Bates News interviewed Francesco Duina (Professor of Sociology at Bates College) about his upcoming book, The Social Acceptance of Inequality: On the Logics of a More Unequal World–a collection co-edited with Luca Storti (Associate Professor Economic Sociology at the University of Torino). The book examines why we accept inequality in our social world. “We were very eager to understand that acceptance — it is, after all, a major factor that sustains those inequalities and something that we may want to grasp if we in fact want to do something about those inequalities,” Duina commented. Duina described four main justifications for inequality: (1) market/economic logics – thinking of inequality as a byproduct of a functioning economic system; (2) moral logics – thinking in terms of fairness, justice, and deservingness; (3) group logics – the idea that a certain group is entitled to more; and (4) cultural logics – cultural ideas (like the “American Dream”) that help us tolerate inequality.

Francesco Duina

Sociologist Stephen Whitehead wrote an opinion piece for NationalWorld arguing against the idea that “masculinity is in crisis.” Whitehead first notes that “masculinity is not singular but multiple. There are countless ways of men performing maleness, manhood, masculinity.” Some men are in crisis, “struggling to find a place in the world that values them as men” and facing depression and isolation. Whitehead names this “collapsed masculinity.” Whitehead also notes that, while there is widespread concern about “toxic masculinity,” he would not describe these men as “in crisis.” Male fundamentalists–those who embrace an “unapologetic, explicitly anti-female, misogynistic position”–are convinced of their superiority and do not trend towards depression or social isolation. Whitehead says that, while this group is dangerous, they are not in crisis.

Stephen Whitehead

Bailey Brown (Assistant Professor of Sociology at Spelman College) wrote an article for The Conversation describing how “school choice” – the expanding range of school options for young children – is a source of anxiety for parents. Parents “felt pressure trying to select a school for their elementary school-age children” and “some parents experience this pressure a bit more acutely than others,” Brown writes. “Women often see their choice of school as a reflection of whether they are good moms, my interviews show. Parents of color feel pressure to find a racially inclusive school. Other parents worry about finding niche schools that offer dual-language programs, for example, or other specialties.”

Bailey Brown

Willy Pedersen’s (Professor of Sociology at the University of Oslo) new book The Beauty and Pain of Drugs reveals an eye-catching correlation: Norwegians who drank heavily in their late teens and early twenties reported higher income and education levels later in life, as compared to their sober or light-drinking peers. “The most likely explanation is that all alcohol is a kind of marker of sociality, and that habit comes with some types of benefits,” Perdersen explained. That is, drinkers forged bonds and social skills that paid off later in life. This story was covered by The Times (London), Vice, and the New York Post.

Willy Pedersen

Victor Onyilor Achem (Researcher in Sociology at the University of Ibadan) wrote an article for The Conversation on how Nigeria’s Benue State Anti‑Open Grazing Law (which “banned the open grazing of livestock and required herders to establish ranches instead”) impacted the dynamics between farming and herding communities. Achem describes how the law–intending to reduce conflict–faltered in both design (as “it expected herders – many of them nomadic, landless and low-capital – to invest in ranches with minimal support”) and enforcement. This left herders feeling “criminalized” and farmers feeling “abandoned.” The law also became a symbol of power, land-based identity, and religious tension: “Both farmers and herders saw it as a struggle for survival, one group fighting to defend ancestral land, the other to preserve livelihood and identity,” Achem writes. “It became a law about belonging, rights, who gets to claim the land, and whose identity is recognised.”

Victor Onyilor Achem