politics

A closeup of a football on a turf field. Photo by Jean-Daniel Francoeur from Pexels under Pexels license.

In the United States the quasi-holiday Super Bowl LVIII is this Sunday, February 11th, 2024. This year the San Francisco 49ers face off against the Kansas City Chiefs. In the spirit of the Super Bowl, check out some sociology from us and our partners Engaging Sports and Contexts on the Super Bowl, football, and sports:

Originally posted February 13, 2020.

Over one million people will get engaged on Valentine’s Day, and as a result, diamond sales usually uptick around this time. Diamonds are both historical and cultural objects; they carry meaning for many — symbolizing love, commitment, and prestige. Diamonds are highly coveted objects, and scholars have found about 90 percent of American women own at least one diamond. In the 1990s, war spread throughout West Africa over these precious pieces of carbon, as armed political groups vied for control over diamond mines and their profits.

• Susan Falls. 2014. Clarity, Cut, and Culture: The Many Meanings of Diamonds. NYU Press.
• G. Smith. 2003. “The allure, magic, and mystery — A brief history of diamonds” The Journal of the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.

Given their role in financing brutal West African civil wars, diamonds became associated with violence and international refugee crises, rather than financial prosperity and love. Diamonds became pejoratively known as blood diamonds, or conflict diamonds, and consumers became more likely to perceive diamonds as the result of large scale violence and rape.  As a result, major diamond producers have attempted to reconstruct the symbolic meaning of diamonds, turning them into symbols of international development and hope.

• Lansana Gberie. 2009. African civil society, ‘Blood diamonds’ and the Kimberley Process. In Movers and Shakers: Social Movements in Africa, Ellis & van Kessel (eds). Brill Publishers: Leiden.
• Gavin Hilson & Mark Hirons & Robert Pijper. 2011. “When Diamonds Go Bust: Contextualising Livelihood Changes in Rural Sierra Leone.” Journal of International Development 23: 1068-1079.

As the diamond trade became immoral and socially unjust, new global norms emerged around corporate and consumer responsibility. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) lobbied for the diamond industry to change their behaviors and support of conflict mines while simultaneously creating new global norms and expectations. In the early 2000s, international NGOs, governments and the diamond industry came together to develop the Kimberley Process — to stop the trade of conflict diamonds. Today, 75 countries participate, accounting for 99% of the global diamond trade. 

• Lauren Bruffaerts. 2015.  “A diamantine struggle: redefining conflict diamonds in the Kimberley Process.” International Affairs 91(5): 1085-1101.
• Franziska Bieri and John Boli. 2011. “Trading Diamonds Responsibly: Institutional Explanations for Corporate Social Responsibility.” Sociological Forum 26(3): 501-526.

Bieri & Boli argue that when NGOs urge companies to employ social responsibility in their commercial practice, they are mobilizing a global moral order. Diamonds provide an example of how symbols, products, and meaning are socially and historically constructed and how this meaning can change over time. The case of blood diamonds also illustrates how changing global norms about what is and is not acceptable can redefine the expectations of how industries conduct business.

Originally posted on March 16, 2017

The United States and the United Nations have had a closely intertwined relationship since the organization’s founding in 1945. The UN deals with a broad range of issues around the globe, and its widespread influence is often controversial. However, the influence of the United Nation continues to be instrumental in promoting crucial human rights causes, and the reach of its aid is arguably beyond compare. Despite its numerous shortcomings, the UN plays a crucial role in promoting human rights norms across the globe.

Throughout the 1990s in particular, the United Nations took on a central role in the global justice process. It organized and funded international courts following episodes of mass violence, such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and it made indictments for egregious crimes possible for the first time (including the crime of genocide).  Sociologists find that the existence of these courts have a global impact in providing justice, and the trials seem to have a positive effect in reducing human rights violations in the long run.

• Kathryn Sikkink. 2011. The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Change World Politics. New York: Norton.
• Joachim Savelsberg. 2015 Representing Mass Violence: Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur. Oakland: University of California Press.

The judicial process alone cannot adequately address global human rights issues — humanitarianism and diplomacy also play key roles. The United Nation arguably plays the most dominant global role in these initiatives, with monumental campaigns addressing topics like hunger, refugee needs, and climate change. The UN has been criticized for showcasing Western ideals and not taking into account cultural contexts, such as early endeavors to reduce female genital cutting. However, the UN has made improvements and when programs are approached as an opportunity for partnership and not dominance, the outcomes can be quite positive. For example, the agency has taken great strides in promoting gender equality and access to education.

