Arlie Russell Hochschild (Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley) was interviewed in Salon, discussing how former president Donald Trump appeals to white, working class voters. “I think we live in both a material economy and a pride economy,” Hochshild explained. While Trump’s policies as president did not materially help these voters, “Trump helped those same poor and working-class white people feel proud and seen again. He talked about national pride and Making America Great Again. His voters feel that language and take it personally.”
The MacArthur Foundation announced its ‘Genius’ fellowship recipients for 2024, including several sociologists. Loka Ashwood’s (Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of Kentucky) work focuses on helping communities overcome environmental injustices. Ruha Benjamin (Associate Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University) studies how technology reproduces inequalities. Dorothy Roberts (Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania) examines racial inequalities within social service systems. This story was covered by the New York Times.
Diario de Cuba ran a story on the “migration crisis” in Cuba, as large numbers of Cuban people are emigrating out of the country, and the effects on children and families. Helen Ochoa Calvo (Sociologist from Cienfuegos, Cuba) commented that migration had become “the only solution left for those who can and want to live a dignified life through their work, the regime has left them with no other.” Ochoa Calvo described the current migration as the most distressing separation of parents and children since the Cuban Revolution: “Not only are parents leaving their younger children behind, they’re also leaving their older parents.”
Blake R. Silver’s (Associate Professor of Sociology at George Mason University) new book, Degrees of Risk: Navigating Insecurity and Inequality in Public Higher Education, examines the ways in which colleges and universities create uncertainty for students. In an interview with The Conversation, Silver describes that many universities experiencing funding cuts create flexible programming and offer a range of optional resources. “Though abundant choices and flexibility may seem broadly appealing, research shows that they can make it difficult to anticipate next steps, and it’s easy for students to get lost,” Silver explains. “This most directly impacts students whose families are less familiar with navigating college and those with few economic resources to recover from missteps.”
GW Today interviewed Elizabeth Vaquera (Associate Professor of Sociology at George Washington University) about how Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are appealing to Latino voters in the upcoming election. Vaquera explains that we very rarely see politicians considering the diversity of Latino populations and focusing solely on immigration is a poor strategy to win Latino votes. “For Latino voters, it’s not all about immigration. The majority of Latinos in the United States are not even immigrants themselves,” Vaquera notes. “They are worried about the same issues as everybody else. The economy is always at the top of their concerns. Jobs, education and health care are all very important to them. Abortion has become a singular issue for some in the Latino community.”
Brooke Harrington (Professor of Sociology at Dartmouth College) appeared on C-SPAN to discuss offshore finance, a system in which countries “sell secrecy to very rich people,” allowing them to protect assets and/or hide money from tax authorities. Harrington describes how many nations that are struggling financially (especially smaller island nations that were with a history of colonization) participate in the global finance system as a way to boost their economies. However, offshore finance tends to end up “undermining democracy and ultimately hollowing out the economy of these countries.” Harrington’s recent book, Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism, explores this system in-depth.
The New York Timesran a story on the emerging support of moderate republican lawmakers from labor unions. Jake Rosenfeld (Professor of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis) commented that recent pro-worker rhetoric from prominent Republicans (including former President Trump) “might be giving cover to more down-ballot Republicans” to adopt pro-union stances. “Ten or 15 years ago, if you staked out a real pro-union position as a G.O.P. lawmaker, you were going to be hearing from the Chamber of Commerce or the National Association of Manufacturers,” Rosenfeld explained.
Parker Muzzerall (PhD Candidate in Sociology at the University of British Columbia) wrote an article for The Conversation about oil and gas workers’ responses to Canada’s efforts to achieve a net-zero energy economy. Muzzerall’s work reveals that many oil and gas workers have a strong sense of regional pride for oil and gas communities and believe that “the federal government and Canadians in other parts of the country do not care about them and their feelings of being excluded from Canada’s vision for the future.”
