Eloísa Martín

How to write a good article

This article presents the main challenges of academic writing and publication in scientific journals. It reveals some of the most common mistakes in the process of manuscript submission and review, and offers some possible solutions.

God Is Argentine and so Is the Pope! Catholicism, Popular Culture and the National Imagination

The arrival of Jorge Bergoglio to the Holy See has introduced a number of changes in the relations between the Catholic Church and the State in Argentina. While traditionally these relations have been characterized by the preferential status of Catholicism as quasi-official religion and its active presence in the government’s decisions, in the last decade it was a noticeable succession of conflicts between the Church and State. However, few days after the coronation of Pope Francisco, government discourse changed radically, emphasizing the importance of having “an Argentinean Pope.” The media and various forms of popular expression (graffiti, jokes, cartoons, montages on Facebook, etc.) express how unprecedented and unexpected this situation was, from a key that combines various representations of national culture. In this new picture, the traditional and conservative homology between Argentine national identity and Catholicism acquires new features, especially at the level of popular religion. In this work, I will observe a specific matrix that allows to relate to the sacred and the idea of nation: soccer. Soccer appears as one of the matrixes that model the relationships with the sacred: not as metalanguage, nor as religious metaphor, but anchored in the specific experiences and particular semantics and their influence on the imagination of the nation and of religion. Soccer, as a matrix, helps us to problematize hegemonic definitions of religion and national identity.

How double-blind peer review works and what it takes to be a good referee:

This editorial describes the double-blind peer review process used by academic journals in the social sciences with a particular focus on the process at Current Sociology. Guidance is also provided to help referees write an appropriate and constructive review. Finally, it addresses some of the major challenges of the peer review process at the practical, epistemic and political level.

Letters of rejection

Having an article rejected is always an undesirable experience that all scholars have undergone, or will still go through, in their professional career. This editorial will present the main motives why a manuscript is rejected, soon after submission or during the review process. I have grouped these motives into structural issues, problems of formatting and problems of content, and suggest some alternatives to reduce the chances of having your manuscript rejected.

Cumbia Villera and the End of the Culture of Work in Argentina in the 90s

The cumbia villera2 emerges in Argentina in the second half of the 90s as a genre that both reveals and enables to construct a certain kind of world: that of the young people from the poorer neighborhoods of Buenos Aires and the Greater Buenos Aires. Poor people who do not perceive themselves as poor, either in the sense of being deprived or as objects of pity, instead positively assert that which in the dominant gaze stigmatizes them. The pejorative adjective “villero” used to characterize the inhabitants of villa.—shantytowns—is here proudly acclaimed and recuperated as a mark of difference within this musical genre. To be a viller. is, in the gaze of “others,” worse than being merely poor: it means to like and deserve poverty. It is a stigmatizing interpellation of something that or someone who is ontologically inferior, or incapable of progress.

No me Arrepiento de este Amor. Fans y Devotos de Gilda, una Cantante Argentina

Resumen. Gilda es el nombre artistico de Miriam Alejandra Bianchi, una cantante argentina de cumbia muerta en un accidente automovilistico en 1996. El presente articulo, basado en trabajo de campo realizando entre marzo de 2002 y septiembre de 2003 con dos clubes de fans y con los visitantes a su tumba, se propone describir la tension constitutiva entre quienes “siguen” a Gilda. Esta se establece a partir de las diferentes autodefiniciones en relacion a la cantante y las consecuentes definiciones de su status: mientras para algunos (“devotos”, “promeseros”) ella es una “santa”, a la que hacen promesas o dedican sacrificios, otros (los “fans”) se nuclean en “fan´s clubes”, le niegan el titulo de “santa” y evitan o se burlan de los gestos que ellos consideran inapropiados por “religiosos”, aunque, tambien ellos, le hagan pedidos o atribuyan a Gilda milagros en sus vidas.

Current Sociology and the challenges of inequality in academia: 65 years forging spaces of intelligibility:

Current Sociology was founded in 1952 and since then has developed into an internationalized and pluralistic journal while always pursuing its mission of sharing sociological works across the globe. Over the past 65 years, Current Sociology has played a major role in both discussions surrounding the field of production of sociological knowledge and debates on its limits and challenges. And at the same time, it has drawn up strategies to overcome these limits and challenges. Meeting these goals has been puzzling at times because within the global academic community, the very production of knowledge entails inequalities derived from a specific geopolitics inherent to the international division of academic work. This article analyses some of the main editorial policies developed over the past seven years in an attempt to face the challenges of inequality in academia and carve out spaces of intelligibility.