social science

New and Noteworthy

Board member S Ericson covered new research from Samuel L. Perry, Kenneth E. Frantz, and Joshua B. Grubbs showing that who identifies as anti-racist is complex with, for instance, many Americans identifying as both color-blind and anti-racist.

Worth a (Look), Sociologically Speaking

Sangyoub Park wrote for Sociological Images on the emotional experience of seeing gochujang, Korean red chili pepper paste, on the shelf in American grocery stores while the United States has experienced a sharp rise in racism and hate crimes against Asian-Americans.

Citings and Sightings

Junia Howell spoke with Marketplace for their Morning Report on the release of the Biden administration’s plan to decrease racial inequity in home appraisals. Howell’s research shows that appraisals of homes in mostly white neighborhoods are three times higher than those in Black or Latinx neighborhoods.

More from Our Partner and Community Pages

Women can run the world (or at least my city) but men continue to hide from equality at home! by Barbara Risman for Council on Contemporary Families’ blog

Meyer Weinshel wrote on Marking Women’s History Month for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ blog

SJSU HonorsX from Dispatches from a Dean

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New and Noteworthy

Board member Daniel Cueto-Villalobos covered new research from Alfredo Huante on the process of gentefication in Boyle Heights and the tensions that arise when wealthy newcomers share long-term residents’ ethnic identity, but not their class position or skin tone.

Worth a Read, Sociologically Speaking

Council on Contemporary Families’ blog featured writing from Kenneth R. Hanson on his research exploring why some people choose synthetic partners (sex dolls) over human ones.

Citings and Sightings

Episode seven of The Boston Globe’s Black News Hour featured sociologist Saida Grundy. Grundy spoke about social citizenship for Black Americans and the necessity of social change in the episode which reflected on the tenth anniversary of Travyon Martin’s killing.

Backstage with TSP

Last week we read Joseph Gusfield’s chapter “Two Genres of Sociology: A Literary Analysis of The American Occupational Structure and Tally’s Corner” together and reflected on long-form writing in sociology. As a board, we are interested in thinking about ways to incorporate more coverage of long-form sociological writing on the site since books are not always a good fit with some of our standard formats. Reading Gusfield together, we were focused on how writers in long-form have to choose an audience and decide what they can assume that audience knows about the topic at hand. This is something we think about a lot at The Society Pages: who is our imagined audience, and what do we expect them to know? We’re always trying to strike a balance between making our writing as accessible as possible, to share sociological findings with a broad public, and keeping our pieces short and engaging.

More from Our Partner and Community Pages

Truth, Memory, and Solidarity with Ukraine and A World Disappearing Before Our Eyes… from the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

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New and Noteworthy

We covered new research from Maia Cuchiarra that shows that Black low-income mothers and parenting instructors understand the purpose of parenting differently and this shapes whether or not they think it is ever appropriate to use physical discipline.

Worth a Read, Sociologically Speaking

Our partner Council on Contemporary Families’ blog posted a research summary from Dana M. Johnson and colleagues on the reasons people choose to self-manage their abortions by obtaining abortion medications online and how policy changes could help increase abortion access.

Citings and Sightings

As we gear up for another election cycle, WBUR spoke with R. L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy on how courting suburban voters means acknowledging the suburbs increasing racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity.

More from Our Partner and Community Pages

Swastikas in the Bathrooms and Memory Politics and Memory Solidarity: An Interview with Jelena Subotić from Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ blog

End of the journey as a dean from Dispatches from a Dean

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New and Noteworthy

After the Child Tax Credit’s historic expansion ended in December, board member Jacob Otis helps us think about what’s next reviewing research on the history of the Child Tax Credit and how it supports families.

Worth a (Look), Sociologically Speaking

Board member S Ericson writes up a data visualization from Benjamin Elbers in Socius showing trends in residential segregation over the past thirty years. Elbers shows that segregation is going down, overall, but is increasing between some racial groups.