Ryan Larson (Assistant Professor of Criminology at Hamline University) appeared on MPR to discuss new research on the mental health effects of the police murder of George Floyd on Minneapolis residents. The study found that Black residents had more negative mental health consequences than White and Latino residents. “Often in epidemiological studies, advantage, say, wealth or socioeconomic status will often serve as a buffer against health problems,” Larson explained. However, in this case, “Black residents living in the most disadvantaged as well as the most advantaged spaces in Minneapolis both saw a pretty similar increase in mental health diagnoses across the city.”
The New York Times ran a story on intensive parenting (involving “painstakingly and methodically cultivating children’s talents, academics and futures through everyday interactions and activities”) and parents’ mental health, citing Melissa Milkie (Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto) and Kei Nomaguchi (Professor of Sociology at Bowling Green State University). Milkie and Nomaguchi describe that pressure on parents has increased in recent years: social media enables comparison to other parents, parents feel pressure to make up for opportunities lost during the pandemic, rapid changes in technology and the nature of work make it difficult to prepare children for the future, and faith that the government can help struggling families has dwindled. “In the U.S., it’s this sense of individualism: You chose to have kids, so go raise them,” Milkie said, “Parents need the village, but people are not as available as they were.”
Following a fatal police-action shooting in Fort Wayne, IN, Amanda Miller (Professor of Sociology at the University of Indianapolis) appeared on 21 Alive News to discuss the wide-reaching effects of police-action shootings. Miller noted that violent events can cause stress and anxiety for individuals who are not directly involved. “Even if you have a very low risk of experiencing violent crime, it can make you feel as if the world is less safe as a result of some of these things happening,” Miller said. Additionally, Miller described how police-action shootings can generate suspicion and mistrust of both law enforcement officers and neighbors
The Economic Times ran a story on how women are often given less clear and candid feedback at work than their male peers, hindering their career advancement. The article cites a recent study by Laura K. Nelson (Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia), Alexandra Brewer (Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California) and colleagues, which found that female emergency medicine residents were more likely to receive inconsistent feedback on their work (either positive numerical scores paired with criticism or low numerical scores paired with praise). The article also cites work by Shelley Correll (Professor of Sociology and Organizational Behavior at Stanford University) and colleagues, finding that managers at a Fortune 500 company often buffered critiques of female employees with praise in performance reviews. Written or verbal feedback that is inconsistent with numerical scores can leave female employees without actionable steps to improve their performance.
The New York Times published an article on recent calls for “viewpoint diversity” in academia. Neil Gross (Professor of Sociology at Colby College) commented that viewpoint diversity “is a very ambiguous term. And that gives it a little bit more power” than ideological diversity or political diversity. However, many advocates for viewpoint diversity point to the need for more conservatives on faculties and in syllabuses. Gross’ work indicates that academia, compared to most other professions, employs a higher percentage of liberal employees. However, in a survey of undergraduates, Gross found that 60% of students felt that professors did a “very good” or “pretty good” job of facilitating discussion of political topics where students had opposing views and 90% of students reported that professors “rarely,” “never,” or “occasionally” discussed their own political views.
Julia Sonnevend (Associate Professor of Sociology and Communications at the New School for Social Research) was interviewed by Public Seminar about her new book Charm: How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics. Sonnevend discussed how political charm is evaluated by (often fragmented) audiences and how the charm of a political leader affects views of their country: “We simply pay more attention to personalities than to institutions, values, or even facts. If you think about the international context, we are often talking about countries Americans know very little about. And when there is a relatable political character, or a character who we really dislike, it is easier to put the country in a box.”
Eric Klinenberg (Professor of Social Science at New York University) wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times arguing that there is an “urgent need to make dangerous heat more recognizable.” Klinenberg discusses how, despite the fact that deaths due to heat waves typically outnumber deaths from hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods combined, Americans are “quick to forget” heat waves. Klinenberg argues that major heat waves should be named (like major storms are named, e.g. “Hurricane Katrina” or “Superstorm Sandy”) to help us “recognize it as an enemy and mobilize support for public projects” to avoid future climate disasters.
