Jennifer Johnson joined Kenyon in 2005 after completing her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. Her research, past and present, explores how and under what conditions ordinary citizens take the law into their own hands or administer justice informally, and what this can tell us about changing understandings of citizenship. As a graduate student and Fulbright scholar, she studied extralegal justice movements in rural southern Mexico, returning to indigenous communities she had become familiar with before graduate school as an international development worker based in Washington, D.C., and Mexico. Portions of her dissertation have been published by Russell Sage Foundation and Routledge presses, and appear in a Spanish-language anthology she co-edited with U.S. and Mexican scholars.
Currently, with support from the University of California-Berkeley’s Center for Right-Wing Studies where she is an affiliated scholar, Jennifer is writing a book about women’s participation in the Minuteman vigilante…
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Jennifer Johnson joined Kenyon in 2005 after completing her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. Her research, past and present, explores how and under what conditions ordinary citizens take the law into their own hands or administer justice informally, and what this can tell us about changing understandings of citizenship. As a graduate student and Fulbright scholar, she studied extralegal justice movements in rural southern Mexico, returning to indigenous communities she had become familiar with before graduate school as an international development worker based in Washington, D.C., and Mexico. Portions of her dissertation have been published by Russell Sage Foundation and Routledge presses, and appear in a Spanish-language anthology she co-edited with U.S. and Mexican scholars.
Currently, with support from the University of California-Berkeley’s Center for Right-Wing Studies where she is an affiliated scholar, Jennifer is writing a book about women’s participation in the Minuteman vigilante movement at the U.S.-Mexico border (forthcoming, University of Texas Press). Trained as an urban ethnographer in the Chicago School tradition, she has also begun fieldwork in Mexico City through a GLCA- funded research collaboration. This research, examining how residents in diverse neighborhoods respond to insecurity, was published in "Mapping the Megalopolis: Order & Disorder in Mexico City" (2018, Lexington Press).
At Kenyon, Jennifer teaches and mentors in the International Studies, Latino/a Studies and Law & Society programs. She takes students to the U.S.- Mexico border as part of her "Borders & Border Crossings" course and is passionate about experiential teaching and learning opportunities of all kinds, especially those that engage students globally. She lives in Gambier with her family and is an avid fan of the Lord’s soccer team (reliving her days as a soccer mom) and local foods.
Education
2005 — Doctor of Philosophy from University of Chicago
1996 — Master of Arts from University of Chicago
1988 — Bachelor of Science from Georgetown University
Courses Recently Taught
INST 201
The Expansion of International Society
INST 201
This course is designed for sophomores who plan to major in international studies. It explores the evolution of modern international society by examining the roles of industrialization, capitalism, nationalism, individualism and other elements of modernity in propelling and directing the flow of wealth, people and ideas between different regions of the world. In addition to studying general political and economic changes, the course considers various local and personal perspectives, giving life to otherwise abstract forces and complicating attempts to construct a single overarching narrative of "modernization," "Westernization" or "development." Among the issues to be examined are the causes and effects of international economic disparities, migration, cultural tensions, and stresses on the environment. In surveying major viewpoints and illustrative cases within these themes, the course is meant to serve as an introduction to the international studies major, utilizing a variety of academic disciplines and providing a foundation for further study of relations between different nations and peoples of the world. As part of the course, students will complete a research paper related to the geographic area where they plan to go for their off-campus experience. This interdisciplinary course does not count toward the completion of any diversification requirement. Prerequisite: sophomore standing or permission of instructor. Offered every year.
INST 401
Senior Seminar: Contemporary Global Issues
INST 401
This seminar will examine some of the problems inherent in cross-cultural comparison and will explore the ways in which a variety of disciplines grapple with these difficulties by investigating contemporary themes in international affairs. These themes will include some or all of the following: (1) ethnic conflict; (2) comparative perspectives on development; (3) religion and socioeconomic development; (4) contemporary environmental problems; (5) the ethics of armed intervention; (6) the emergence of a world popular culture and its consequences for national cultures; (7) the challenges of democratization and (8) perceptions of the United States, Americans and U.S. foreign policy abroad. Open only to international studies majors with senior standing. This interdisciplinary course does not count toward the completion of any diversification requirement. Offered every year.
