• CNBC recently interviewed Alexandrea Ravenelle (Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), who discussed how the gig economy emerged from the sharing economy, how workers “get stuck” in the gig economy, and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the gig economy. Ravenelle’s new book, Side Hustle Safety Net, discusses the precarious nature of the gig economy.
  • Jacqui Frost (Assistant Professor of Sociology at Purdue University) wrote a story for The Conversation on the growth of “atheist churches.” These secular organizations adopt some traditions of religious organizations (such as Sunday meetings, collective singing, meditation and reflection, reading inspirational texts, and shared testimonies from members), but do not reference God or any supernatural elements. Amid arguments that religious decline will lead to a decline in community engagement and well-being, “atheist churches are an example of how nonreligious Americans are finding new ways to meet those needs.”
  • Newsweek featured a new study by Mark Whiting (Senior Computational Social Scientist at the University of Pennsylvania) and Duncan Watts (Professor and Computational Social Scientist at the University of Pennsylvania) that examines how “common sense” may not be so common. “People didn’t seem to have predictably consistent ideas of what is common sense,” Whiting said, “The number of items that a larger group all agree on is vanishingly small…so as a consequence, common sense is not all that common.”
  • The Emancipator recently featured excerpts from Hajar Yazdiha’s (Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California) book The Struggle for the People’s King, addressing the widespread sanitization of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy. “The danger of a sanitized reading of the past is that this selective memory evades social reality and enables the maintenance of White supremacy,” Yazdiha writes.
  • (Via ASA) John Skrentny (Professor of Sociology at UC San Diego) wrote an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times on how a shortage of STEM workers persists despite investment in STEM education. Skrentny argues that “employers, and the investors who drive their behavior, depress the national returns on STEM education investments” by driving recent STEM graduates out of the market through: 1) low wage levels, 2) “burn-and-churn” management styles, 3) frequent layoffs, and 4) unwelcoming environments for women, minorities, and older workers.