Pesquisa ran an article on homelessness in Brazil, which has grown about 211% from 2012 to 2022. Research from the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA) indicates that the primary reasons for homelessness are financial hardship, broken family ties, and health issues (particularly related to addiction). Marco Antônio Carvalho Natalino (Sociologist at the Institute of Applied Economic Research) explains that “the reason for homelessness influences its duration,” and homelessness due to family or health issues tends to last longer. Fraya Frehse (Professor of Sociology at the University of São Paulo) commented that the spread of homelessness is a global reality.
Ahead of the U.S. presidential debate, Tressie McMillan Cottom (Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science) joined four other New York Times columnists in an online discussion on the candidates and their potential pathways to winning the election. McMillan Cottom noted that “Trump is a known entity. He does not have to “win” the debate…he has to win the media cycle. His biggest risk is being ineffectual at commanding attention.” For Harris, the “best path to winning is through historic turnout and enthusiasm.” McMillan Cottom emphasized the importance of selling a compelling story to scared, angry voters: “The big story of Trump’s win in 2016 was that voters were angry and experts missed it. … The story in this election is that voters are still angry and we may still be missing it. I spent time talking to female voters in nail salons, hair salons and waxing salons. … The women I talked to in those female spaces are angry and afraid. As one low-information voter told me, she wants someone to look like a fighter.”
David Karen (Professor of Sociology at Bryn Mawr) is featured in the recently released film Love 2020. The film is about the 2020 US Open–the first major international event held during the COVID-19 pandemic. Karen commented that it “was a delight to talk with Jacqueline Joseph, the director of the film, about so many things that I’m passionate about: tennis, New York City, the role of sports in our lives, and movements for social justice.” This story was covered by Bryn Mawr News.
And Some Bonus Clippings:
Arlie Russell Hochschild’s new book, Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right, was covered by WBUR and theBoston Globe.
Sherry Turkle’s interview for Body Electricdiscussing the effects of AI chatbots on relationships was re-publicized on NPR last week.
Following a school shooting in Winder, GA, the New York Times ran a story on gun laws in Georgia, noting that the state does not have a “red-flag law”–a measure allowing judges to order a temporary confiscation of firearms if there is a credible risk of harm. Jeffrey W. Swanson (Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University) commented that transitioning between adolescence and young adulthood is “a relatively high-risk time, particularly for young men, for not just mass shootings, but violence and aggression” and that red-flag protection law “is an important policy because it’s nimble, it’s risk-based and focused on individual circumstances.”
Scott Thumma (Professor of Sociology of Religion at Hartford International University) appeared on PBS News, discussing megachurches (religious congregations with 2,000+ worshipers) and the recent resignation of several high-profile pastors . Thumma explains that “many people flock to them because they [have] all of the amenities that people were looking for in a congregation. They had robust Sunday school programs, youth programs and exciting worship.” About 40% of megachurches are nondenominational, making them “accountable only to themselves.” Thumma notes that “we don’t have really good data on congregations and the incidence of misconduct across all congregations, but certainly anything that happens in a megachurch…gets amplified because they have such a high profile.”
The New York Times ran a story on escalating tensions in many labor unions between union leaders and left-leaning union members calling for the union to take a stance on the war in Gaza and other issues outside the workplace. Ruth Milkman (Professor of Sociology at the City University of New York) commented that “insofar as the new energy [in the labor movement is about young people] — and it mostly is — part of what comes with that is Gaza being a high priority.” Milkman added that union leaders have generally aligned their unions with Democratic politicians and may be reluctant to “take strong stands on anything that might risk political capital” or their access to party leaders.
Earlier this summer, a 17-year-old killed three girls and injured ten people in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, UK. Following the attack, false rumors spread online that the attacker was an asylum seeker or Muslim immigrant. The misinformation–linked to the far-right movement–prompted a series of violent riots across the UK, in which mosques and a hotel used to house asylum seekers were targeted. Stephanie Alice Baker (Reader in Sociology at City St. George’s, University of London) commented that the UK has “a wide populist movement that is being sowed and cultivated both online and offline.” However, Baker emphasized that “there is never one reason or cause for a riot,” but rather “a complex web of social, political and economic” factors. “There is no doubt that people across the country are experiencing a cost-of-living crisis, mortgage rates and rents have skyrocketed. People are struggling to make ends meet,” Baker explains. “At the same time, there has been a rise in immigration, which many perceived to be the cause, but obviously is a scapegoat.” This story was covered by City University of London.
