REBECCA HANSON Assistant Professor of Sociology, Criminology, and Latin American Studies
Welcome to my site! I am an assistant professor at the University of Florida and founder and director of UF's International Ethnography Lab. I am interested in politics, policing, and violence in Latin America and qualitative research. My most recent book, Policing the Revolution: The Transformation of Coercive Power and Venezuela's Security Landscape During Chavismo, is now available to pre-order!
Below are a few of my most recent publications
Click on the publications tab to jump to my books, articles, and contributions to public sociology
For a complete list, see my CV.
BOOKS
"Hanson provides one of the most insightful books that has been written on the Chavista period....All Venezuela scholars need to engage this text." -- David Smilde, Favrot Professor of Human Relations, Tulane University
"Policing the Revolution is a remarkable book offering an extraordinarily comprehensive account of the evolution of Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution and Chavismo through the lens of policing and coercion, offering one of the few (and certainly the most robust) analysis to date on the left's approaches to security. The book's deep ethnographic approach masterfully pairs a focus on street-level officers with the vantage point of ordinary barrio residents to analyze how the revolution is experienced 'from below'..." -- Yanilda González, Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School
"Hanson's detailed and incisive ethnography of Venezuelan police provides critical insights into politics in that country and its police forces..." -- Desmond Arias, Marxe Chair in Western Hemisphere Affairs, Baruch College-CUNY
You can watch a video of my book talk at University of Michigan here and another with the folks at University of Pittsburgh's Charlemos series here.
The Paradox of Violence in Venezuela: Revolution, Crime, and Policing During Chavismo, 2022
"This collection of brilliant studies written by frontline scholars provides responses to this riddle from various perspectives and methods, and subtly unfolds the many ways criminal violence explodes...This is a seminal work for social studies that transcends Venezuela..."—Marcelo Bergman, National University of Tres de Febrero
"Besides enriching our understanding of the relationship among organized criminal groups, the Venezuelan state, and armed violence, this timely volume promises critical comparative leverage for understanding these relationships throughout the region...This is both an impeccable country case study and a thoughtfully framed set of interventions designed to advance larger cross-regional and disciplinary research agendas..."—Benjamin Lessing, University of Chicago
Check out our book talk at WOLA here!
Harassed: Gender, Bodies and Research, University of California Press, 2019
"A groundbreaking contribution and a long overdue publication about the deafening sexual silence surrounding the fieldwork experiences of many women scholars conducting qualitative research in sociology..."—Gloria Gonzalez-Lopez, The University of Texas at Austin
"Identifying how academic standards themselves—and ethnographic standards specifically—make sociologists vulnerable to gender and sexualized violence is an important and timely contribution to the field. The book...should be required reading for any class on ethnography or in-depth interviewing, for any researcher conducting ethnography or interviews, and for any faculty member who is advising students conducting such work. Armed with this book, researchers will not only be better able to protect themselves but they will also gain a model for how to learn and teach from their own embodied experiences in the field."—Abigail C. Saguy, University of California, Los Angeles
Check out the New Books Network Podcast episode on Harassed here and our book talk at University of Florida!
Peer reviewed
journal articles
Rebecca Hanson and Dorothy Kronick. Forthcoming. Official vigilantism. World Development (part of a special issue on institutional reform)
Rebecca Hanson, Dorothy Kronick, and Tara Slough. 2025. Preaching to the choir: A problem of participatory interventions. The Journal of Politics. https://doi.org/10.1086/732983
Verónica Zubillaga and Rebecca Hanson. 2024. “Shoutings, scoldings, gossip and whispers: Mothers’ responses to armed actors and militarization in two Caracas barrios”. Latin American Research Review 59(1): 1-18
Verónica Zubillaga, Rebecca Hanson, and Francisco Sánchez. 2022. “Gobernanzas criminales en Caracas”. Dilemas: Revista de Estudos de Conflito e Controle Social 4: 529-558. Special issue “Governança Criminal na América Latina em Perspectiva comparada”, edited by Luana Dias Motta and Benjamin Lessing.
