More and more couples are opting to have friends officiate their wedding ceremonies. The Knot, a popular wedding website, saw a jump from 29-40% from 2009 to 2015. In a recent article in The Atlantic, sociologist Ellen Lamont explains that this trend is especially popular among young couples:

“More and more, Millennials are identifying the things in their life that are ‘generic’ and finding a way to make them meaningful, personalized, and special.”

And this is part of a larger trend forgoing traditions around marriage. According to Lamont,

“The expectations for marriage have shifted, and sociologists refer to this as kind of a ‘deinstitutionalization’ of marriage…Basically meaning that the social norms that guided marriage have become more negotiable, flexible, and individualized.”

For example, couples are opting for non-religious ceremonies, choosing not to have the bride’s father give her away, and creating unique last names to share. In short, these are ways young couples construct weddings that are meaningful for them. Having a friend officiate signals the importance of friendships in their lives.

Many working-class white Americans — even those stricken by poverty or poor health — favor policies that defund programs that could benefit their health and opportunities. Racial resentment may be part of the reason why. In an interview with Vox, Jonathan Metzl suggests that working-class white populations often scapegoat immigrant and minority populations, instead of blaming those who actually shape these policies — the elite and corporations.

In the South and Midwest, Metzl finds that working-class whites have rejected policies that would otherwise benefit their access to healthcare and educational resources, leading to shorter lifespans and higher high school dropout rates — all to block these same resources for immigrants and minorities. However, Metzl makes it clear that individual racism is not the sole factor driving this paradoxical situation. Instead, he suggests that the issue is more structurally-rooted; the policies themselves are racially motivated, not necessarily the individuals that support the policies. However, Metzl did find many whites who feel that public services only benefit racial minorities, including using stereotypes such as “welfare queens,” which continues to be a powerful racial trope in politics.

It is important to remember that racial resentment and white privilege are not new to the United States. Metzl discusses:

“Philosophers have been wrestling with this in the United States for centuries. I mean, this was the core question that W.E.B. Du Bois asked after Reconstruction: Why is it that low-income whites, working-class whites, don’t align their interests with newly freed slaves? If they did, it would be an insurmountable union that would really force some benefits from upper-class people to make the lives of working-class people better…And what he found was that there was this idea of a reward of whiteness that was given to white people. It was a psychological benefit that allowed them to feel a sense of psychological prestige and overlook their own material conditions.”

When working-class whites attempt to hold on to white privilege — by supporting policies that continue to defund education and health care in the United States, for example — they help perpetuate a situation that is, according to Metzl, “hurting nearly everybody.”

We hear a lot about “toxic masculinity” in popular culture these days and sometimes it seems like toxic masculinity — as opposed to healthy masculinity — is to blame for all of the world’s problems. In a recent article in The Atlantic, sociologist Raewyn Connell disagrees with this common conception, arguing that toxic masculinity itself is not a singular cause of problems like violence and entitlement. Instead, Connell points out that masculinity itself is complex.

For example, standards of masculinity vary across time and place. Connell’s work demonstrates that there is not one masculinity, but multiple masculinities — shaped by race, class, culture, social position, and other factors. Thus, the causes of violence and other social problems often blamed on a culture of toxic masculinity are not the same in all places. Connell says,

“The popular discussion of masculinity has often presumed there are fixed character types among men…I’m skeptical of the idea of character types. I think it’s more important to understand the situations in which groups of men act, the patterns in their actions, and the consequences of what they do.”

According to Michael Salter, social scientist and author of the article,

“The problem with a crusade against toxic masculinity is that in targeting culture as the enemy, it risks overlooking the real-life conditions and forces that sustain culture.”

Salter argues thatif we want to stop violence perpetrated by men, we must take a broad approach, understanding men’s material realities — their social positions, the standards set for them, the broader political context and other factors — and institutions that may help perpetuate violence. To explain, Salter uses the example of liquor stores:

“By focusing on culture, people who oppose toxic masculinity can inadvertently collude with institutions that perpetuate it. For example, the alcohol industry has funded research to deny the relationship between alcohol and violence, instead blaming “masculinity” and “cultures of drinking.” In this regard, the industry is repeating liberal feminist arguments about toxic masculinity. However, there is strong evidence that the density of liquor shops in a given geographic area increases the local rate of domestic violence. Any serious framework for preventing violence against women will address alcohol availability as well as masculine norms and sexism.”