Ruth Horowitz’s (Professor of Sociology at New York University) new book, Passionate Work: Choreographing a Dance Career, studies dancers in the corps de ballet and how they sustain a passion for dance through a profession characterized by uncertainty. In an interview with Pointe Magazine, Horowitz highlights the camaraderie of being in the corps: “Being in the corps brings people together in ways other positions in the company can’t, because you can’t do a triple pirouette if everyone else is doing a double. So while ballet can be very competitive, being in the corps requires a lot of teamwork and a certain amount of cohesiveness that is a building block for some of these deep-seated relationships.”
The Nation ran an article on Michael Sierra-Arévalo’s (Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas – Austin) recent book The Danger Imperative. Sierra-Arévalo examines police culture and how it shapes interactions with the public. He describes the “danger imperative” as “policing’s governing institutional frame,” which includes a preoccupation with violence and officer safety, leading officers to treat every interaction as a potential emergency.
The New York Times ran a story on a prominent video creator of the homesteading movement (which focuses on living self-sufficiently and off-the-grid) who broadcasts the lifestyle to millions of social media followers. Jordan Travis Radke (Director of the Collaborative for Community Engagement at Colorado College) commented that members of the homesteading movement have varied backgrounds and political alignments, but agree that while “the societal systems and structures in which they were embedded could not be changed anymore,” their lifestyles could be changed. “The modern homesteading movement’s big idea is that, rather than trying to change the world collectively and publicly, people are trying to reshape their private sphere — their worlds, their homes, their own tiny network,” Radke said. “They’re changing their lives, but they want other people to see it, because they want others to follow suit.”
Vice President Kamala Harris announced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate for the upcoming presidential election. Republicans are criticizing Walz’s response to the mass protests following the 2020 police murder of George Floyd, saying Walz “let Minnesota burn” by not bringing in the National Guard quickly enough. In an article for USA Today, Michelle Phelps (Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota) explains that National Guard activation had to be requested by the mayor, as managing unrest was the city’s responsibility. “To say that [Walz] let Minnesota or Minneapolis burn is just a wild misconstruing of the facts,” Phelps said. “It was a response to a really unusual set of circumstances, and I think they responded as fast as was reasonably possible, given the scale of the operation.” In an article for BBC, Phelps added that a more forceful response could have backfired: “There’s a vision in which if we had had a more conservative governor that escalated the state response in the way that President Trump wanted, we would have seen more violence and more destruction,” she said.
Francisco Lara-García (Assistant Professor of Sociology at Hofstra University) was recently interviewed in The Markup discussing the “virtual wall” of digital surveillance along the US-Mexico border and the relationship to surveillance among those who live in border towns. “One thing that is kind of a paradox about living and having lived on the border is that there are moments when you can’t not be aware of the intense amount of enforcement and surveillance and activity across the border. But at the same time, it also just becomes a fabric of your life that you don’t notice, or you just don’t pay attention to it,” Lara-García said. “Part of that is because it gets normalized, but also sometimes because there’s surveillance and enforcement that actually just doesn’t impact your life at a particular moment.”
The New York Times ran a story on the “step gap” in senior care. A 2021 study led by Sarah Patterson (Research Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan) found that among older adults needing assistance, about half of adults with biological children received care from them, while fewer than a quarter of adults in blended families received care from their step-children. “We have more reconfigured families than ever before, and these families may increasingly rely on someone who’s not a biological child. In general, those relationships tend to be less close,” Deborah Carr (Director of the Center of Innovation in Social Science and Professor of Sociology at Boston University) commented. Merril Silverstein (Professor of Sociology at Syracuse University) added that relationship quality also depends on the age at which a step-parent enters a child’s life: “When a new father comes in and you’re in your 50s, are you going to call him Dad?” Silverstein asked.
