In this episode, guest hosts Amber Powell and Allison Nobles talk to Associate Professor of Sociology at Occidental College Lisa Wade about her book American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus. The conversation focuses on interrogating what ‘hookup culture’ really is— and how college students make sense of themselves and their positions within (and excluded from) the culture. Using students’ self-reported experiences with sex on campus, Wade is able to narrate the complexities involved in navigating this ‘hookup culture’.
race
In this episode, guest host Neeraj Rajasekar talks to Harvard professor Natasha Warikoo about her book The Diversity Bargain: And Other Dilemmas of Race, Admissions, and Meritocracy at Elite Universities. The book centers on conversations with white students and students of color at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford around their understandings of diversity and diversity programs. Through these interviews, Warikoo illustrates how elite students make sense of their positions at elite universities, the merit involved, and the role privilege plays.
Prior to the 1990s, the sociology of immigration focused mainly on just a handful of major cities where most new arrivals had settled throughout the 20th century. But more recently, immigrants have been moving to new destinations in the rural South and Midwest, drawing scholars like today’s guest, Vanesa Ribas, to closely monitor how race and labor dynamics might be playing out in these smaller communities. Dr. Ribas’ new book, On the Line: Slaughterhouse Lives and the Making of the New South, examines these changes through a case study centered around a meat packing plant in rural North Carolina.
In this episode, I talk to University of Minnesota Professor and Editor-In-Chief of TheSocietyPages Douglas Hartmann about his book Midnight Basketball: Race, Sports, and Neoliberal Social Policy. This conversation focuses on a 1990s crime initiative, known as midnight basketball, which aimed to curb crime by setting up late night basketball leagues in inner cities. While initially popular with democrats and republicans , including president George H. W. Bush, the program would eventually fall, being attacked by right-wing politicians and radio hosts alike, but it left behind a complex history with many implications for sports, race, and social policy today.
In this episode, I talk to University of Toronto professor Jooyoung Lee, author of Blowin’ Up: Rap Dreams in South Central. This conversation focuses on the book as well as Professor Lee’s experiences writing the book. For some context, set in South Central Los Angeles, Professor Lee worked in and around Project Blowed, an open mic venue that functioned as a kind of hub for a large underground hip-hop community in Los Angeles. For some vocabulary, “Blowin’ Up” refers to getting attention/ fame/ money/ recognition in wider society and a “Blowedian” is a member of Project Blowed. Our conversations covers topics from what it means to be an insider in ethnography, to Professor Lee’s experiences ‘defending the block’ from intruders with his dance skills.
Northwestern University professor Aldon Morris discusses W.E.B. Du Bois and the status of his work in the sociological canon. In this special hour-long episode, we explore the ongoing tension between social justice activism and the scientific features of contemporary sociology, especially as it is experienced by many black scholars today. Morris’ new book is called The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology.
In this episode, host Jack Delehanty speaks with Stanford sociologist Doug McAdam, whose 2014 co-authored book Deeply Divided: Racial Politics and Social Movements in Postwar America traces the roots of polarization in today’s politics back to the national struggle over civil rights in the 1960s. In their conversation, Jack and Doug focus particularly on tensions between modern social movements and the interests of party leaders developing in this year’s presidential election. They consider how the ongoing national conversation about racial inequality might be changing how Americans relate to major political parties.
Diversity is one of those concepts that is all but taken for granted as a good and desirable quality in American social life. However, as professor Ellen Berrey explains, the actual institutions and practices designed to promote diversity can sometimes obscure real inequalities and limit the ways we think about social justice. Her new book, The Enigma of Diveristy: The Language of Race and the Limits of Racial Justice, chronicles three cases – one at a university, one in a neighborhood, and one at a large corporation – that demonstrate some of the problems that the idealization of diversity raises for minorities in America today.
In this week’s episode, guest host Stephen Suh interviews Dr Lisa Cacho, who is an associate professor of Latina/Latino studies and Asian American studies at the University of Illinois. Together, they discuss Dr Cacho’s recent book Social Death: Racialized Rightlessness and the Criminalization of the Unprotected. In it, Dr Cacho explains the sociological concept of “social death” and how it often applies to racial minorities in America. Her book explores how the notion of a racial Other contributes to the criminalization of people on the basis of status, rather than their behavior.
