Editorial Team · Theory Section
Laura Acosta
Laura Acosta is a cultural and political sociologist engaged in theory-building. She combines historical, quantitative, and ethnographic methods to systematically link the micro-social and psychological roots of wartime interactions with the macro-historical causes and consequences of civil war. Her book project, The Enemy That Binds Us Together: Thwarting Peace in The Name of Democracy, proposes a new theory connecting social boundaries and civil war that incorporates the fabrication of imagined enemies and its peace-thwarting effects in the long run. Her recent work has been featured in the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Theory and Society, and Quality & Quantity.
Alex Diamond
Alex Diamond is an ethnographer, photographer, documentary filmmaker, and Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University. His first book, Governing the Excluded: Rural Livelihoods Beyond Coca in Colombia’s Peace Laboratory, describes a landmark peace process from the perspective of farmers hoping to drive a regional transition from violence to peace, guerrilla rule to state authority, and coca to legal agriculture. He is working on a second book project, High Stakes: Cannabis, Crime, Capitalism, and Politics, that tells the stories of those who grow, sell, and advocate for cannabis to describe how cannabis has been mostly legalized in the US and how (legal and illegal) weed economies have reconfigured in response to different policies. Other recent work has appeared in American Journal of Sociology, Social Problems, and Sociological Forum.
Jen Triplett
Jen Triplett is a qualitative, comparative-historical sociologist working in the subfields of political sociology, cultural sociology, and gender. Her current book project, “Articulating Crisis: Revolutionary State Building and Meaning-Making in Revolutionary Cuba,” contributes to a sociological understanding of how governance through categories, group-making, and identity-formation influence political consolidation during times of transition. Her work has appeared in the American Sociological Review and Qualitative Sociology. Jen holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor and a MA in Latin American Studies from Tulane University, New Orleans.