• Ann Quennerstedt and Mikael Quennerstedt. 2013. “Researching Children’s Rights in Education: Sociology of Childhood Encountering Educational Theory.” British Journal of Sociology of Education. 35(1): 115-132.
• Melanie M. Hughes, Mona Lena Krook, and Pamela Paxton. 2015. “Transnational Women’s Activism and the Global Diffusion of Gender Quotas.” International Studies Quarterly. 59(2): 357-372.
• Elizabeth Heger Boyle. 2002. Female Genital Cutting. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

On January 19, 2021, less than 24 hours before their swearing-in, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and their spouses, Dr. Jill Biden and Douglas Emhoff, stood at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial to light the first COVID-19 memorial. Looking out over the Reflecting Pool, they led a moment of silence to honor the more than 400,000 American lives lost to the deadly virus. Following months of government inaction and widespread denial,  this ceremony marked the first national commemoration of COVID victims. Despite its immediacy and ephemerality, the memorial shares much in common with other public memorials commemorating events of mass violence and loss of life. An interdisciplinary body of literature sheds light on public memorials’ complex, contested, and inherently political nature.  

Temporality, Immediate response, and Grassroots memorials

Many memorials begin organically, in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic event that captures public attention. For instance, in 1997, following Princess Diana’s sudden death, Londoners left more than 60 million flowers outside her homes at Kensington and Buckingham Palaces. Similarly, in the wake of 9/11, grassroots memorials to the victims sprang up on streetlights and walls throughout New York, in open areas near the Pentagon, and in the fields near the Flight 93 crash site outside Pittsburgh. These spontaneous and temporary memorials reflected the visceral public grief experienced and mediated in real time, in public and collective ways.

• Erika Doss. 2008. The Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials. Amsterdam University Press. 
• Elizabeth L. Greenspan. 2003. “Spontaneous Memorials, Museums, and Public History: Memorialization of September 11, 2001 at the Pentagon.” The Public Historian 25(2): 129-132. 

Official Memorials

When the immediate shock of traumatic events wears off, plans for official memorializations begin taking shape, often led by governmental bodies with input from both the public and private sectors. Around the globe, from Seoul, to Berlin, to Lower Manhattan, decisions about public memorials have grown increasingly democratic, as leaders seek out input and participation from community members and engaged groups. As with any other democratic process, memorial developments are subject to group conflicts and financial constraints. Decisions for public memorials such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, the Flight 93 National Memorial in Southeast Pennsylvania, or  the Memorial to Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, were  shaped by the interests of commemorated groups, long-term urban master plans, the goals of the tourism industry and the larger social significance memorials invoke among the broader public. 

• Quentin Stevens and Karen Franck. 2015. Memorials as Spaces of Engagement: Design, Use, and Meaning. Routledge.
• Quentin Stevens. 2020. “Decision-making processes for public memorials in Seoul: How well do they reflect and contribute to South Korea’s democracy?”. Politics and Space 38(7-8):1328-1347. 
• Quentin Stevens. 2013. “Masterplanning public memorials: a historical comparison of Washington, Ottawa, and Canberra.” Planning Perspectives 30(1):39-66. 
• Tanovic, Sabina. 2019. Designing Memory: The Architecture of Commemoration in Europe, 1914 to the Present. Cambridge University Press. 

The Contested Politics of Memory 

While highlighting traumatic events and experiences, permanent and temporary memorials often shape public discourse around politically charged topics. For example, the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, which blanketed the National Mall from 1987 to 1996, commemorating the predominantly queer victims of HIV/AIDS, helped break the silence around the deadly disease. Located immediately off the National Mall, the subterranean Vietnam Veterans Memorial – designed by the American sculptor Maya Lin – incited a public reckoning over an unpopular war that continues to stoke controversy. 

Still, various communities affected by AIDS – including BIPOC and working class communities – have expressed concern over the installment’s predominantly-gay focus, arguing non-queer AIDS victims’ expereinces were being overlooked. Just last summer, following the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis Police, cities across the US painted messages of support for global Black Lives Matter movement on city streets, sparking robust public debate on police violence and the use of public dollars on law enforcement. These debates are ongoing, signalling that rituals of commemoration are inherently fraught and contested processes.

