Mike Savage (Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science) wrote an article for The Conversation on changes in UK personal wealth and wealth inequality over time. “The UK, like many rich countries, has become much wealthier, and these benefits are being more widely spread,” Savage explains. However, Savage argues that this increase in wealth has been largely in private hands, with limited investment in the common good. Savage argues that the idea that wealth should be treated as a private good “leads to the deeply dysfunctional view that wealth assets are free to be amassed, spent and passed on by their owners with scant encroachment in the form of taxation.”

The Atlantic ran an article on the concept of “groupthink” and how it is often used as a negatively loaded term to explain catastrophic decision making. The article cites critiques of groupthink theory from Sally Riggs Fuller (Organizational Sociologist and former Professor at the University of South Florida) and Ramon Aldag (Professor of Management and Human Resources at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business). Contrary to “groupthink” theories that suggest that quick consensus leads to poor decision making, their research suggested that “tight-knit groups—ones with that cohesive “we-feeling”—tend to make better decisions.”

The Washington Post ran a story on how China is attracting scholars–particularly in STEM fields–in the wake of the Trump Administration’s funding cuts and immigration restrictions. The article cites research from Yu Xie (Professor of Sociology at Princeton University) and Junming Huang (Research Scientist at Princeton University), finding that “In the first six months of this year alone, about 50 tenure-track scholars of Chinese descent left U.S. universities for China” and “more than 70 percent of these departed scholars work in STEM fields.” Xie also commented that scholars relocating to China have to work in a more restrictive environment. “In China, scholars’ freedom at work is also constrained, as they are subject to bureaucratic control,” Xie said. “The university system in China is rigid.”

Canton Winer (Assistant Professor of Sociology at Northern Illinois University) wrote an article for The Conversation on people who feel that gender is “irrelevant, unimportant, pointless and, overall, not a helpful framework for understanding and defining themselves.” While the assumption that everyone has a gender identity is widespread, Winer describes how many individuals experience gender detachment. “Gender detachment isn’t just about not identifying as a man or a woman; it’s about not identifying with gender at all,” Winer explains.

Orlando Patterson (Professor of Sociology at Harvard University) appeared on the Economics Matters podcast to discuss the concept of freedom. He describes freedom as a concept originating in the ancient West and deeply connected to systems of slavery. Patterson discussed how the concept of freedom is related to three forms of power: 1) power to control your circumstances (including to control your own life and power over others); 2) power to liberate yourself from the control of others; and 3) power to participate in governance.

Ash Watson (Scientia Fellow and Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney) described the consequences of the digital divide in Australia in an NewsCop article. Nearly “6 million Australians have difficulty accessing the internet; this spans physical access, affording the internet and being confident and capable with their own abilities,” Watson described. As more services–including banking, news, housing applications, and government services–move online, many Australians are getting left behind. “The big consequence is that people can struggle to fully participate and feel that they don’t belong in Australian society as a result,” Watson said.

The Washington Post ran an article about shifting trends in cosmetic surgery–particularly a rise in breast implant removals and breast implants of smaller sizes, mirroring a broader cultural trend toward thinness. Alka Menon (Assistant Professor of Sociology at Yale University) explained that “cosmetic surgery moves on a trend model. Minimalism is the name of the game now.” Menon also commented on how social media accelerates cycles of beauty trends: “What took decades to shift from Marilyn Monroe to Kate Moss now happens in a few years. The algorithm determines what version of beauty you’re exposed to.”

BU’s Arts X Sciences Magazine highlighted Patrick Sheehan’s (Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boston University) work on start-up companies. Sheehan describes how ‘hype’ – a “collective emotional energy within companies that’s oriented towards this imagined future” – motivates workers to invest effort into companies that are likely to fail. He notes that Silicon Valley start-ups workers are primarily young men from elite schools: “They come to these start-ups, and they’re promised this grand vision of ‘We could become millionaires, change the world, make friends, and have a great time. And they work themselves to the bone, to the point of burnout, until physical and mental breakdown. This promise, this imagined future somehow enrolls these elite young men who have all the options in the world to grind themselves towards something that’s almost certainly not going to work out.”

The Atlantic ran an article on the practice of lowering the flag. The article describes that this practice was once a relatively rare practice of public mourning, but has become common in recent years. Nancy Berns (Professor of Sociology at Drake University) was quoted, describing flag lowering as a public ritual. She notes that the power of ritual does not lie in “the ritual itself, but in the meaning that people attach to it.” However, when the flag is lowered frequently, the public may not even realize the reason, generating a sense of unease instead of a sense of unity.

While efforts to censor children’s media were common during the mid-20th century, they focused on targeting violent or sexual content and were often bipartisan. Recent research from Michael Macy (Professor of Sociology at Cornell University), Adam Szetela (Writer; Ph.D. in English), and Shiyu Ji (Ph.D. Candidate at Cornell University) finds that censorship efforts are now more focused on political ideology (the political left targeting media that reinforces racism, sexism, and homophobia; the political right targeting media that promotes diversity or challenges traditional gender / sexuality norms). “When each side attacks cancel culture on the other side, the attacks do not cancel out – they additively contribute to the restriction of freedom of expression,” Macy commented. “When people see ‘freedom of expression’ as just another weapon to use in the culture wars, it contributes to the problem of censorship by demeaning free expression as a core societal value.” This story was covered by the Cornell Chronicle. 