Graeme Blair, Fotini Christia, Jeremy Weinstein, Rebecca Hanson, et al. 2021. “Community policing does not build citizen trust in police or reduce crime in the Global South”. Science 374: 1-14
Rebecca Hanson and Verónica Zubillaga. 2021. “From carceral punitivism to systematic killing: The necropolitics of policing in post-Chávez Venezuela”. Violence: An International Journal 2(1): 65-84
Rebecca Hanson and Patricia Richards. 2021. “Acoso sexual en el campo: Género, raza, nación y la construcción del conocimiento etnográfico”. Polis, Revista Latinoamericana Vol 59. http://journals.openedition.org/polis/20369 Special issue “Re-imaginando diversidad en la academia, en tiempos de activismo feminista y pandemia”, edited by Jael Goldsmith Weil and Kelly Bauer
Verónica Zubillaga and Rebecca Hanson. 2018. “Del punitivismo carcelario a la matanza sistemática: El avance de los operativos militarizados en la era post-Chávez”. REVISTA M. Estudos sobre a Morte, os Mortos e o Morrer 3(5): 32-52
Rebecca Hanson. 2018. “Deepening distrust: Why participatory experiments aren’t always good for democracy”. The Sociological Quarterly 59(1): 145-167
Rebecca Hanson and Pablo Lapegna. 2018. “Popular participation and governance in Kirchner’s Argentina and Chavez’s Venezuela: Recognition, incorporation, and supportive mobilisation”. Journal of Latin American Studies 50(1): 153-182
Rebecca Hanson and Patricia Richards. 2017. “Sexual harassment and the construction of ethnographic knowledge”. Sociological Forum 32(3): 587-609
Andrés Antillano, Iván Pojomovsky, Verónica Zubillaga, Chelina Sepúlveda, and Rebecca Hanson. 2015. “The Venezuelan prison: From neoliberalism to the Bolivarian Revolution”. Crime, Law, and Social Change 65(3): 195-211
Peer reviewed book chapters
Do police-community meetings work? Experimental evidence from Medellín. with Eric Arias, Dorothy Kronick, and Tara Slough.
Crime, insecurity, and community policing: Experiments on building trust, 2024
Introduction: The paradox of violence in Venezuela, with David Smilde and Verónica Zubillaga
The Paradox of Violence in Venezuela: Revolution, Crime, and Policing During Chavismo, 2022
Dilemmas of reform: Crime, policing, and public opinion in Venezuela, with David Smilde
The Paradox of Violence in Venezuela: Revolution, Crime, and Policing During Chavismo, 2022
The pressure to bring in a body: How systematic killing transformed police raids and gangs in Post-Chávez Venezuela, with Leonard Gómez
The Paradox of Violence in Venezuela: Revolution, Crime, and Policing During Chavismo, 2022
Explaining violence in times of revolution: Final reflections and emerging agendas for research, with David Smilde and Verónica Zubillaga
The Paradox of Violence in Venezuela: Revolution, Crime, and Policing During Chavismo, 2022
Non-peer reviewed articles and book chapters
La traición de las promesas de la revolución bolivariana y la represión a oscuras en los barrios populares, with Verónica Zubillaga, 2024
LASA Forum 55(3): 63-67,
The expansion of police violence and impunity in Venezuela, 2024
LASA Forum 55(2): 4-39, 2024
Shifting dynamics of violence: The revolution’s most powerful legacy? with Verónica Zubillaga, 2022
NACLA 54(1): 96-100
Towards an embodied analysis of the academic field, with Patricia Richards, 2022
Introduction to our special issue “Gender, violence and the production of knowledge”
The Journal of Men’s Studies 30(2): 321-330
Gangs in the post-Chávez Bolivarian Revolution: How mano dura policies and political pacts have organized crime in Venezuela, with Verónica Zubillaga and Andrés Antillano, 2021
Routledge International Handbook of Critical Gang Studies
What does sexual harassment tell us about the construction of ethnographic knowledge, with Patricia Richards, 2020
ASA Footnotes 47(5):4-6
La etnografía corporizada en tiempos de pandemia: ¿A dónde vamos desde aquí? with Patricia Richards, 2020.
