Eldad J. Levy

Eldad J. Levy is a sociologist whose research examines violence, security, and urban life, with a regional focus on Latin America and Mexico. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from The University of Texas at Austin, where he is affiliated with the Urban Ethnography Lab, and previously held the Alfred J. Hanna Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship at Rollins College. Using ethnographic methods, his research sits at the intersection of economic sociology, criminology, and urban sociology.

He examines the emergence of entrepreneurial security in Mexico City, exploring how entrepreneurs shape security markets, labor, and everyday urban life. He investigates how the global security industry diffuses new technologies, expertise, and professional norms that transform governance, reproduce class inequalities, and reconfigure urban space. His research also analyzes the expanding role of security entrepreneurs as intermediaries between the state, private capital, and economic elites in Mexico. His broader research interests include violence, policing, private governance, organized crime, and the sociology of Latin America. His work has been supported by the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR) Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Publications

Levy, Eldad J., and Javier Auyero. "Opportunities and Alliances: The Relational Dynamics of Criminal Collusion in Latin America." The British Journal of Sociology (2026).

Auyero, Javier, Faith M. Deckard, Alex Diamond, Maricarmen Hernández, Katherine Jensen, Allison Lang, Eldad J. Levy, Águeda Ortega, Katherine Sobering, and Mary Ellen Stitt. "Why Ethnography?" Qualitative Sociology (2026): 1–21.

Levy, Eldad J. "Trusting Your Guardian: Relational Trust in High-Risk Services." Socio-Economic Review 24, no. 1 (2026): 1–25.

Levy, Eldad J. "Looking Right, Looking Busy: The Vigilant Body and the Production of Performative Surveillance in Private Security." Work and Occupations 53, no. 2 (2026): 389–428.

Fridman, Daniel, Benjamín Ibarra-Sevilla, and Eldad J. Levy. "Aligning Valuations: Preservation Experts and the Values of Historic Heritage in Post-Disaster Mexico." Qualitative Sociology 48, no. 2 (2025): 183–211.

Weitzman, Abigail, Marcos Caudillo, and Eldad J. Levy. "Hybrid Interpersonal Violence in Latin America: Patterns and Causes." Annual Review of Criminology 7, no. 1 (2024): 163–186.

Levy, Eldad J. "Rodrigo: ‘Many Secrets, Nothing to Hide’—Security Entrepreneurship in Mexico City." In Portraits of Persistence: Inequality and Hope in Latin America, 59–81. 2024.

Levy, Eldad J. "Legacy Work: Three Strategies of Adversarial Meaning-Making of Historical Characters." American Journal of Cultural Sociology 9, no. 4 (2021): 518–554.

Presentations and Awards

• Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, Emerging Scholars Award, 2023.
• International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR) Foundation, 2022.