Backstage with TSP

I had the pleasure of announcing in this week’s meeting agenda that one of our fearless leaders, Doug Hartmann, is bringing bagels to our board meeting today. (We may be happily munching away on them as you read this). One of the things we missed most about going virtual during covid was the opportunity to gather together in-person not only to get work done but also to be in community with one another. As with all things covid, we aren’t sure what’s next but we feel grateful that, for the time being, we feel safe to be together and carefully lower our masks to take bites of our bagels!

More from Our Partner and Community Pages

Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ blog spotlights student Tibisay Navarro-Mana.

Council on Contemporary Families’ blog posted writing from Naomi Lightman and Anthony Kevins, sharing their research on how family policy changes might decrease inequalities in unpaid care work.

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New and Noteworthy

Board member Daniel Cueto-Villalobos wrote up new research from Samuel Perry and colleagues that explores the relationship between White Christian nationalism and denial of anti-Black discrimination and racial injustice.

Worth a (Watch), Sociologically Speaking

Isabel Arriagada created a short and informative video that summarizes this piece from Jillian LaBranche on how the meaning of diamonds is intertwined with their place in global conflict (Just in time for Valentine’s Day <3).

Backstage with TSP

This week we reincorporated “archive pitches” into the regular business of our board meetings. With an archive pitch, board members search through the (literally) thousands of posts on our pages and find a piece that connects with a current event, news story, or something on their mind. We promote these archive pitches on the site and social media and use them as springboards for new ideas. Our archive pitches are both useful reminders of how extensive and useful our backlog is and motivation to write something new when one of us discovers that we don’t actually have anything on (insert important and timely issue).

More from Our Partner and Community Pages

Council on Contemporary Families’ blog posted a piece from Shannon Cavanaugh covering research showing that women are less likely to initiate romantic contact online but have more success when they do

For the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ (CHGS) blog Remco Ensel wrote on “The Betrayal of Anne Frank”: Genocide research in the time of mass media and Kurt Borchard explained the significance of The COPE Visitor Center in Laos

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New and Noteworthy

Board member Mason Jones wrote up research from Vicki Lens that shows that, in family law court rooms, low-income moms face expectations of what “good mothers” do that do not acknowledge the structural barriers they face when parenting.

Worth a Read, Sociologically Speaking

Board member Jake Otis rounded up social science research that places the current wave of labor strikes in context.

Backstage with TSP

This week we turned our focus to writing and will discuss the first chapter of Becker’s classic Writing for Social Scientists. It’s an excellent book and the first chapter got me thinking about vulnerability and shame in the writing process. Becker does a great job of articulating that part of what makes writing so difficult is that we have to be vulnerable. When we write we are putting ourselves out there. We worry about getting it right at TSP. We worry that maybe we aren’t quite capturing what the author meant by that phrase, or maybe we don’t really understand the complex statistical technique used in that exciting new article, so maybe we shouldn’t write about it for the site. But we do anyway, in part, because we have the advantage of being really close to why writing in spite of fear matters. We hope our writing helps bring social scientific findings to a a public that would otherwise not have access to them. Having such a lofty vision means that the stakes can feel really high at times but it also helps motivate us to work together to get words on the (digital) page.

More from Our Partner and Community Pages

Council for Contemporary Families’ blog re-posted a piece from Tyler Jamison on the skills needed to break-up a partnership with care.

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It’s the start of a new semester here in Minnesota (where, at the time of writing, it is a balmy one degree) and we’re back to share the latest social science writing from our grad board, partner, and community pages.

New and Noteworthy

We shared writing from our own Doug Hartmann, published in the Winter 2022 issue of Footnotes, on what community-engaged research is and how it can provide meaning, and challenges, to sociologists.

Worth a (Look), Sociologically Speaking

Over at Sociological Images Evan Stewart covers the persistent drop in self-reported happiness in the General Social Survey and the potential for both policy (and personal) solutions to improve subjective well being.

Citings and Sightings

Amanda Mull interviewed sociologist Daniel Schneider, who studies precarious and unpredictable work schedules, for the Atlantic on “How Omicron is Making America’s Bad Jobs Even Worse.”