LASA Forum 52(1): 24-28
Research in Urban Sociology, 2019
Harassment and violence in qualitative research and why we ignore it, with Patricia Richards, 2019.
ASA Newsletter for the Crime, Law, and Deviance Fall/Winter: 4-6
Ethnographies of security: Pushing security studies beyond the bounds of international relations, 2018
Introduction to my special issue “Ethnographies of security”
Qualitative Sociology 41(2): 135-144
Editors’ note: Studying gender and sexuality with qualitative methods, with David Smilde, 2018
Qualitative Sociology 41(3): 333-335
Policing the protests in Post-Chávez Venezuela: How human rights legitimize coercion, 2015
Society for Cultural Anthropology, February 5
Recent public sociology
This is not the way to curb migration, with David Smilde and Verónica Zubillaga. Op-ed in The New York Times, April 4, 2025. Republished in Spanish.
FBI and DHS question using tattoos to accurately ID Venezuelan criminal gang. Quoted in USA Today, article by Will
Carless and Rick Jervis, March 28, 2025
Trump sent Venezuelans to this Salvadoran prison. Kristi Noem visited them. Quoted in USA Today, article by Eduardo Cuevas, March 26, 2025
How Eric Adams and the NYPD Helped Create the Xenophobic Tren de Aragua Panic. Quoted in Hell Gate, article by Max Rivlin-Nader, March 25
What is Tren de Aragua? How the Venezuelan gang started − and why US policies may only make it stronger, with Verónica Zubillaga. The Conversation, March 3, 2025
The murder rate in Venezuela has fallen − but both Trump and Maduro are wrong about why. The Conversation, February 24, 2025
What next for Venezuela? Maduro critics fear widening crackdown. Quoted in Buenos Aires Times, article by Esteban Rojas & Mariette Le Roux, January 13, 2025
Para ser investido primero tendría que sacar del juego a Maduro y a Diosdado Cabello. Interview in Artículo14, article by Esther Sanz Sieteiglesias, January 11, 2025
What Does González’s Exile Mean for Venezuela? Latin American Advisor, September 13, 2024
¿A quién beneficia el exilio de Edmundo González en España? Interview in Artículo14, article by Esther Sanz Sieteiglesias, September 11, 2024
Joe Biden lifted sanctions on Venezuela. Is he to blame for the country’s disputed elections? Quoted in POLITIFACT, article by Marta Campabadal Graus and Maria Ramirez Uribe, August 2, 2024
Massive protests erupt again over disputed Venezuelan elections – but they look different this time, with Verónica Zubillaga. The Conversation, July 31, 2024
Venezuela, ¿y ahora qué? Las opciones de Machado ante el fraude de Maduro. Interview in Artículo14, article by Esther Sanz Sieteiglesias, July 31, 2024
Présidentielle au Venezuela: de nouvelles manifestations attendues après la réélection de Maduro. Quoted in AFP News, article by Mariëtte Le Roux, July 30, 2024
Como morre uma democracia: os impactos do novo avanço autoritário de Maduro. Quoted in VEJA Magazine, article by Amanda Péchy, July 29, 2024
¿Qué hará Estados Unidos cuando se conozca al ganador? Quoted in Clarín, article by María Eugenia Plano, July 28, 2024
Amid fears of foul play, Venezuela grids for uncertain election. Quoted in AFP News, article by Mariëtte Le Roux, July 21, 2024
Regresamos a la vieja cultura de la militarización policial. PRODAVINCI. Interview by Hugo Prieto, June 6, 2024