Abstract

ESPINOSA LUNA, Carolina  and  CORRADI, Consuelo. Economies of abusive legitimacy: A Sociological Explanation of Academic Violence against Women. Estud. sociol [online]. 2026, vol.44, e2873.  Epub Mar 06, 2026. ISSN 2448-6442.  https://doi.org/10.24201/es.2026v44.e2873.

The concept of “economies of abusive legitimacy” is proposed to explain academic violence against women. Rather than attributing it solely to deficient rules, transgressive individuals, or permissive cultures, it is understood as the result of unequal, gendered exchanges-material, symbolic, and affective- sustained by power networks and validated through social judgments. Based on the qualitative analysis of more than one hundred interviews, the article shows how diverse manifestations-sexual, workplace-institutional, teaching-formative, symbolic-authorial, emotional-psychological, and maternal- are stabilized by a common logic of power, exchange, and legitimation. The analytical implications of the proposal are outlined, and recent transformations in gender relations are discussed, along with their reach for imagining more just forms of academic coexistence.

Keywords : academic violence; violence against women; power; legitimacy; exchanges; gender.

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