SOCY 105
Society in Comparative Perspective
SOCY 105
From our vantage point in the 21st century, we perceive that the nature and fate of American society is increasingly connected to the nature and fate of society in other parts of the world. But what is "society" and how does it change over time? How, exactly, does society shape the human experience and human behavior in the United States and elsewhere? And how can we understand the ties that bind society "here" to society "there"? Sociology crystallized in the 19th century to address big questions like these in light of the profound uncertainty and human suffering that accompanied the rise of industrial capitalism, rapid urbanization and the consolidation of the centralized bureaucratic state. This course introduces students to the discipline by revisiting the work of early sociologists, then using the analytical lenses they developed to examine concrete cases of social change and globalization. Students may take only one introductory-level course. This counts toward the foundation requirement for the major. Offered every year.
SOCY 226
Sociology of Law
SOCY 226
This course examines the social conditions that give rise to law, how changing social conditions affect law and how law affects the society we live in. In the first few weeks, we focus on how classical social theorists, the so-called founders of sociology, viewed the law and its relationship to the rapid social change unfolding before their eyes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the following weeks, we explore how social actors such as the environmental, civil rights and free speech movements attempt to use the law, litigation and legal institutions as instruments of social change. Turning this question around, we then look at how legal processes, actors and institutions -- criminal trials, lawyers and the courts, to name a few -- interact with the media to shape public opinion, protest and collective action. We will explore the diverse ways individuals experience and interpret the law, and why this matters for understanding how law operates in the real world. In the final weeks of the semester, we probe how broader cultural shifts in American society are radically redefining the role and scope of our legal system. This counts toward the institutions and change requirement for the major. Prerequisite: 100-level sociology course. Offered every other year.
SOCY 233
Sociology of Food
SOCY 233
This course explores the social world(s) we live in by analyzing what we eat, where it comes from, who produces it and who prepares it and how. Firstly, we examine the patterned culinary choices of Americans; how American foodways are differentiated by gender, race/ethnicity and class; and how political, social and historical forces have shaped these patterns in ways that are not necessarily obvious to the sociologically untrained eye. We then shift our focus away from ourselves and our own sociologically conditioned eating habits to analyze the local, regional and global processes and factors that bring food to our table. A major theme is the greater social and spatial distances our food travels from field, farm or factory to consumers in the United States and in other parts of the western hemisphere, and how these distances complicate and sometimes obscure the unequal power relations at the root of food production and consumption. Our exploration of the global ties that bind consumer and producer ends with a look at how social activists around the world have organized collectively to reduce these distances and inequalities. This counts toward the culture and identity or institutions and change requirement for the major. Prerequisite: 100-level sociology course or permission of instructor. Offered every other year.
SOCY 235
Transnational Social Movements
SOCY 235
Especially since the civil rights student and antiwar movements of the 1950s and 1960s in the United States, sociologists have studied how individuals mobilize collectively and self-consciously to promote social change at a national level. Building on this tradition, this mid-level course examines a recent wave of protest movements that self-consciously organize across national borders. Under what circumstances and with what chances of success do national movements form alliances that cross borders? Is it true that globalization has generated new resources and strategic opportunities for the rise of transnational movements? In an age of accelerated globalization, do national borders still contain movements in any significant way? We will address these questions and others using case studies of contemporary environmental, anti-sweatshop, indigenous rights and religious movements. This counts toward the institutions and change requirement for the major. Prerequisite: 100-level sociology course. Offered every other year.
SOCY 237
Borders and Border Crossings
SOCY 237
Popular conceptions of globalization often allude to the growing magnitude of global flows and the stunning rapidity with which capital, commodities, culture, information and people now cross national borders. From this characterization, one might conclude that national borders and indeed nation-states themselves are becoming increasingly porous and irrelevant as sources or sites of social regulation and control. This course examines the material reality of border regions and movement across them as a means of interrogating these assumptions and exposing how globalization rescales and reconfigures power differentials in human society but does not eliminate them. It scrutinizes technological, economic, political and ideological forces that facilitate border crossings for some groups of people under particular circumstances, then explores the seemingly contradictory tendency toward border fortification. Topics include: regional trade integration and political economy of border regions; the global sex trade and illegal trafficking of economic migrants; global civil society and sanctuary movements; paramilitary and vigilante border patrols; and the technology of surveillance. This course includes a required off-campus experiential component at the U.S.-Mexico border that takes place during the first week of spring break. This counts toward the institutions and change requirement for the major. Prerequisite: 100-level sociology course or permission of instructor. Offered every other year.