Alongside loss of life, new forms of public commemorations have highlighted ‘experiences’ of trauma, abuse, and human rights violations and the survivors. With similar political goals, these politically-motivated installments aim to harness political energy around these salient topics in support of policy change, reparations, and broader societal awareness.

• Alexander, Jeffrey, Ron Eyerman, Bernhard Giesen, Neil J. Smelser, and Piotr Sztompka. 2004. Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press
• Alison Atkinson-Phillips. 2020. Remembering experience: Public memorials are not just about the dead anymore.” Memory Studies 00(0):1-16. 
• Carol Blair and Neil Michel. 2011. “The AIDS Memorial Quilt and Contemporary Culture of Public Commemoration.” Pp. 3-41 in Remembering the AIDS Quilt. East Lansing: Michigan University Press. 
• Jeffrey A. Bennet. 2011. “A Stitch in Time: Public Emotionality and the Repertoire of Citizenship.” Pp. 133-159 in Remembering the AIDS Quilt. East Lansing: Michigan University Press. 
• Jeffrey K. Olick. 2007. The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility. New York: Routledge.
• Robin Wagner-Pacifici and Barry Schwartz. 1991. “The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating a Difficult Past.” The American Journal of Sociology 97(2):376-420.
• Jason Williamson. 2016. “A Survivor’s Perspective on Memory and Memorial Culture: Recollections on the 20th Anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing.” Social Science Quarterly 97(1):101-104. 

2020 is a census year in the United States, meaning that this year represents the major moment of a constitutionally-mandated survey about the American population.

Since it was first introduced in the 18th century, the U.S. Census has always provided important data for guiding public policy and served as a crucial source of evidence for social science research. Considering we only get this chance once a decade, here at The Society Pages we took a quick census of our own content to bring you our favorites #TSPClassics about the Census. This collection covers a variety of topics, ranging from the nuts and bolts of conducting the Census itself, to how the history of the Census reflects and impacts changing racial and ethnic boundaries in the United States, and the variety of ways social scientists have used census data in conducting research and building theory. Read on!

The Census and Social Science: Lessons for and from Conducting Research

Advances in social science methodology and research have contributed to developments in the Census. Though it is a rare and large research endeavor unlike any other, the Census is a great example of theoretical and methodological considerations that social scientists grapple with every day. Not only does the Census give us a chance to put sociological theory and methodology into action, but Census data has been important in social science literature and research across a variety of fields.

As one of the largest endeavors in data collection, the Census has many complicated issues to consider as part of the practical processes involved with research and the interpretation of data.

• In this #TSPClassic episode of Office Hours, we hear from Robert M Groves, a sociologist who was then Director of the Census Bureau, about how the Census manages and works through such complications.
• In this Clipping, Robin Autry speaks with The Atlantic about how researchers clean census data to deal with ambiguous, fluid concepts such as race and ethnicity.
• Then, read this #TSPClassic from The Color Line about the preparation and planning behind the 2010 Census; how does such thinking relate to the 2020 Census?

Census data and related research can tell us a lot about our lives, particularly when it comes to where we live and how we work.

• Scholars have used such data to understand the history of urbanization and suburbanization in the United States; this Sociological Images post draws on census data to visualize the development of the modern American metropolis and contemporary communities.
• Read this Sociological Images post about inequalities in Americans’ commutes to work and access to transportation.
• Finally, see how Graphic Sociology uses on census data to discuss how unemployment and poverty relates to age, gender, and much more. 

The Census can tell us a lot about the big picture, but what can it tell you about yourself?

• In this article from Contexts, Leah Sabo reflects on how thinking about the Census can teach us about the individual and make us think about our own lives. Read on to spark your sociological imagination about privilege, neighborhoods, diversity, and much more.

The Census, and subsidiary projects it manages such as the American Community Survey (ACS), provide incredibly important data for social science research. Though the ACS reaches fewer people than the one-a-decade Census, it gathers information about ancestry, neighborhoods, and communities in more detail and with more regularity.