Emine Fidan Elcioglu (Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto) wrote an article for The Conversation discussing YouTube’s role in the political education of young people in Canada. Elcioglu found that “young people now form political beliefs through two competing knowledge systems: a hollowed-out university, and YouTube’s attention economy.” While universities tend to highlight structural explanations for inequality, conservative influencers on YouTube tend to offer simple narratives and emotionally charged content that feels true.

A Georgetown University lecture series on Gaza featured Martin Shaw (historical sociologist and Professor Emeritus of International Relations and Politics at the University of Sussex) to discuss the process of defining genocides in legal courts. Shaw noted that “the relationship of war to genocide is a central paradox: Genocide must be distinguished from war, but it typically occurs within the context of war.” He also discussed how the United States and Israel are very influential in international courts, making it difficult to resolve issues without the support of Western nations. “The problem here is not non-intervention, but deep intervention on Israel’s side,” Shaw said. “International courts have been unprecedentedly active in this case, but they have also been unprecedentedly attacked by the United States and Israel and barely defended by Europe.” This story was covered by The Hoya.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (Professor at the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) appeared on an episode of The Opinions – a New York Times podcast – to discuss how Donald Trump has become America’s first “meme President.” McMillan Cottom commented on how Trump’s use of humor and embodiment of internet mediums has had his communication style politically effective: “We have really struggled with this in polite, elite discourse, where we associate humor with being a low form of communication, but humor resonates deeply with a cross section of people, and especially among younger people.”

In response to the Department of Justice’s push to investigate the Open Society Foundations (philanthropies funded by the billionaire George Soros), several sociologists discussed the state of civil society in the United States:

Christopher Justin Einolf (Professor of Sociology at Northern Illinois University) wrote an article for The Conversation on the impact of civil society, ”the dense network of groups, communities, networks and ties that stand between the individual and the modern state”, on democracy. He explains that America has had a historically strong civil society, which helps account for our success of long term democracy. However, authoritarian leaders tend to crack down on or defund civil society organizations.

Dylan J. Riley (Professor of Sociology at Berkeley) was interviewed in Dissent Magazine. Riley highlighted the differences between the current period and interwar Europe, such as the size of civil society networks, the role of social media, and leader’s approaches to foreign policy.

Laura Hall’s (Associate Professor of Sociology at Carlton University) new book, Bloodied Bodies, Bloody Landscapes: Settler Colonialism in Horror!, examines the influence of settler colonialism on common tropes of the horror genre. “Who, and where, are Indigenous people in horror?,” Hall writes. “The answer: everywhere and nowhere at once. Both disappeared but also obsessed over, the imagined Indian is projected to reinforce settler colonialism.” This story was covered by Quill & Quire.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration disbanded an advisory committee of experts that provided technical expertise to the U.S. Census Bureau. The committee reassembled and met this week, independently of the Census Bureau. “Will our scientific advice still find an ear at the Census Bureau? I do not know,” said Barbara Entwisle (Committee Chair and Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina). “However, it is a certainty that our recommendations will have no effect at all if we do not provide them.” This story was covered by the Associated Press.

The Washington Post ran a story on elected officials and other leaders cancelling in-person events due to concerns over political violence. “One of the goals of political violence is to totally transform civic culture,” Peter Simi (Professor of Sociology at Chapman University) commented. “If you’re not holding public events, you’re kind of doing the work of those who are kind of promoting political violence.”

In an article for The Conversation, Jeffrey Dixon (Professor of Sociology at College of the Holy Cross) discussed how artificial intelligence may impact American workers. Dixon argues that “America’s fusion of limited labor protections and aggressive AI adoption could create the perfect storm for widespread job insecurity.”

The New York Times ran an article discussing how hormonal birth control is discussed on social media–particularly the growing number of TikTok videos where women discuss negative side effects of birth control and encourage other women to question their doctors about contraception. The article quotes Amanda Stevenson (Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado, Boulder) on the connection between culture and law: “If we look at what happened between Roe v. Wade and Dobbs, we see a steady escalation of the stigmatization of abortions, and a steady escalation of legal restrictions on the provision of abortion care. Those two processes, stigmatization and legal restrictions are mutually reinforcing.”

David Garland’s (Professor of Sociology and Law at New York University) new book, Law and Order Leviathan: America’s Extraordinary Regime of Policing and Punishment, explores how and why policing and incarceration have become the basis of social order in the United States. Garland argues that “the theme connecting the myriad practices of the American penal state is the singular emphasis on control, not retribution, or restitution, or rehabilitation, but the imposition of restraints on offenders” and that penal control is used to compensate for a lack of political and economic systems of stabilizing communities. Garland discussed the book in an interview with Princeton University Press. 

Building Design ran an article urging architects to engage with sociology when designing homes. The article cites work by Monique Eleb (Professor at the Ecole d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais) and Anne Marie Chatelet (University of Strasbourg) on how domestic rituals have changed across generations and work by Sonia Lavadinho (Founder of Bfluid Prospective Research) on the increasing diversity in types of households as we live longer.

Robert Putnam (Research Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University) and Richard Reeves (Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution) wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times about the current “boy crisis” (how “boys and young men are unwoven from the fabric of our society”) and drawing parallels to the early 20th Century. Putnam and Reeves describe Progressive-era reform efforts and the emergence of child-serving organizations (such as Big Brothers, Boy Scouts, and the Y.M.C.A.). “We have boys seeking guidance. We have men seeking purpose. We have civic institutions desperate for male volunteers,” they describe. “We need to match the outpouring of civic energy, institutional innovation and readiness to experiment with risky new ideas that marked the “boy problem” reformers a century ago.”