the World Social Forum, Arundhati Roy told us that to imagine that a lea... more A t the 2004 meetings of the World Social Forum, Arundhati Roy told us that to imagine that a leader's personal charisma and a c.v. of struggle will dent the corporate cartel is to have no understanding of how capitalism works, or for that matter, how power works. Radical change will not be negotiated by governments; it can only be enforced by people. (Democracy Now! 2004) As long as people do not take steps to ensure economic and social rights, persons of economic and social privilege will have greater influence over how the world is shaped than the rest. Economic rights, such as the rights to be free from economic oppression, to work, to have fair labor standards, and to earn a decent living, are necessary in order for all persons to have an equal chance of personal fulfillment and agency. The rights to food, housing, health, and education serve to reduce inequality and flatten authority structures that are incompatible with the goals that these rights assert.

Societies Without Borders, 2009

Contemporary Justice Review, 2015

Background/Aims: The aim of this study was to evaluate the outcome of endoscopic dilation for ben... more Background/Aims: The aim of this study was to evaluate the outcome of endoscopic dilation for benign anastomotic stricture after radical gastrectomy in gastric cancer patients. Methods: Gastric cancer patients who underwent endoscopic balloon dilation for benign anastomosis stricture after radical gastrectomy during a 6-year period were reviewed retrospectively. Results: Twenty-one patients developed benign strictures at the site of anastomosis. The majority of strictures occurred within 1 year after surgery (95.2%). The median duration to stenosis after surgery was 1.70 months (range, 0.17 to 23.97 months). The success rate of the first endoscopic dilation was 61.9%. Between the restenosis group (n=8) and the no restenosis group (n=13), there were no significant differences in the body mass index (22.82 kg/ m 2 vs 22.46 kg/m 2), interval to symptom onset (73.9 days vs 109.3 days), interval to treatment (84.6 days vs 115.6 days), maximal balloon diameter (14.12 mm vs 15.62 mm), number of balloon dilation sessions (1.75 vs 1.31), location of gastric cancer or type of surgery. One patient required surgery because of stricture refractory to repeated dilation. Conclusions: Endoscopic dilation is a highly effective treatment for benign anastomotic strictures after radical gastrectomy for gastric cancer and should be considered a primary intervention prior to proceeding with surgical revision.

PARTECIPAZIONE E CONFLITTO, 2013

Sometimes, and unexpectedly, people having accepted the authority of others as legitimate stop do... more Sometimes, and unexpectedly, people having accepted the authority of others as legitimate stop doing it and start resist, in the sense they take action on their own behalf. By this way they initiate exhibiting power, denying civil disobedience as mere resistance and lack of political strenght.

Society & Natural Resources, 2012

There have been several cross-national studies published in the world polity theoretical traditio... more There have been several cross-national studies published in the world polity theoretical tradition that demonstrate the beneficial impact of international nongovernmental organizations. However, these studies neglect the role of domestic nongovernmental organizations. We address this gap in the literature by conducting a cross-national study that considers the impact of both international and domestic nongovernmental organizations on deforestation. We use data from a sample of 60 nations for the period of 1990 to 2005. We find substantial support for the world polity theory that higher levels of both types of nongovernmental organizations are associated with lower rates of deforestation. We expand the analysis to test a political opportunity structure hypothesis that democracy enhances the ability of nongovernmental organizations to deal with the causes of forest loss. In doing so, we find that international and domestic nongovernmental organizations tend to decrease forest loss more in democratic rather than in repressive nations.

The Second ISA Forum of Sociology (August 1-4, …, 2012

... Friday, August 3, 2012: 3:15 PM. Faculty of Economics, TBA. Oral Louis ESPARZA , Sociology, C... more ... Friday, August 3, 2012: 3:15 PM. Faculty of Economics, TBA. Oral Louis ESPARZA , Sociology, California State University, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA. ... (Arias and Maldonado 2004) This has led to a rise in popular movements on the non-violent Left in Colombia. ...