• In this #TSPClassic from Council on Contemporary Families, Philip Cohen challenges proposed budget cuts to the ACS and explains why it is important to fund this survey and social science in general.
• Furthermore, such research processes are important around the world; read a Sociological Images piece about what other censuses around the world look like, based on resources from the American Anthropological Association.

The Census and Race: The Social Construction of Race and Diversity in the USA

“Race” is a social construction. Social forces shape how physical characteristics and groups become seen in racialized ways, and this happens through a variety of cultural and material processes. The ways the Census approaches race, ethnicity, and identity have changed drastically over its centuries-long history; much of this reflects shifting norms about racial categories and racism itself in the United States. Census data thus shows us how race and racial landscapes change, and the complexities of race in the United States.

Racial identification on the Census has changed and evolved.

• This Sociological Images post describes how the Census’ racial categories have changed over the years
• This Sociological Images post describes shifts in Census practices regarding the measurement of race through appearance versus identity. 
• Be sure to read this summary of research on how the fluidity of racial identification on the Census can itself be a fluid process.
• These next two Clippings consider how the Census relates to the intersections of race, ethnicity, nationality, and citizenship: the first describes how the Census affects the historical development of “Hispanic” as an ethnic category, and the second points to complexities in measuring American-Indian identities in census data. 

Census research has been used to study racial inequality both past and present.

• This post from Sociological Images uses census data to illustrate discuss historical quantification of slavery.
• And this #TSPClassic via Council on Contemporary Families draws on census data to discuss how, despite the passage of fifty years since the Civil Rights Act, racial inequality and disadvantage persist in a variety of outcomes.
• Finally, read this Sociological Images post to learn more about racial residential segregation in several American metropolises.

The twenty-first century has witnessed the rise of unprecedented racial and ethnic diversity in the United States.

• This post from Council on Contemporary Families uses census data to capture how America’s children are growing up in a new era of everyday diversity
• And this #TSPClassic from Sociological Images shows racial and ethnic diversity within American families.
• This Sociological Images post considers potential contrasts between the demographics of the mid-20th and the mid-21st century.
• Along these lines, read this post from Color Lines about the rise of interracial marriage and families, particularly for Asian-Americans. 

The rise of difference and diversity has drawn discomfort, racial tensions, and backlash, and much of this comes from the ways that everyday people react to census data and population projects.

• This Clipping describes such reactions
• And this Clipping describes how census data can be used to stoke fears about immigration.
• Finally, be sure to read this #TSPClassic, a special feature about the “whitelash” against diversity.

As American diversity continues to rise, push back and resentment will surely continue to be relevant to how people use and react to census data. What will we see once the 2020 numbers come out?

Finally, it is important to recognize that rising racial diversity does not necessarily mean that racial inequality will disappear; in fact, sociologists often find the opposite. One such area of research is related to segregation and concentrated disadvantage, wherein non-white communities often have less cultural, political, and economic power.

• Be sure to read this Discoveries post about historical and contemporary racial segregation between the North and the South,
• And read this Clippings piece about how segregation persists despite an increasingly racially diverse population. 

As we move into a future of greater difference, such ideas are important to keep in mind; what will the 2020 Census tell us about race, diversity, and inequality?

We hope you enjoy these #TSPClassics as much as we do, and we look forward to working with the 2020 Census data!

During times of crisis, existing prejudices often become heightened. Fears about the current coronavirus, or COVID-19, have revealed rampant racism and xenophobia against Asians. Anti-Asian discrimination ranges from avoiding Chinese businesses to direct bullying and assaults of people perceived to be Asian. This discriminatory behavior is nothing new. The United States has a long history of blaming marginalized groups when it comes to infectious disease, from Irish immigrants blamed for carrying typhus to “promiscuous women” for spreading sexually transmitted infections. 

Historically, the Chinese faced blame time and again. In the 19th century, public health officials depicted Chinese immigrants as “filthy,” carriers of disease. These views influenced Anti-Chinese policies and practices, including humiliating medical examinations at Angel Island — the entry port for many Chinese immigrants coming to America — and the violent quarantine and disinfection of San Francisco’s Chinatown in the early 20th century when a case of the Bubonic plague was confirmed there. 

