Many remain surprised by Donald Trump’s election success, and everyone has their own theory about how he pulled it off. Sociologist Scott Melzer suggests that the answer may be found by looking at the strategy used by the National Rifle Association: mobilize people over what upsets them. Melzer recently spoke to The Trace about how the findings in his 2012 book, Gun Crusaders: The NRA’s Culture War, can be used to understand Trump’s presidential victory.

According to Melzer, the NRA garners much of its power due to the fact that the organization is more of a social movement than an interest group. In other words, its large membership base is a stronger influence than its money. He explains,

“Social movements and their bases respond to either fear or hope. The NRA has cranked up the fear meter to 11 and has kept it there for a really long time. Threat is really the strongest source of mobilization.”

Melzer believes that members of the NRA feel as if they are losing their country, not just their guns, and that the NRA capitalizes on this fear by pushing a message of infringement on their member’s way of life. The NRA frames its members as victims of a country that is giving special rights to women, people of color, and LGBT communities, but not gun owners. This explains their emphasis on identity politics and civil rights. Melzer continues,

“The NRA, other social movement organizations, and certainly Donald Trump can get folks to believe messages that they’re victims of this kind of left-wing attack on their values, their livelihoods and ultimately their masculine identities.”

Trump touted a similar message throughout his campaign, empowering the NRA’s large membership base, along with others who were feeling threatened and left behind, to go out and protect a way of life that they believe to be in danger. 

New York City is known for its diners and coffee shops. One might assume that this is because the population shares a caffeine addiction, but a recent New York Times article on the changes in New York’s diner scene presents a more nuanced perspective with the The Great Good Place by sociologist Ray Oldenburg.

Work and home are central to our lives, but so is everybody’s special “third place,” the spot for relaxing and hanging out with friends and strangers alike. Oldenburg describes how this includes coffee shops, diners, pubs, taverns, and even post offices. These sites are important within the context of individual lives, but they can also build communities. Not all diner regulars becomes friends with one another, but they do become “affiliated,” picking up conversations and forming a social environment specific to these public homes away from home.

Additionally, these “third places” are symbolic of a city’s past, considering that they’re usually in older areas, reflecting a bygone era of the city. Consider that today in New York, decades-old diners are rapidly folding under increasing rent and the pressure to sell. What was once a classic third place like a small diner can quickly become a new high-rise, and this phenomenon occurs outside the Big Apple as well. So, swing by that midnight diner for a bite and get it while it’s hot — while you can. 

Previous research shows that women experience a “motherhood penalty” at work when they have children, while having children actually helps men’s careers. New research shows that the motherhood penalty may actually be worse for women who make more money. This is because, in terms of dollars and some career paths, taking time off or switching to part-time work is more costly for high-earning women in the long run.

In workplaces that offer little flexibility, women are left with few options. In a recent Bloomberg article by Rachel Greenfield, sociologist Paula England elaborates:

“A lot of women are getting pushed into dropping out entirely for a few years because they can’t get a little leave at the beginning or because they can’t get enough flexibility.”

This results in a higher income loss than women in lower income positions experience. However, Greenfield notes that it is important to keep in mind that low-income women may actually be hit harder because they start out with fewer resources; high earning women simply suffer a disproportionate income loss.

Online dating can be a tricky business … but what if the online persona you fall for isn’t a person, but a meme or character? As described in an article in The Guardian, there is a new trend in Japan called “virtual love,” wherein people who are not interested in an everyday relationship fall for an online entity. With help from Chuo University sociologist Masahiro Yamada, the article explains how this phenomenon can occur and what drives it, namely the culmination of “stranded singles” who have cultural or economic reasons to favor this form of virtual dating. The article describes this subculture below:

“The development of the multimillion-pound virtual romance industry in Japan reflects the existence of a growing number of people who don’t have a real-life partner, said Yamada. There is even a slang term, ‘moe,’ for those who fall in love with fictional computer characters, while dating sims allow users to adjust the mood and character of online partners and are aimed at women as much as men.”

Yamada says that young people are much more likely to wait for traditional marriage in Japan, but also that marriage and even the formation of couples has weakened in modern Japan. For some, these online relationships with a “moe” offer a new way to find companionship and support.

“Yamada said there was now an expectation gap, with many young people giving up hope in the real world and turning to their computer world, where they could control their ‘lives’.”

This trend is studied here within the Japanese context wherein birth rates are falling and less couples are forming, but University of Leeds sociologist Adrian Favell reminds us that this phenomenon should not be interpreted as a problematic or dysfunctional development limited to Japan. As Favell posits,

“Is it unique to Japan for young people to obsess over pop, film stars, and the rest? Or to ‘fall in love’ on the internet? I don’t think so.”

Despite becoming more unpopular in many other nations, it appears as though the death penalty is alive and well in the United States. During the recent election, voters in California, Nebraska, and Oklahoma called upon their governments to strengthen the death penalty. California rejected replacing executions with life sentences and shortened the legal process for executions. Nebraska revoked its 2015 ban on capital punishment, and Oklahoma voters motioned to include it within the state constitution.

In an article with Public Radio International, sociologist Susan Sharp from the University of Oklahoma explains why support for capital punishment is so robust in the United States and not elsewhere. According to Sharp, the U. S. embraces individualism, which allows citizens to ignore the social determinants of crime and perpetuates a “lock em’ up and throw away the key attitude.” Sharp states,

“We don’t look at social conditions and how those impact crime and criminal behavior. If you look at European countries, where there is no death penalty, they also have social service programs far superior to anything we have in this country. They don’t condemn people for needing assistance.”

