In this episode, guest host Caty Taborda-Whitt sits down with Trevor Hoppe to discuss his new book, Punishing Disease: HIV and the Criminalization of Sickness, which looks at the public health response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The conversation focuses on how this infectious disease became a target for criminalization through policies and laws that punished the sick.
health
Office Hours is back for fall semester! We welcome new producer Matthew Aguilar-Champeau, whose soundscaping includes a musical refresh courtesy of The Custodian of Records.
Hosts Sarah Catherine-Billups and Caty Taborda kick things off with Princeton professor Dalton Conley, author of Being Black, Living in the Red and the popular sociology textbook You May Ask Yourself. Their conversation pries into the sometimes controversial, but always provocative intersection between sociology and genetic science.
In this episode, University of Colorado sociologist Sanyu Mojola discusses her work on HIV rates among young African women. She discusses social mechanisms – specifically the entanglement of love and money – that lead to higher rates of HIV death among African females compared to African males. She also considers why money holds a value for African women above and beyond its economic value, specifically pointing to its cultural power and ability to advance women toward modernity.
Her new book earned the 2015 American Sociological Association’s Sex and Gender Section Distinguished Book Award. It’s
called Love, Money, and HIV: Becoming a Modern African Woman in the Age of AIDS.
In this episode, we step into the global market for surrogate mothers with University of Texas sociologist Sharmila Rudrappa. She explains why India has become an increasingly popular destination for American couples searching for affordable pregnancy assistance. She also considers why most Indian women who become surrogates come from working class backgrounds, and how their experiences as wage workers inform what kind of value gets placed on this new form of “labor”. Her book is called Discounted Life: The Price of Global Surrogacy in India.
Because they suffer from an invisible affliction, people with migraines are sometimes suspected of “making up” their disease in order to avoid performing unwanted duties. Even within psychology, women were once suspected of self-inducing their own migraines as a result of their inability to cope with the chaos of daily life. These days, neurobiological research has helped to establish migraine as a legitimate disease, with causes rooted within the organic structure of certain brains. However, as Rutgers professor Joanna Kempner explains, even this paradigm shift tends to imply that the feminine “migraine brain” differs from the masculine “normal brain” in problematic ways. In Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health, she explores how cultural assumptions about gender and pain continue to inform how migraines are diagnosed, treated, and stigmatized.
This week we are joined by Matt Wray, a professor at Temple University, where he teaches sociology of race, culture, and health. Matt has researched suicide rates in Las Vegas, the city with the highest metropolitan suicide rate in the U.S. He is currently at work on a book about the “Suicide Belt” in the American West. In addition to his work on suicide, Matt has written extensively on the topic of whiteness and white identity. We discuss Matt’s current work on the Suicide Belt and explore the contributions sociologists can make to the study of suicide.
This is a special edition of Office Hours: we’re cross-posting the first interview from the all new Contexts Podcast. In this interview, Jessica Streeter speaks with Henry H. Brownstein and Timothy M. Mulcahy, co-authors of the Winter 2012 Contexts feature, Home Cooking: Marketing Meth.
If you like Office Hours, you probably already love Contexts magazine and now you’ve got another great podcast to subscribe to with the Contexts Podcast. So head over to contexts.org to subscribe and while you’re there, check out the new Spring 2012 issue of Contexts!
This episode on Office Hours, we talk with Megan Comfort about her book, Doing Time Together: Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison. The book is the outcome of her ethnographic research at San Quentin Prison, studying how intimate relationships are sustained while male partners are incarcerated.
This episode we talk with Janet Hankin, co-editor of the special issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, “What Do We Know? Key Findings from 50 Years of Medical Sociology”. We discuss the contributions and insights sociologists have made in the areas of health, illness, and the medical establishment. Topics include the transformation of the health care system in the United States over the past 50 years, and the distinction between the sociology in medicine and the sociology of medicine.
This week, we talk with Jeremy Freese about sociology and genetics. Topics include: why sociology and behavioral genetics need one another, why sociologists have been too hesitant to participate in interdisciplinary research, and how the complexities of gene-environment interdependence are stretching our imaginations as scientists and changing the way we think about causation.
If you like what you hear in this episode, this interview is part of an ongoing series on genetics, health, and sociology here at Office Hours. Past guests include Allan Horwitz, Peter Conrad, and Thomas Bouchard, with more on the way!
