public health

1. Equal Pay for Equal Work: The Council on Contemporary families offers aportfolio of research on 50 years since the Equal Pay Act, and we suggest checking out the pieces on how the wage gap narrows among high earners and how the wage gap is affected by race and ethnicity.
2. Awareness of Diseases like ALS and Alzheimer’s: A 2012 American Sociological Review article by Rachel Kahn Best outlines how awareness campaigns bring more funding to medical research on some conditions, but add to the stigma associated with others.
3. Voting Rights: The Scholars Strategy Network presents an overview of research on steps forward and back since the Voting Rights Act of 1963.
4. Mass Incarceration: Sarah Shannon and Chris Uggen offer a starting point with their time-lapse visualizations of changes in American punishment, including the disproportionate incarceration of black men.

This week, on The Editors’ Desk*, Doug Hartmann enumerated and tried to define** six elements of the sociological worldview. Elsewhere on The Society Pages, our many contributors worked to demonstrate that worldview—enjoy!

*That’s right: we all share one desk. It’s adorable. Possibly even adorkable.

**See what I did there? The man never met a conjunction he didn’t like. more...

This week on TSP!

The Editors’ Desk:

“Sociology in Retired Football Player’s Past,” by Doug Hartmann. He makes it sound so sordid!

There’s Research on That!

“Olympic Flame Relay Goes Lunar,” by Amy August. Transnational ritual lifts off.

“Texas Abortion Restrictions Take Effect,” by Jacqui Frost. New laws change the mechanics, but not the incidence, of abortion.

Citings & Sightings:

“Redesigning Work to Find Balance,” by Erin Hoekstra. U of M sociologists tell the Huffington Post that flexibility increases productivity—they’ve got the research to prove it.

“Angry White Men and Aggrieved Entitlement,” by John Ziegler. Michael Kimmel on the defenses that go up when unrecognized privilege is challenged. The Real World: White Male America.

“Libraries, Coffee Shops, and Natural Disasters,” by Molly Goin. Eric Klinenberg on civic spaces and disaster response.

A Few from the Community Pages:

• Football! Sociological Images: Cliff Leek on hazing and masculinity in pro football and ThickCulture: “Gender Socialization and the NFL” and “Turning away from Football.”
• Feminism! Miley et al. with Girl w/ Pen!
• Cyborgs! WWIS, you don’t know me! Post-LOLcat lingo! Currency, privacy, and competing values!

Scholars Strategy Network:

“Are Job Training Programs a Good Way to Fight Poverty?” by Harry Holzer.

“The Value of Providing Continued Healthcare to People Leaving America’s Prisons,” by Emily Wang.

Becoming Aware

Root canal: that’s what I’ll be doing with my morning. In fact, I’m in the chair awaiting my fate right now. You are welcome to send mocking notes of semi-pity via the comments below. It’s a combination of a routine-emergency thing, and hopefully by noon or so I’ll be nice and numb, by Monday I’ll have a bruised face, and by this time next week I’ll be right as rain, happily eating and breathing and whatnot. But it’s super weird to suddenly become aware of one tooth.  more...