• Nayan Shah. 2010. Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown. University of California Press.
• Erika Lee and Judy Yung. 2010. Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America. Oxford University Press.
• Alan Kraut. 1994. Silent Travelers: Germs, Disease, and the Immigrant Menace. Basic Books.
• Howard Markel and Alexandra Minna Stern. 2002. “The Foreignness of Germs: The Persistent Association of Immigrants and Disease in American Society.” The Milbank Quarterly 80(4): 757-788.

Discrimination against the Chinese is one example among many. Such discrimination had nothing to do with their actual hygiene and health, and everything to do with their social position relative to other racial groups. It’s easy to look back on the xenophobic U.S. policies and behavior in earlier times. Let’s not fall into the same patterns today.

For more on xenophobia and coronavirus, listen to Erika Lee on a recent episode of NPR’s podcast, Code Switch.

This post was created in collaboration with the Minnesota Journalism Center. 

Coronavirus — also known as COVID-19 — has taken the global media world by storm. Over 2,000 have died and more than 79,000 are infected globally. The World Health Organization has been criticized for not declaring a public health emergency earlier than they did, but doctors including Dr. Emily Landon at the University of Chicago are saying that “people shouldn’t panic.” 

In cases of public health epidemics, whether people panic depends in part on how journalists cover the issue and which experts they cite. Journalists tend to quote official sources like government officials and public health officials to inform the public about outbreaks of illness including influenza, swine flu, Zika, Ebola, and more recently, coronavirus. Being quoted in news articles gives public health officials the opportunity to share their expertise on said topics to help inform readers about how to protect themselves and avoid infection. From a sociological perspective, focusing on the spread of information about pandemics and infectious diseases provides opportunities for scholars to comment on evolving social structures and processes in a way that will influence the biomedical sciences’ public and policy agenda.

• Mark Davis and Davina Lohm. 2020. Pandemics, Publics, and Narrative. Oxford University Press.
• Robert Dingwall, Lily M. Hoffman, and Karen Staniland. 2013. “Introduction: Why a Sociology of Pandemics?” Sociology of Health & Illness 35(2): 167–173.
• Mark Davis, Davina Lohm, Paul Flowers, Emily Waller, and Niamh Stephenson. 2014. “We Became Sceptics”: Fear and Media Hype in General Public Narrative on the Advent of Pandemic Influenza.” Sociological Inquiry 84(4): 499–518.

As epidemiologist Adam Kucharski wrote in The Guardian, “stories sparking fear seem to have overtaken the outbreak in real life” and misinformation (a topic The Society Pages has written about here) seems to be more contagious than the virus itself. The “need for speed” in publishing journalistic updates about the virus as well as scholarly work has resulted in several retractions, including the retraction of a preprint of a scholarly paper after its analysis was found to be faulty. 

Further, the spread of information — and misinformation, including conspiracy theories — about health crises often occurs on social media platforms including Twitter and Instagram. Scholars found that false information spread especially quickly during Ebola outbreaks in West Africa and in the Zika outbreak in Brazil, which led to the formation of counterproductive policies passed by public health officials who struggled to combat false claims. In recent years, Instagram was found to be the most effective platform for health organizations including Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, and Doctors without Borders to engage followers during global health crises.

• John M. Carey, Victoria Chi, D. J. Flynn, Brendan Nyhan, and Thomas Zeitzoff. 2020. “The Effects of Corrective Information about Disease Epidemics and Outbreaks: Evidence from Zika and Yellow Fever in Brazil.” Science Advances 6(5).
• Jeanine P.D. Guidrya, Yan Jin, Caroline A.Orr, Marcus Messner, and Shana Meganck. 2017. “Ebola on Instagram and Twitter: How Health Organizations Address the Health Crisis in their Social Media Engagement.” Public Relations Review 43(3): 477–486.
• Anthony Stefanidis, Emily Vraga, Georgios Lamprianidis, Jacek Radzikowski, Paul L Delamater, Kathryn H Jacobsen, Dieter Pfoser, Arie Croitoru, and Andrew Crooks. 2017. “Zika in Twitter: Temporal Variations of Locations, Actors, and Concepts.” JMIR Public Health and Surveillance 3(2).

Scholars, including Dr. Anita Varma, recently published five tips for journalists on covering coronavirus. These include paying attention to the frames used and including quotes from official sources like government officials as well as the people directly affected by the health concern. Dr. Karin Wahl-Jorgensen published an article on the role that fear plays in narratives about public health crises. The bottom line is: The way stories are told matters and affects the management of pandemics and policy responses.