Most of the world’s nations have revised their constitutions to protect the human rights of their... more Most of the world’s nations have revised their constitutions to protect the human rights of their citizens. Yet there has been no national discussion in this country to write human rights into our own constitution. Building on Blau’s (2015) call to action, this work explores ways in which sociologists can align the principles of our profession to the advancement of human society and the protection of human rights.

Societies Without Borders, 2009

Global Labour Journal, Jan 31, 2018

Faculty labour in the United States is increasingly "contingent", as tenure-track and tenured pos... more Faculty labour in the United States is increasingly "contingent", as tenure-track and tenured positions are rapidly being replaced by "adjuncts", "lecturers", "instructors" and other faculty who lack traditional protections of academic freedom and job security. In light of this, contingent faculty have been actively organising themselves into unions on many campuses. Unionisation efforts for nontenure-track faculty have often been highly successful, yet significant hurdles remain. Although it is common to refer to all faculty outside the tenure-system faculty as "contingent", 2 this umbrella term masks enormous variation in pay, benefits, working conditions, job security and inclusion in governance. The diverse range of institutional types within the United States (US) higher education system (community colleges, four-year public universities, for-profit colleges, private liberal arts colleges and elite research universities, to name a few), and its unusual degree of decentralisation, add further complexity to our understanding of precarious American academic labour.

Qualitative Sociology, Mar 1, 2010

What does God think about nuns siphoning their blood into plastic baby bottles, then squirting th... more What does God think about nuns siphoning their blood into plastic baby bottles, then squirting the warm result onto a U.S. Patriot missile? What would He say to priests hammering on the door of a pristine F-16 fighter jet with pickaxes purchased from the local hardware store? If you ask one of the subjects interviewed by Sharon Erickson Nepstad they would tell you that they are following the personal example of Jesus Christ, the political subversive who advised us to turn swords into plowshares. These Plowshares activists are collectively part of a faith-based peace movement and individually adopt a progressive interpretation of their Catholic faith. In Religion and War Resistance in the Plowshares Movement, Nepstad takes a close look at this movement and its international counterparts. She surveys slightly over 50 activists and interviews another three dozen to find out why they become involved in this kind of creative high-risk activism, how they endure significant personal costs, and how they keep their spirits up despite the unmet objectives of achieving a peaceful society. Plowshares activists shared their personal documents with Nepstad and made movement archives available for her review. Social movement scholars have been discussing high-risk activism since at least the mideighties. Doug McAdam, for instance, theorized that people who otherwise had a free Qual Sociol (2010) 33:105–109 DOI 10.1007/s11133-009-9143-3

Sociological Forum, Oct 25, 2007

Global Labor Journal, 2018

Societies Without Borders, 2010

A group of developing countries within the World Trade Organization, called the G22, formed in 20... more A group of developing countries within the World Trade Organization, called the G22, formed in 2003 to bring attention to important economic concerns of the Global South. Th is coalition building at the global level is instructive to the literature on social movement coalition building and strategies in a transnational context. Th is article examines coalition building among nation-states within the context of the WTO. Drawing upon existing trading blocs, the G22 are able to leverage attention away from the WTO consensus. Th e declining signifi cance of the global institution is a result of the breaking of this consensus. Th e 2003 World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico saw a wide rift between several developed and developing nations over specifi c economic proposals. One of the most divisive issues between the group of developing nations, which called themselves the Group of 22 (G22), and the developed nations was that of farm subsidies. Both Japan and the US fi scally support their respective agribusinesses but many of the G22 countries oppose this practice. Structural adjustment policies (SAPs) prohibit many developing countries from adopting these sorts of protectionist policies and cannot provide their agribusinesses with a level playing fi eld. Th is article explores how this group of developing nations came to coalesce as a distinct group, the G22, with common goals on at least a few trade issues on which they diff er with some of the more developed nations.