SOCY 373
Qualitative Research Methods
SOCY 373
This course focuses on learning to use qualitative methods to answer questions about social life. We will discuss individual and group interviews, observational techniques and content analysis of documents and visual images. Students will practice using these techniques by carrying out a semester-long research project using these methods. We also will discuss the "nuts and bolts" of designing a research project, writing research proposals, collecting data, analyzing data and writing up qualitative research. Finally, we will contextualize this practical instruction with discussions of research ethics, issues of reliability and validity in qualitative research, the relationship between qualitative methods and theory-building and the place of qualitative methods in the discipline of sociology. This counts toward the methods requirement for the major. Prerequisite: sophomore standing and SOCY 271 or LGLS 371 or permission of instructor. Offered every two years.
SOCY 432
Global Cities
SOCY 432
Since the origins of the discipline in the mid-19th century, sociologists have been fascinated with cities, viewing them as icons of modernity and laboratories for studying the forms of human association they believed to be the hallmarks of this new age. Building on this rich but Western-centric history of urban studies, this course examines the urban form and experience today from the perspective of a more geographically and culturally diverse set of cities ranging from Mexico City to Mumbai, from Chicago to São Paulo. Drawing on concrete case studies from these cities and others, we will ask what we can learn about the global processes that characterize contemporary human society at large by studying so-called "global cities," and Third World cities. We will pay particular attention to the relationship between globalization and the spatial organization of cities, exploring, for example, how social actors and states in specific places claim, reclaim, purpose, repurpose, surveil, contest and govern public space as part of broader neoliberal social transformation. Students in this course will take an active role leading seminar discussion and, by the end of the semester, produce and present original research on a global city of their choosing. This counts toward the institutions and change area requirement for the major. Prerequisite: junior standing or permission of instructor. Offered every other year.
SOCY 493
Individual Study
SOCY 493
Individual study is an exception, not a routine option, with details to be negotiated between the student(s) and the faculty member and the department chair. The course may involve investigation of a topic engaging the interest of both student and professor. In some cases, a faculty member may agree to oversee an individual study as a way of exploring the development of a regular curricular offering. In others, the faculty member may guide one or two advanced students through a focused topic drawing on his or her expertise, with the course culminating in a substantial paper. The individual study should involve regular meetings at which the student and professor discuss assigned material. The professor has final authority over the material to be covered and the pace of work. The student is expected to devote time to the individual study equivalent to that for a regular course. Individual studies will be awarded 0.5 units of credit. Because students must enroll for individual studies by the end of the seventh class day of each semester, they should begin discussion of the proposed individual study preferably the semester before, so that there is time to devise the proposal and seek departmental approval before the registrar’s deadline.
SOCY 497
Senior Honors
SOCY 497
This course is for students pursuing departmental honors. Permission of instructor and department chair required. Prerequisite: senior standing and sociology major.
SOCY 498
Senior Honors
SOCY 498
This course is for students pursuing departmental honors. Permission of instructor and department chair required.
Academic & Scholarly Achievements
Under Contract
Grandmothers on Guard: Making & Remaking Nation at the U.S.-Mexico Border. Austin: University of Texas Press.
2015
"'Border Granny Wants You!': Grandmothers Policing Nation at the U.S.-Mexico Border." Pp. 35-59 in Border Politics: Social Movements, Collective Identities and Globalization edited by Nancy A. Naples and Jennifer Bickham Mendez, New York: New York University Press.
2012
"Peasant Movements." Pp 1651-54 in The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization Vol. IV edited by George Ritzer, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
2011
“Mobilizing Minutewomen: Gender, Cyberpower and the New Nativist Movement.” Pp. 137-61 in Critical Aspects of Gender in Conflict Resolution, Peacebuilding, and Social Movements, edited by Anna Snyder and Stephanie Stobbe, Bingley, UK: Emerald Books.
2007
2007. "When the Poor Police Themselves: Public Insecurity and Extra-Legal Criminal Justice Administration in Mexico." Pp. 165-187 in Legitimacy and Criminal Justice Administration in Comparative Perspective, edited by Anthony Braga et. al. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
2007
2007. "Deregulating Markets, Reregulating Crime: Extralegal Policing and the Penal State in Mexico." Pp. 263-80 in Deciphering the Global edited by Saskia Sassen, London & New York: Routledge.
2002
2002. "What's Globalization Got To Do With It?: Political Action and Peasant Producers in Guerrero, Mexico." Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies26 (52): 267-83.
2017
“Securing the City in La Polvorilla: The Spatial Logic of Self-Sufficiency.” Pp. 147-70 in Mapping the Megalopolis: Order and Disorder in Mexico City, Glen David Kuecker and Alejandro Puga, eds. Lanham, MD: Lexington Press. Co-authored with Shannan Mattiace.