• Alessio Cornia, Marina Ghersetti, Paolo Mancini, and Tomas Odén. 2016. “The Partisans, the Technocrats and the Watchdogs.” Journalism Studies 17(8): 1030–1050.
• Chi Kit Chan. 2016. “Defining Health Risk by Media Template: Hong Kong’s News Discourse of the Swine Flu Pandemic.” Journalism 17(8): 1018–1036.

• Peter Ruigrok and Nel Vasterman. 2013. “Pandemic Alarm in the Dutch Media: Media Coverage of the 2009 Influenza A (H1N1) Pandemic and the Role of the Expert Sources.” European Journal of Communication.

This post was created in collaboration with the Minnesota Journalism Center. 

Objectivity and neutrality have been cornerstone norms of journalistic practice in democracies in the Western world for over a century. However, in recent years ideals of fairness, accuracy, and balance have come under increasing attack from many different and sometimes unexpected directions. 

Many beliefs about the need for media objectivity go back to Alexis de Tocqueville’s 19th century argument that the circulation of newspapers are integral to fostering a functional and effective democracy. Indeed, objectivity became a news value in the 1830s, partly to do with the rise of the Associated Press (AP), created in 1848 by a group of New York newspapers that wanted to take advantage of the speed of the telegraph in transmitting news to multiple outlets. To transmit news to a variety of news outlets with a variety of political allegiances consistently, a sense of objectivity had to be maintained to be relevant to as wide an audience and clientele as possible. 

• Michael Schudson. 1981. Discovering The News: A Social History Of American Newspapers. New York, NY: Basic Books.

• Gaye Tuchman. 1972. Objectivity as Strategic Ritual: An Examination of Newsmen’s Notions of Objectivity. American Journal of Sociology 77(4): 660–679.

Cutting against these norms was the sensationalism of newspaper content in the late 19th century. While the use of emotion in reporting has often been connected to the commercialization and tabloidization of journalism, in recent years it has also appeared in coverage of disasters, crises, and human rights abuses — and has come to be seen as positive and valuable as well. The roles of objectivity and impartiality have always been contested within journalistic practice, so rather than seeing emotion as the opposite of objectivity, some scholars now argue it can come alongside and inform journalistic practice worldwide.

• Karin Wahl-Jorgensen. 2019. Emotions, Media and Politics. Medford, MA, USA: Polity.
• Matt Carlson. 2017. Journalistic Authority: Legitimating News in the Digital Era. Columbia University Press.
• Valerie Bélair‐Gagnon. 2013. Revisiting Impartiality: Social Media and Journalism at The BBC. Symbolic Interaction 36(4): 478–492.

The role of objectivity has also come into question as a mechanism that can silence marginalized writers and populations. Relatedly, news can also reinforce institutions of power in society, for better or for worse. In populist countries including Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, “professional journalism” is often pitted against “militant journalism” promoted by neo-populist governments and their sympathizers — a movement that has critical implications for the freedom of the press in societies in the Global South. Also, news media has been found to negatively portray protests and protesters.

• Danielle Kilgo and Summer Harlow. 2019. “Protests, Media Coverage, and a Hierarchy of Social Struggle.” The International Journal of Press/Politics 24(4): 508–530. 
• Lewis Raven Wallace. 2019. The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity. University of Chicago Press.

• Silvio Waisbord. 2013. Reinventing Professionalism: Journalism and News in Global Perspective. Cambridge: Polity.

Over one million people will get engaged on Valentine’s Day, and as a result, diamond sales usually uptick around this time. Diamonds are both historical and cultural objects; they carry meaning for many — symbolizing love, commitment, and prestige. Diamonds are highly coveted objects, and scholars have found about 90 percent of American women own at least one diamond. In the 1990s, war spread throughout West Africa over these precious pieces of carbon, as armed political groups vied for control over diamond mines and their profits.

• Susan Falls. 2014. Clarity, Cut, and Culture: The Many Meanings of Diamonds. NYU Press.
• G. Smith. 2003. “The allure, magic, and mystery — A brief history of diamonds” The Journal of the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.