A recent article in The New York Times highlights the complicated picture behind NFL suspensions, which can ruin many a fantasy-football Sunday. Often, players are suspended for legal issues such as domestic abuse or drugs. Considering the recent discussion surrounding head injuries in football, however, we may see suspensions for different reasons. As opposed to the current system of punishment through fines, suspensions deter players from doling out violent or dangerous hits during games.

Fines—as expensive as they can be—are often very minuscule in relation to an NFL player’s income. Taking players out of the line up on game day, however, could be a stronger punishment for athletes. Of course, even if this becomes the norm within the league, the transition won’t be easy. As explained by University of Minnesota sociology professor and TSP’s Doug Hartmann,

“[T]he league wants and needs to get rid of dirty plays and players, [but] they don’t want to take actions that compromise, or even appear to compromise, the actual contests themselves.”

In other words, preserving the quality of the game and the sport is important to the league, especially if they feel that viewership will drop if the games appear restrained. Whatever the future holds for suspensions and roughness in football, it’s sure to be a tight contest.

Japan is known for its stressful corporate culture where overwork is very common. At the same time, Japan’s population is on the wane as the birth rate continues to drop. A recent article in Seeker highlights new research by University of Illinois sociology professor Eunmi Mun that may be able to tackle both of these problems at once with an innovative, if straightforward, idea: expanding paternity leave.

As Mun explains, Japanese norms regarding commitment to your job, the division of labor, and gender roles — norms quite similar to those in the United States — are driving factors in the dynamics described above. Mun explains,

“Taking leave is definitely a violation of that work culture and ideology. Another aspect is the very strong gender ideology in Japan. There’s a very clear gender division of labor, so men do not really have a function in the household. Their function is basically the breadwinning function.”

Therefore, Japanese women are more likely to take parental leave when they have a child, and this absence can have negative impacts on their career. If paternity leave is expanded, however, perhaps more families can have children and parental leave can become less of a gendered practice. For Japan and other nations, paternity leave may hold the key to an egalitarian family life.

With the cost of tuition rising at many public universities and a scarcity of aid from federal and state agencies alike, it is difficult to obtain a college education without incurring a mountain of debt in the United States. Wisconsin Public Radio talked with sociologist Sara Goldrick-Rab about her research on student debt and the ways it hinders students from completing their degrees.

Despite receiving Pell grants or other forms of federal aid, half of the 3,000 students in Goldrick-Rab’s study had dropped out within six years, and only twenty percent had completed their degrees in five years. She argues that attrition occurs because these forms of aid do not cover the large majority of costs for either two-year and four-year institutions. Specifically, state sources of funding do not hold up their end of the deal, which leads to tuition hikes at many state schools. As a result, many students are forced to decide between basic necessities and continuing their education. As Goldrick-Rab notes:

“The cost of living in this country is substantial and some college students are going without their basic needs met. It is very clear that hunger and homelessness are not strangers to undergraduates now, and that’s pretty devastating.”

Goldrick-Rab suggests that a possible solution is to make two-year associate’s degrees free. That way “you know what you’re getting from it, before you get involved in the risk involved of using debt to finance it.” Higher education is foundational to the future of the United States, so we must start investing more in students instead of making them choose between their next meal and earning a college degree.

The continued mass dumping of Hillary Clinton’s personal emails by WikiLeaks makes one wonder about the fine line between transparency in government and violations of privacy. Recently, NPR spoke to UNC sociologist Zeynep Tufekci about this very issue. Tufekci acknowledges the importance of whistle-blowing, saying that items like Clinton’s Goldman Sachs speeches pass the public interest test. However, she goes on to explain that what is currently being done by WikiLeaks may go beyond simply exposing a politician’s attempt to keep secrets.  She explains,

“[T]here’s a lot of personal information that is being exposed. What this does – and this is what scares me – is that this method is going to be used in the future to any political organization – dissident organizations – that are trying to challenge power. And what they’re going to end up seeing is that their personal information is going to be dumped for the world.”

For Tufekci, it does not have to be all or nothing. Her ideal is that the hacks would go through journalists who could pass on things that are in the interest of the public. This method could help avoid having a flood of distracting information that makes it difficult for people to figure out what is important and what is not. Consider her response to the adage, “Never write an email that you wouldn’t be willing to see on the front page of the New York Times”:

“That, as a warning, strikes me a little bit like you shouldn’t wear miniskirts if you don’t want to be sexually assaulted, to be honest. It might not be – it might be something you take into account. But it doesn’t mean that if the hacking does occur, that it’s all fair game.”

For now, the debate continues — does being a public official mean you are no longer entitled to a private life? And what kinds of information should be deemed public interest and what should be kept private?  

From the Olympics in ancient Greece to modern extravaganzas like the FIFA World Cup, sport has been historically associated with the purest form of competition. Ingrained moral and ethical values drive the spirit of competition, which helps make sport a cultural phenomenon. Of course, there are those who take short cuts, and these ideals of “purity” in competition come to the forefront with every new doping scandal and the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) by athletes.

Jan Ove Tangen, a professor in the sociology of sport from Norway, has an interesting point of view when it comes to PEDs.  Tangen proposes that the natural solution for monitoring PEDs and the ever-increasing performance of athletes is simply to allow doping.

“Wherever the arbitrary limits of doping are drawn it is the nature of competitive sports to strive towards getting as close as possible to those limits to achieve perfection. Sometimes that will lead to ‘accidental’ breaches of the rules.”

Tangen says that by accepting PEDs, the penalization of athletes for larger institutional flaws will come to an end. It will also eliminate the hefty costs of monitoring and regulation of doping, which could lead to positive outcomes like proper medical attention for athletes. Plus, this helps fight the inevitable dynamic where a rule is set and athletes toe the line as close as possible, but invariably step out of bounds.