In other words, by only focusing on a culture of toxic masculinity, we miss the social contexts and real-life conditions that help to sustain this culture. Instead, we must pay attention to the particularities in men and boys’ lives if we ever hope to end gender violence and inequality.

This March’s TV ratings for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament mark a four-year high, placing 2019 in a tie for the third-largest March Madness viewership since the early 1990s. Considering that 2017’s title game drew 23 million viewers, last night’s championship is positioned to exceed that number. High-visibility sporting events like the Final Four not only influence our perceptions of race and sport in a number of ways, but they can also alter the power dynamic between players and owners. In an interview for Match Volume, Sociologist Ben Carrington explains how.

Fans may look forward to high visibility events like the Final Four to escape the pressures of day-to-day life, but sports can have real-world impacts. For example, entertainment sports skew the perception of racial representation within sport, leading fans to believe that Black athletes have more success than they really do.

“All sports are racialized to different degree. Looking at all levels, coaches, owners, GMs, the front office, the media, then most sports remain overwhelmingly white. One of the ancient things, one of the discourses, is that quote ‘Blacks dominate sports.’ …[but] if you look at participation figures–the group who participates most often in the greatest range of sports, most frequently, are white middle class males. They play lacrosse, they ski, they sail, they play, you know, softball, baseball, golf, tennis–across the board. So what we find in a small number of sports, entertainment sports, the ones that have high visibility, there’s a disproportionate number of blacks, black men in particular. So that kind of skews the discussion.”

On the other hand, the sport-as-entertainment industry’s dependence upon Black athletes gives them tremendous power, which NBA players have capitalized on. NFL owners’ fear that players would harness this power likely prompted their backlash against Colin Kaepernick, Carrington explains.

“I don’t actually think the NFL owners were that bothered by Kaepernick speaking out on those issues [like Black Lives Matter]. I think what they became the most fearful about as the protests continued, which helps to explain his exclusion, was that the NFL players would begin to act like NBA players. And by that I mean…[owner] Donald Sterling was effectively stripped of ownership [of the LA Clippers] within 48 hours of that tape breaking. 48 hours. An owner, stripped of ownership. And that came about not because the other owners thought this is really outrageous, that one of us is speaking badly about black people, it came about because Stef Curry and Lebron James made it really clear to the commissioner that you might not have games come Wednesday.”

Given that hot-button issues like these are topics that frequently come up when Carrington teaches “Race, Celebrity, & Sports” and “Politics of Sports” at the University of Southern California, he emphasizes to his students that thinking sociologically — not adopting his political point of view — is the key to getting a good grade.

“What I want the students to do is to think critically. I want them to debunk,… to look to unveil the… power structures which often aren’t visible, but are there, shaping…. Why do we support a certain team rather than another team? Why is there a stadium being built in Englewood? What’s the politics behind that, what’s are the consequences for gentrification, for housing costs, what are the transportation implications of that? Why is the LA Dodgers Stadium where it is? Who gets displaced when stadiums are built where they are? Who gets to own teams? Who gets to play for teams? You know, all of the myriad of things that surround sports: the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful.”

Carrington’s goal is to encourage his students to think independently, marshal critical thinking, and use good evidence and data to support their opinions, no matter what side they’re on. For the rest of us, high-profile sporting events like the NCAA Championships invite us all to reflect on the social patterns that shape them.

Migration across the U.S.-Mexico border is a highly contested and politicized topic in the United States today, and much of this discussion revolves around white Americans long-standing but erroneous fears of undocumented immigrants crossing the southern border. However, a recent study featured in an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune finds that Latinos who legally cross often experience discrimination at border checkpoints.

The study’s authors, Alexander Updegrove, Joshua Shadwick, Eryn O’Neal, and Alex Piquero, draw from surveys at two public Texas universities about student experiences of legal crossings across the U.S.-Mexico border. Nearly one-third of the students described experiences of discrimination by border patrol agents due to their darker skin complexion, clothing, use of a Mexican instead of U.S. passport, and for having an accent. All of these students described experiencing either additional screening, extended questioning, degrading comments, or physical searches.