In her forthcoming book, Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right, Arlie Russell Hochschild (Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley) interviews residents of Pikeville, KY, a small city located in the whitest and second-poorest U.S. congressional district where 80% of 2016 voters supported Donald Trump. Hochschild finds a pervasive sense of loss. “There’s a regional story, and that’s that coal jobs are out. They have blamed the liberal war on coal for that loss. Opiate addiction has come in big time and hasn’t stopped,” Hochschild told Democracy Now. “And now many are leaving the region, the young, the most educated. And so, this becomes an area of loss.” Hochschild describes how economic loss can spark shame and describes Donald Trump as the ‘shame president’: “He comes in with an anti-shaming ritual that relieves them of this. And I think that’s a lot of the steam behind the MAGA enthusiasts for the Republican ticket.”
On July 13th, former President Donald Trump survived an attempted assassination at a campaign rally in Butler, PA. Katherine Stewart (author and journalist) and Samuel Perry (Professor of Sociology at the University of Oklahoma) appeared on Vanity Fair’s Inside the Hive podcast to discuss the political impact of Christian Nationalism and how the assassination attempt may reinforce Trump’s messiah-like image among followers. “Everybody’s saying it’s providence, he was saved by God,” Stewart said. “A sector of the movement has, frankly, consistently framed the contemporary political landscape as being one of spiritual warfare.” Perry added that the Republican Party has powerfully harnessed religion as a uniting message and that Democrats need to define a shared value system: “‘What unites us as a people?’ Well, in their mind, it’s this Christian heritage and ethnic culture that they adhere to. But for the rest of Americans, what does unite us?”
Callum Cant (Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford) wrote an opinion piece for The Guardian on the narrow defeat for union recognition for Amazon employees in the U.K. Following a wave of strikes in U.K. warehouses in 2022, Cant describes that Amazon “had to use every trick in its extensive union-busting playbook to secure the result.” Cant argues that Amazon’s razor-thin victory indicates that global efforts for union recognition are at a tipping point and, under harsh economic conditions, “workers may find that they have no other choice but to get organized.”
Chua Beng Huat’s (Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Anthropology at the National University of Singapore) recent book, Public Subsidy / Private Accumulation: the Political Economy of Singapore’s Public Housing, offers an analysis of housing in Singapore and the increasingly visible problems with Housing Board flats. Huat argues that the government faces a delicate balancing act between curbing runaway housing prices that are preventing young, first-time buyers from buying their first flat and maintaining the value of homes as a primary asset for older owners. Huat also notes that buy-sell-repurchase cycles of Housing Board (HDB) flats may contribute to inequalities: “The younger generation is more calculative about making a profit from HDB, but in practice, only those with higher income among the residents are able to upgrade.” This story was covered by The Straits Times.
Sherry Turkle (Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) was interviewed for NPR’s Body Electricto discuss her latest research on people’s experiences with generative AI chatbots. Turkle describes how some individuals she interviewed formed emotional or romantic connections to the chatbots. “What AI can offer is a space away from the friction of companionship and friendship,” Turkle said. “It offers the illusion of intimacy without the demands. And that is the particular challenge of this technology.”
In France’s recent parliamentary election, the left-wing New Popular Front coalition won more seats than both the centrist Ensemble Alliance and far-right National Rally party (which was predicted to emerge with the most seats). Safia Dahani (Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology at the European Centre for Sociology and Political Science) commented to the New York Times that “at every election, racist, antisemitic, sexist or homophobic comments made by National Rally candidates” raise suspicion among voters, despite the party’s efforts to sanitize its image. However, as Dahani commented on The Conversation Weekly, the election was not a total defeat for the National Rally party: “They gained more seats than they had in 2022. They are the third force represented in the National Assembly … So it means that they are here and they are settling in to French political life.”
Terry Shoemaker (Associate Teaching Professor in Religious Studies at Arizona State University) wrote an article for The Conversation applying sociologist Robert Bellah’s concept of “civil religion” to the Summer Olympics and describing how the Olympic Games provide a sacred arena to perform patriotism.
