~the-society-pages | Bookmarks (107)

Jordyn is a first year PhD student in the Sociology Department at the University of Minnesota. Her interests lie on the perpetuation of gender inequality across intersecting dimensions of culture, media, race, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, and family. Mallory Harrington (she/her) is a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of Sociology and a JD student […]

“I’m like a safety net for my family,” Amanda told me, explaining her decision to accept a job at Amazon. Her voice weighed heavy with responsibility. An Asian first-generation college student from a low-income family, Amanda considered job factors beyond personal career ambitions. While uneasy about certain aspects of the company, she knew the job […]

Emily K. Carian is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Irvine. She studies why gender inequality is so persistent by examining masculinity, male supremacism, and cultural processes at home and at work. Her most recent research appears in Social Problems, Men and Masculinities, and Sociological Perspectives. Here, […]

The Washington Post ran an article on older adults with cognitive impairment or dementia who live alone in the United States. Elena Portacolone (Professor at the Institute for Health and Aging at the University of California at San Francisco) describes that the health-care system assumes that these older adults have...

Many sociological topics provoke heated political debates that can affect classroom dynamics. A common narrative in the current political discourse centers on perceptions that sociology instructors lack “political neutrality,” framing sociology classrooms as spaces where sociologists impose their own personal political beliefs and opinions on students’ learning. In this environment, what is the “political responsibility” […]

Green grass with morning dew clinging and glowing in the sunlight. Image by Nandhu Kumar from Pexels is licensed under Pexels license. When a crime is committed, the harm done to victims and communities can rarely be healed by writing a check or locking someone up. Yet the U.S. criminal justice system’s approach relies heavily […]

New & Noteworthy A growing online movement, the “manosphere,” fuels gender-based culture wars by promoting misogynistic beliefs. These subcultures, including Incels and MGTOW, view society as a “Gynocracy” where men are oppressed by women. United by the “Red Pill” metaphor from the Matrix, these groups reject feminist ideas and spread misinformation, often using violent language. […]

Roger Southall (Professor of Sociology at the University of Witwatersrand) wrote an article for The Conversation on poverty and inequality in South Africa. According to recent polls, 60% of South Africans think that the government of national unity is working well and there has been a recent upturn in the economy. H...

Jordyn is a first year PhD student in the Sociology Department at the University of Minnesota. Her interests lie on the perpetuation of gender inequality across intersecting dimensions of culture, media, race, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, and family. S is a board member at The Society Pages. He holds a BA in Sociology from the […]

Say you want to buy or sell some secondhand fashion online. To determine whether the platform you intend to use is legitimate, you might look to its payment system. How does the app ensure secure transactions? Both buyers and sellers are likely to be relieved when an app provides an escrow service—that is, when a […]

“Well, you might say, this is all very well in ‘theory’ but what about ‘in practice’?”(Burawoy, p. 219)  This year at First Publics, we’ve given ourselves, our contributors, and our readers the task of thinking about the challenges and opportunities of teaching theory as public sociology. This task may sound odd, even to committed public […]

New & Noteworthy TSP Board member Shania Kuo writes up research by Patrick Krueger and colleagues’ in a new Discovery. This piece highlights that while working parents lose sleep (especially those with young children) their physical activity remains steady or even increases as they intentionally incorporate exercise into family time. The study emphasizes the current […]

Nicole Bedera is a sociologist and sexual violence researcher. She studies how our social structures contribute to survivors’ traumas and makes sexual violence more likely to occur in the future. Her scholarship has influenced anti-violence programming across the country, including for Planned Parenthood, and her work has been featured in many popular outlets, including The […]

Former President Barack Obama will be joining the campaign trail with Vice President Kamala Harris, and is set to visit several swing states. Liz McKenna (Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University) commented that Obama’s 2008 campaign enlisted local supporters “to do the difficult and often socially...

This is a remarkable year for elections and democracy globally with about half the population of the world having the opportunity to vote in consequential national or local elections. But those of us that teach in the US might encounter students that are only thinking about the upcoming election here in November. During our recent […]

As the housing crisis continues to affect millions of renters around the world, scholars tend to focus on urban areas. But people rent in rural places, too. That’s why a recent study by sociologists Carl Gershenson and Matthew Desmond focuses directly on the ways the rental housing crisis is affecting rural Americans. Published in Rural […]

While most current literature focused on implementing anti-racist pedagogy examines the instructor-undergraduate student dynamic, this article highlights the crucial role of graduate teaching assistants in implementing this pedagogy in the classroom.

Elites often strive to justify their success by invoking the concept of merit. But how do they define merit? According to a new article by Sam Friedman and colleagues, the answer varies across countries. Published in Social Forces, the study draws from 71 interviews with elites in the United Kingdom and Denmark to identify national […]

Patrick M. Krueger, Joshua A. Goode, Paula Fomby, and Jarron M. Saint Onge, “Less Time for Health: Parenting, Work, and Time-Intensive Health Behaviors among Married or Cohabiting Men and Women in the United States,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 2023 Two parents sitting watching their child play in a box. Image by cottonbrostudio under […]

See Cambrice’s piece on the need to bring attention to sociology programs and foster community among sociology students at HBCUs, particularly in a post Floyd-era.

New & Noteworthy Shania Kuo and Eleanor Nickel’s latest ‘There’s Research on That’ explores the “model minority” myth and its role in perpetuating the discrimination Asian Americans face in the workplace. While Asian Americans are overrepresented in professional fields like tech, law, and business, they remain underrepresented in leadership due to stereotypes that cast them […]

We are thrilled to welcome Musa al-Gharbi to the Contexts blog to celebrate the publication of his new book, We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite. In this post, blog editor Elena van Stee chats with Musa to explore the emergence of a new “woke” elite and the hidden ways they actively benefit from […]

Michelle Janning has been writing about the intersections of family life and spatial and material culture for more than two decades. She has published numerous books and articles about the sociology of homes, social research methods in architecture and design, love letters as family story memory objects, and material and spatial dimensions of family relationships and life stage transitions. Janning is […]

Arlie Russell Hochschild (Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley) was interviewed in Salon, discussing how former president Donald Trump appeals to white, working class voters. “I think we live in both a material economy and a pride economy,” Hochshild explained. While Trump’s polic...