Backstage with TSP

At the request of our graduate board, this semester we’re focusing some of our meetings on writing. As both academics and folks interested in connecting scientific findings with a larger public, we wear a lot of “writing hats” at TSP. Over the course of the semester we hope that talking together about writing will help us think about our collective work at TSP, exploring how to better engage in writing as communication and writing as a collaborative process. If you have a favorite piece on sociological writing, send it our way at tsp@contexts.org.

More from our Partner and Community Pages

The Council on Contemporary Families’ blog shared Dominique C. Hill‘s writing A Black Girl’s Crown Changes the Game, exploring how her participants defined black girlhood.

Kennedy Kneller wrote for Engaging Sports on how the backyard ice rink shatters the myth of Canadian hockey as underpinned by community and collective identity.

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We think of the Society Pages as a place for social scientists to connect with public issues and audiences. Sociology’s professional organization, the American Sociological Association, has a new initiative to connect sociologists to other organizations in an exciting way.

The Sociology Action Network (or SAN ) will match ASA members who are interested in volunteering their sociological expertise with not-for-profit organizations in need of technical assistance. If you or your organization are intrigued by this possibility, the project is up and running so the time is now!

SAN volunteers help organizations in many ways, including conducting needs assessments and program evaluations, reviewing technical reports, writing grants, and providing training.  In the process of helping a local organization achieve their goals, you will be helping to expand the public’s understanding of sociology and its value to society. 

Sign up here to become a SAN volunteer today. And/or learn more about the initiative by coming to the SAN workshop at the upcoming 2019 Annual Meetings in New York. (Full disclosure: Doug is on the advisory board and will be on the panel in August, and Chris was a member of the ASA council that approved the project). The more, the merrier — and the more meaningful use of your sociological knowledge and skills.

Our readers and our writers (as well as our friends and partners) have been asking what the election of Donald Trump and Republican legislative majorities might mean for social science and social scientists. The sky is (probably) not falling and new opportunities will (almost surely) arise, but there are some significant challenges ahead for many of us who think of ourselves as social researchers – regardless of our own party affiliation. I am thinking here about the institutions that affect our research, teaching, and learning, rather than our individual or collective views or concerns as citizens or political actors. Most pointedly, the new regime has signaled that they will offer less material and symbolic support for sociology, for science, for criticism, and for higher education. Nobody can predict what will happen at this point and it may be too early, dumb, or offensive to raise practical professional questions from a position of unusual privilege, but I will follow Doug Hartmann in offering some personal reflections and semi-educated guesses based on the recent past.

Your work. There is no sugarcoating it: the conditions of work for most social scientists are unlikely to get any easier in the next few years. But our field has proven remarkably resilient. How many scholars believe their research, teaching, outreach, and engagement work suddenly became less important with this November’s election? Like obstetricians or immigration lawyers, our life’s work may simultaneously become more challenging and more meaningful in coming years. Consider the topics listed atop our main page at TSP: gender, race, inequality, crime, culture, health, and politics. Ya think the election won’t bring new urgency to work in any of these areas, or new research questions to investigate? To paraphrase Etta James, the blues is our business and business is good. That said, federal research funding streams may slow to a trickle. I anticipate a pivot toward foundations, community partners, and universities that are already stretched thin. I spoke with a foundation representative today who seemed keenly aware of this potential vacuum — and sincerely interested in learning where their investments might do the most good. Of course, most social scientists will continue to do good work without major grants or fellowships and there will likely be new grant solicitations in narrowly-defined target areas. But at this point I would rather scale back my projects (and those of my students) than delay them in anticipation of a large infusion of federal social science research dollars.