And the Society Page of the Week: ThickCulture’s Jose Marchial takes on Malcolm Gladwell’s take on Social Networking and Social Movements.
Office Hours is back for fall semester! We welcome new producer Matthew Aguilar-Champeau, whose soundscaping includes a musical refresh courtesy of The Custodian of Records.
Hosts Sarah Catherine-Billups and Caty Taborda kick things off with Princeton professor Dalton Conley, author of Being Black, Living in the Red and the popular sociology textbook You May Ask Yourself. Their conversation pries into the sometimes controversial, but always provocative intersection between sociology and genetic science.
In this episode, University of Colorado sociologist Sanyu Mojola discusses her work on HIV rates among young African women. She discusses social mechanisms – specifically the entanglement of love and money – that lead to higher rates of HIV death among African females compared to African males. She also considers why money holds a value for African women above and beyond its economic value, specifically pointing to its cultural power and ability to advance women toward modernity.
Her new book earned the 2015 American Sociological Association’s Sex and Gender Section Distinguished Book Award. It’s
called Love, Money, and HIV: Becoming a Modern African Woman in the Age of AIDS.
In this episode, we step into the global market for surrogate mothers with University of Texas sociologist Sharmila Rudrappa. She explains why India has become an increasingly popular destination for American couples searching for affordable pregnancy assistance. She also considers why most Indian women who become surrogates come from working class backgrounds, and how their experiences as wage workers inform what kind of value gets placed on this new form of “labor”. Her book is called Discounted Life: The Price of Global Surrogacy in India.
Because they suffer from an invisible affliction, people with migraines are sometimes suspected of “making up” their disease in order to avoid performing unwanted duties. Even within psychology, women were once suspected of self-inducing their own migraines as a result of their inability to cope with the chaos of daily life. These days, neurobiological research has helped to establish migraine as a legitimate disease, with causes rooted within the organic structure of certain brains. However, as Rutgers professor Joanna Kempner explains, even this paradigm shift tends to imply that the feminine “migraine brain” differs from the masculine “normal brain” in problematic ways. In Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health, she explores how cultural assumptions about gender and pain continue to inform how migraines are diagnosed, treated, and stigmatized.
This week we are joined by Matt Wray, a professor at Temple University, where he teaches sociology of race, culture, and health. Matt has researched suicide rates in Las Vegas, the city with the highest metropolitan suicide rate in the U.S. He is currently at work on a book about the “Suicide Belt” in the American West. In addition to his work on suicide, Matt has written extensively on the topic of whiteness and white identity. We discuss Matt’s current work on the Suicide Belt and explore the contributions sociologists can make to the study of suicide.
This is a special edition of Office Hours: we’re cross-posting the first interview from the all new Contexts Podcast. In this interview, Jessica Streeter speaks with Henry H. Brownstein and Timothy M. Mulcahy, co-authors of the Winter 2012 Contexts feature, Home Cooking: Marketing Meth.
If you like Office Hours, you probably already love Contexts magazine and now you’ve got another great podcast to subscribe to with the Contexts Podcast. So head over to contexts.org to subscribe and while you’re there, check out the new Spring 2012 issue of Contexts!
This episode on Office Hours, we talk with Megan Comfort about her book, Doing Time Together: Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison. The book is the outcome of her ethnographic research at San Quentin Prison, studying how intimate relationships are sustained while male partners are incarcerated.
This episode we talk with Janet Hankin, co-editor of the special issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, “What Do We Know? Key Findings from 50 Years of Medical Sociology”. We discuss the contributions and insights sociologists have made in the areas of health, illness, and the medical establishment. Topics include the transformation of the health care system in the United States over the past 50 years, and the distinction between the sociology in medicine and the sociology of medicine.
This week, we talk with Jeremy Freese about sociology and genetics. Topics include: why sociology and behavioral genetics need one another, why sociologists have been too hesitant to participate in interdisciplinary research, and how the complexities of gene-environment interdependence are stretching our imaginations as scientists and changing the way we think about causation.
If you like what you hear in this episode, this interview is part of an ongoing series on genetics, health, and sociology here at Office Hours. Past guests include Allan Horwitz, Peter Conrad, and Thomas Bouchard, with more on the way!
And the Society Page of the Week: ThickCulture’s Jose Marchial takes on Malcolm Gladwell’s take on Social Networking and Social Movements.