In a new study, Sofia Hiltner (PhD Candidate in Sociology at the University of Michigan) found that there is little focus on climate change in leading sociology journals, conference sessions, faculty biographies and course listings in top-ranked U.S. sociology departments in the U.S. “This deficit threatens sociology’s relevance to human welfare,” Hiltner said. “It also limits our understanding of the climate crisis as a social problem and our ability to imagine responses.” This story was reported by Phys.Org.
Jessi Streib (Associate Professor of Sociology at Duke University) wrote an article for The Conversation describing how hiring practices (and luck) can equalize opportunities for college graduates of different socioeconomic backgrounds. Many prospective employers hide key job information (salary range, detailed job descriptions, criteria for evaluation, etc.) and refuse to negotiate with new hires. This can lead to less income disparity for new hires, as all students are navigating their job searches with limited information.
In a New York Times audio essay, Matthew Desmond (Professor of Sociology at Princeton University) interviews a resident of the Water Street Mission shelter in Lancaster, PA – a shelter striving to “address not just people’s material needs, like housing and employment, but the whole person, including their emotional, even their spiritual needs.” Desmond calls for mobilizing resources to alleviate poverty and homelessness: “When it comes to abolishing poverty or solving the homelessness crisis, America’s problem has never been a lack of resources. Our problem has been a lack of moral clarity, moral urgency.”
Public Books interviewed Allison Pugh (Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia) about her new book The Last Human Job: the Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World. In the book, Pugh discusses the value of “connective labor” ( the “collaborative work of emotional recognition”) and discusses how technological advances and mechanization threaten this work.
The New York Times ran an article on the increasing mainstream popularity of drag performance in the Philippines. Athena Charanne Presto (Sociologist at the University of the Philippines) described the tension between evolving social values and the “entrenched legacies” of Roman Catholic religious views: “While more globally oriented younger generations may drive liberalization, the church’s influence remains. [But] many Filipinos find a way to reconcile faith and support for diverse identities,” Presto said. Jayeel Cornelio (Professor of Development Studies at the Ateneo de Manila University) added: “What we are seeing is a transformation of what it means to be Catholic or Christian for the youth, who are looking for authenticity. Sometimes they find this outside the institution or traditional practices.”
Jessica Calarco’s (Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison) new book, Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net, describes how our lack of an effective social safety net pushes U.S. women into undervalued labor–particularly care work. “We can’t really get by without a social safety net, but we’d like to pretend that we can, and that’s where women’s labor comes in,” Calarco told Esquire. “We maintain the illusion of a DIY society by relying on women to fill in the gaps. Women do the unpaid and underpaid labor that holds everything together.” Calarco was also interviewed about the book in Salon and Fast Company.
Thomas D. Beamish (Professor of Sociology at the University of California-Davis) wrote an article for the Conversation on how Americans’ understanding of tragic events has changed in the 21st Century. Tragedies were often explained in reference to “God, fate, bad luck, blameless accidents or…individual responsibility” in the 20th Century. Now there is a focus on assigning social blame (where “societal institutions such as the government, industry, civil society and even American culture are held responsible”). Beamish emphasizes that tragic events are now politically polarizing, rather than unifying.
In his new book, The Last Plantation: Racism and Resistance in the Halls of Congress, James R. Jones’ (Assistant Professor of Sociology and American Studies at Rutgers) new book argues that the lack of racial diversity among congressional staffers perpetuates inequalities. “The unequal racial makeup of congressional staff is one of the most important problems subverting our multiracial democracy,” he writes. This story was covered by Politico.
Anna Akbari’s (former Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU) recent memoir, There is No Ethan: How Three Women Caught America’s Biggest Catfish, describes her experience being emotionally manipulated by an online catfisher. The New York Times review of the book notes that although Akbari’s dissertation focused on “aspirational identity,” she withholds her sociological perspective until the epilogue. There, “she poses fascinating questions: What are the ethical boundaries of digital platforms? Is lying to create intimacy a violation of consent? When does inauthenticity become evil? And how should the law handle people who engage in virtual offenses that are not financially motivated…?”
About Clippings
Sociology and sociologists in the news. Read more…