Your institution. I know it isn’t the first issue on your mind, but life could also get more complicated for the people who sign your paychecks. Boo freaking hoo, right? Well, imagine being a public university president in a state transitioning from an education-friendly governor (and/or legislature) to a new regime less committed to higher education (or, perhaps, one that is explicitly anti-intellectual). Top administrators and their staff in government relations must now reframe their appeals – simply to hold onto the 20 percent (or whatever – your mileage may vary) they (we) currently receive. If experience is any guide, they will offer both a vigorous defense of liberal arts education and renewed claims about “ROI” (return on investment) and your university’s role in workforce development. Such talk strains relations with faculty and students but does not (necessarily) mean that your leaders have sold out or turned their back on “core mission.” It may be one among many strategies to bring the resources needed to sustain that mission. Yes, they can and must “fight the good fight” and they might be better served leading a march on the state capitol, but their messaging, their invitation lists, and even their hires will respond in some way to the new power dynamics. Hold your leaders and institutions accountable, but remember that they are probably not your principal enemy and do what you can to help them advocate for the social sciences.

Your peers. Though our positions and power vary greatly, many of us share at least a loosely-connected professional identity. This election has been especially divisive within sociology, pitting sister against sister in heated debates, whether over Bernie versus Hillary or the best path forward under Trump. But sociologist-on-sociologist violence will get us nowhere. As one election post-mortem noted, it simply isn’t tactical for groups to insist on moral purity or 100 percent consensus. And our professional life already exaggerates differences imperceptible to civilians, whether we’re arguing the nuances of Foucauldian theory or the relative merits of Poisson vs. negative binomial regression. The Society Pages believes that sociology needs a “big tent” to prosper – one embracing both our pure science wing and our social activist wing. Because we don’t have a lot of weight to throw around, we’d likely be further diminished if we “cleave it in twain.” So I’m going to continue to love all y’all – even when y’all disagree. Of course, smart people of good will disagree on what to do next. Some advocate resistance, protests, and letter-writing campaigns. Others “stay in their lanes,” only taking policy positions when they have direct and empirically verifiable expert knowledge on a subject. And, yes, others will work directly with the new regime – often on the same sorts of policy questions they are pursuing with the current regime. I was more frequently summoned to Washington under the Obama and Clinton administrations than during the Bush administration(s), but the latter also took up issues that mattered to me (such as prisoner reentry). I saw how social scientists can make a tangible difference under blue, red, and purplish regimes. Maybe this time it’s different and more nefarious, but on balance I would almost always prefer to have good social scientists in the room when decisions affecting society are made.

Yourself. Social scientists extrapolate. That’s what we do. And when we lack good information, we tend to extrapolate based on worst-case scenarios. So, many of us will end 2016 with great apprehension not just about 2017 but about the longer-term trajectories of our careers, our students’ careers, and our disciplines. That said, even the most pessimistic observer should recognize that the social sciences are too strong to ignore and too tough to die. Put differently, it is a good time for many of us to reflect on our privilege and to direct our efforts toward aiding people and groups who are far more vulnerable or marginalized. And if you’d like to support the social sciences in ways that go beyond your own research and teaching, commit yourself to deploying your expertise in ways that directly confront the howling fantods you might be feeling. For me, that means doing all I can to protect the integrity and transparency of basic social indicators and U.S. government statistics – and to redouble our efforts at The Society Pages to bring social science research to broader visibility and influence.

When scholars think about doing interviews with the media, we often imagine ourselves to be doing some kind of great public service–wherein we deign to come down from the ivory tower and share our wisdom and knowledge with naive, uninformed journalists and their massive, mostly ignorant, and fundamentally distracted masses. There is some truth to this conceit. Writers and producers often approach a story or a topic with a limited, fairly narrow frame of reference, and sometimes don’t even know the most basic facts or more general trends that are involved.  I average maybe an interview a week, and find myself spending much of my time in these exchanges trying to get the writer or producer on the other end of the line to expand their scope, attend to some of the broader social forces or issues, or reframe their pieces in one way or the other. Sometimes this effort to frame and/or reorient stories works, sometimes it doesn’t (and rarely do we get credit either way).

But none of that is really the point of this post. The point of this post is that journalists often know a lot more than we give them credit for, and that we scholars–especially us sociologists–have got a lot more to gain from working with them than we usually realize. more...