Given their role in financing brutal West African civil wars, diamonds became associated with violence and international refugee crises, rather than financial prosperity and love. Diamonds became pejoratively known as blood diamonds, or conflict diamonds, and consumers became more likely to perceive diamonds as the result of large scale violence and rape.  As a result, major diamond producers have attempted to reconstruct the symbolic meaning of diamonds, turning them into symbols of international development and hope.

• Lansana Gberie. 2009. African civil society, ‘Blood diamonds’ and the Kimberley Process. In Movers and Shakers: Social Movements in Africa, Ellis & van Kessel (eds). Brill Publishers: Leiden.
• Gavin Hilson & Mark Hirons & Robert Pijper. 2011. “When Diamonds Go Bust: Contextualising Livelihood Changes in Rural Sierra Leone.” Journal of International Development 23: 1068-1079.

As the diamond trade became immoral and socially unjust, new global norms emerged around corporate and consumer responsibility. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) lobbied for the diamond industry to change their behaviors and support of conflict mines while simultaneously creating new global norms and expectations. In the early 2000s, international NGOs, governments and the diamond industry came together to develop the Kimberley Process — to stop the trade of conflict diamonds. Today, 75 countries participate, accounting for 99% of the global diamond trade. 

• Lauren Bruffaerts. 2015.  “A diamantine struggle: redefining conflict diamonds in the Kimberley Process.” International Affairs 91(5): 1085-1101.
• Franziska Bieri and John Boli. 2011. “Trading Diamonds Responsibly: Institutional Explanations for Corporate Social Responsibility.” Sociological Forum 26(3): 501-526.

Bieri & Boli argue that when NGOs urge companies to employ social responsibility in their commercial practice, they are mobilizing a global moral order. Diamonds provide an example of how symbols, products, and meaning are socially and historically constructed and how this meaning can change over time. The case of blood diamonds also illustrates how changing global norms about what is and is not acceptable can redefine the expectations of how industries conduct business.

Originally published July 30, 2019.

As candidates gear up for this week’s democratic debates, constituents continue to voice concerns about the student debt crisis. Recent estimates indicate that roughly 45 million students in the United States have incurred student loans during college. Democratic candidates like Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have proposed legislation to relieve or cancel  this debt burden. Sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom’s congressional testimony on behalf of Warren’s student loan relief plan last April reveals the importance of sociological perspectives on the debt crisis. Sociologists have recently documented the conditions driving student loan debt and its impacts across race and gender. 

In recent decades, students have enrolled in universities at increasing rates due to the “education gospel,” where college credentials are touted as public goods and career necessities, encouraging students to seek credit. At the same time, student loan debt has rapidly increased, urging students to ask whether the risks of loan debt during early adulthood outweigh the reward of a college degree. Student loan risks include economic hardship, mental health problems, and delayed adult transitions such as starting a family. Individual debt has also led to disparate impacts among students of color, who are more likely to hail from low-income families. Recent evidence suggests that Black students are more likely to drop out of college due to debt and return home after incurring more debt than their white peers. Racial disparities in student loan debt continue into their mid-thirties and impact the white-Black racial wealth gap.

• Jason N. Houle and Fenaba R. Addo. 2018. “Racial Disparities in Student Debt and the Reproduction of the Fragile Black Middle Class.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.
• Jason N. Houle and Cody Warner. 2017. “Into the Red and Back to the Nest? Student Debt, College Completion, and Returning to the Parental Home among Young Adults.” Sociology of Education 90(1): 89-108.
• Brandon A. Jackson and John R. Reynolds. 2013. “The Price of Opportunity: Race, Student Loan Debt, and College Achievement.” Sociological Inquiry 83(3): 335-368.

Other work reveals gendered disparities in student debt. One survey found that while women were more likely to incur debt than their male peers, men with higher levels of student debt were more likely to drop out of college than women with similar amounts of debt. The authors suggest that women’s labor market opportunities — often more likely to require college degrees than men’s — may account for these differences. McMillan Cottom’s interviews with 109 students from for-profit colleges uncovers how Black, low-income women in particular bear the burden of student loans. For many of these women, the rewards of college credentials outweigh the risks of high student loan debt.

• Rachel E. Dwyer, Randy Hodson, and Laura McCloud. 2013. “Gender, Debt, and Dropping Out of College.” Gender & Society 27(1): 30-55.
• Tressie McMillan Cottom. 2017. Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy. New York: The New Press.