In this episode, professor Joyce Bell explains the legacy of activists in community organizations that emerged as a result of the Black Power movement in the 1960s and 70s. Her work demonstrates both the resources and tensions that radical social movements bring to institutions in civil society. Her new book is called The Black Power Movement and American Social Work.
In this episode, guest host Neeraj Rajasekar talks to Harvard professor Natasha Warikoo about her book The Diversity Bargain: And Other Dilemmas of Race, Admissions, and Meritocracy at Elite Universities. The book centers on conversations with white students and students of color at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford around their understandings of diversity and diversity programs. Through these interviews, Warikoo illustrates how elite students make sense of their positions at elite universities, the merit involved, and the role privilege plays.
Prior to the 1990s, the sociology of immigration focused mainly on just a handful of major cities where most new arrivals had settled throughout the 20th century. But more recently, immigrants have been moving to new destinations in the rural South and Midwest, drawing scholars like today’s guest, Vanesa Ribas, to closely monitor how race and labor dynamics might be playing out in these smaller communities. Dr. Ribas’ new book, On the Line: Slaughterhouse Lives and the Making of the New South, examines these changes through a case study centered around a meat packing plant in rural North Carolina.
In this episode, I talk to University of Minnesota Professor and Editor-In-Chief of TheSocietyPages Douglas Hartmann about his book Midnight Basketball: Race, Sports, and Neoliberal Social Policy. This conversation focuses on a 1990s crime initiative, known as midnight basketball, which aimed to curb crime by setting up late night basketball leagues in inner cities. While initially popular with democrats and republicans , including president George H. W. Bush, the program would eventually fall, being attacked by right-wing politicians and radio hosts alike, but it left behind a complex history with many implications for sports, race, and social policy today.
In this episode, I talk to University of Toronto professor Jooyoung Lee, author of Blowin’ Up: Rap Dreams in South Central. This conversation focuses on the book as well as Professor Lee’s experiences writing the book. For some context, set in South Central Los Angeles, Professor Lee worked in and around Project Blowed, an open mic venue that functioned as a kind of hub for a large underground hip-hop community in Los Angeles. For some vocabulary, “Blowin’ Up” refers to getting attention/ fame/ money/ recognition in wider society and a “Blowedian” is a member of Project Blowed. Our conversations covers topics from what it means to be an insider in ethnography, to Professor Lee’s experiences ‘defending the block’ from intruders with his dance skills.
Northwestern University professor Aldon Morris discusses W.E.B. Du Bois and the status of his work in the sociological canon. In this special hour-long episode, we explore the ongoing tension between social justice activism and the scientific features of contemporary sociology, especially as it is experienced by many black scholars today. Morris’ new book is called The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology.
In this episode, host Jack Delehanty speaks with Stanford sociologist Doug McAdam, whose 2014 co-authored book Deeply Divided: Racial Politics and Social Movements in Postwar America traces the roots of polarization in today’s politics back to the national struggle over civil rights in the 1960s. In their conversation, Jack and Doug focus particularly on tensions between modern social movements and the interests of party leaders developing in this year’s presidential election. They consider how the ongoing national conversation about racial inequality might be changing how Americans relate to major political parties.
Diversity is one of those concepts that is all but taken for granted as a good and desirable quality in American social life. However, as professor Ellen Berrey explains, the actual institutions and practices designed to promote diversity can sometimes obscure real inequalities and limit the ways we think about social justice. Her new book, The Enigma of Diveristy: The Language of Race and the Limits of Racial Justice, chronicles three cases – one at a university, one in a neighborhood, and one at a large corporation – that demonstrate some of the problems that the idealization of diversity raises for minorities in America today.
In this week’s episode, guest host Stephen Suh interviews Dr Lisa Cacho, who is an associate professor of Latina/Latino studies and Asian American studies at the University of Illinois. Together, they discuss Dr Cacho’s recent book Social Death: Racialized Rightlessness and the Criminalization of the Unprotected. In it, Dr Cacho explains the sociological concept of “social death” and how it often applies to racial minorities in America. Her book explores how the notion of a racial Other contributes to the criminalization of people on the basis of status, rather than their behavior.
In this episode, professor Joyce Bell explains the legacy of activists in community organizations that emerged as a result of the Black Power movement in the 1960s and 70s. Her work demonstrates both the resources and tensions that radical social movements bring to institutions in civil society. Her new book is called The Black Power Movement and American Social Work.