June 1, 2023
A fire killed 38 migrants in a Mexico detention facility in March 2023. A sociologist’s conversations with migrants show that they had a common response to this news – a deep sense of grief.
April 13, 2023
It is easy to feel jaded in a time of catastrophe but there is a compelling moral argument for us to work towards a better world.
April 10, 2023
Nick Haslam, The University of Melbourne
The idea that the poor are impoverished morally as well as materially, that they lack humanity as well as means, has a long history.
April 5, 2023
The reconversions of graduates and executives to manual trades can be seen as “voluntary downgrading” and are highly publicized.
April 2, 2023
Michael James Walsh, University of Canberra and Eduardo de la Fuente, University of South Australia
Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is a ‘bible’ for scholars, voted a top 10 book of the 20th century. It also fascinated general readers, as a guide to social manners.
February 20, 2023
The pandemic put a spotlight on inequalities among college students. But students’ resources were unequal all along.
November 21, 2022
Jessica Gerrard, The University of Melbourne and Steven Threadgold, University of Newcastle
Class allows us to understand inequality not as a consequence of personal failings, but as a socioeconomic issue.
November 7, 2022
Josh Woods, West Virginia University
Headlines about pickleball’s exploding popularity abound. But the less visible social undercurrents of an emerging sport ultimately shape its long-term future.
October 21, 2022
Barry Markovsky, University of South Carolina
A sociologist unpacks how common superstitions like fear of 13 can gain steam.
October 8, 2022
Annie Ernaux is the first French woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her autofiction masterpiece, The Years, has been called a modern In Search of Lost Time.
October 5, 2022
October is awash in seas of pink T-shirts, balloons and ribbons in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. But this messaging fails to recognize people who are not cured of the disease.
September 12, 2022
Adia Harvey Wingfield, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis
The author, who died Sept. 1, 2022, inspired countless researchers to probe the injustices working people face.
July 11, 2022
We often talk about ‘emotional labour’ as performed by those who take on the emotional workload within families or relationships. But the term has a specific meaning – and that’s not what it is.
May 24, 2022
May 11, 2022
In this era of racial reckoning, words such as ‘white privilege’ have played a significant role in defining social problems plaguing America. But those words also have a downside.
April 29, 2022
David Bidwell, University of Rhode Island; Jeremy Firestone, University of Delaware, and Michael Ferguson, University of New Hampshire
The regionalism that fuels the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry is also found in U.S. attitudes about energy production, a new study shows. That could have repercussions for the renewable energy transition.
April 29, 2022
Loren Henderson, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
As the world locked down and a country’s racial reckoning heated up, this social scientist refined her approach to studying the lives of Black moms.
February 11, 2022
You have a finely honed sense of privacy in the physical world. But the sights and sounds you encounter online don’t help you detect risks and can even lull you into a false sense of security.
December 14, 2021
Fiona Greenland, University of Virginia and Michelle D. Fabiani, University of New Haven
Scientists can be asked to help find solutions during disasters. A study of how archaeologists worked on the problem of looting during the Syrian war offers lessons for science done during crisis.
November 12, 2021
Chih-Ling Liu, Lancaster University and Robert Kozinets, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
An economic approach to emancipation.