For example, a 19-year-old Latino respondent Robert’ reports being mocked by a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer for his health condition, stating that the officers

“[made] fun of my heart pulse, because I have a pretty fast pulse — most of the time my hands are shaking. So when I told him about my health issue, he started to laugh and called other officers to come and see.”

One of the study’s co-authors, criminologist Alex Piquero, explains that when people are treated poorly by custom officials or other law enforcement, it causes trust in the entire institution to wither away:

“People talk, they share vicarious experiences and then you have this folklore that develops; … if you create a lived experience that law enforcement is not fair, not on their side and not there to help and protect certain people, then these same people are likelier to not report crime and not go to law enforcement for help.”

According to Piquero, trust and mutual respect must be present between safety officials and the public in order to ensure everyone’s safety.

Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York announced earlier this year that part of his 2020 executive budget will include a proposed ban on public disclosure of arrest photos and booking information collected by police agencies. The announcement is part of recent developments across the United States to end the practice of the mass distribution of mug shots and arrest information online. In a recent editorial for Slate, Sara Esther Lageson describes how the movement to end the widespread practice of online mug shots highlights broader debates about transparency, free speech, and due process.

Lageson notes how Cuomo’s proposal has since inspired public backlash while other stories, such as California criminal indictment of mugshots.com for charging people thousands of dollars for mug shot removal on their site, have received sparse but positive public support. She describes how this contradiction represents a tension between transparency in public records and due process protections,

“There’s an important due process responsibility to protect the innocent that must be balanced against unfettered access in a digital age—even if this means losing access to millions of mug shots. As it stands now, the debate over whether law enforcement should release mug shots centers on how the records are used in the public sphere. While simply posting the photos is an expression of First Amendment freedoms, salaciously posting the mug shots for fodder, voyeurism, or extortion feels wrong. But attempting to make a clear distinction between the two creates a false dichotomy between the appropriate and inappropriate sharing of public records on the internet.”

While mug shots may be useful to monitor police misconduct or other activities during arrest, Lageson notes that there are many exemptions through the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that make it difficult or impossible for the public to keep an eye on police, court, and prison operations. Thus, the potential transparency benefits to having constant online access of people’s arrest information and mug shots do not outweigh the stigma and shame that can impact people for the rest of their lives. Lageson looks to Europe as a useful example for how the United States can do better,

“There are other options for how to treat mug shots and other pre-conviction records. Nearly all European countries, for instance, routinely protect the privacy of the accused and limit public access to criminal records in an effort to foster rehabilitation. Curbing mug shots to prevent public shaming and extortion just doesn’t equate to secret criminal justice operations—which, in reality, are already quite secretive even with our current public records scheme. It’s entirely possible to promote open government while also preventing the bulk release of millions of booking photos per year.”

We often think of social media as a place where people fight with one another while hiding behind their keyboards and screens, but NPR recently featured research showing that social media can have positive effects, too. Specifically, social media can spread positive emotions.

In person, you can share a smile or frown with people you pass on the street. And according to research conducted by Nicholas Christakis, something as simple as sharing a smile during your morning commute can change someone’s day completely. By administering surveys to about 5,000 people in one town over the course of 32 years, Christakis was able to map face-to-face interactions and analyze how emotions spread through social networks.

“We were able to show that as one person became happy or sad, it rippled through the network,” Christakis says.

This ripple effect of emotions takes place online, too. Jeff Hancock, a communications researcher at Stanford University, researched emotions and their spread on social media by changing the amount of positive or negative posts Facebook users saw on their news feeds.

It turns out that when more positive posts are on users’ feeds, they are more likely to write positive posts, but negative posts prompted people to write more sad or angry posts. Not only do negative posts prompt people to write more negative posts, but research also shows that, if a bully or “troll” attacks you sarcastically or personally while you are in a bad mood, you are likely to copy the troll-like behavior.

So, in addition to smiling at someone on your way to work, it might be worth considering sharing a positive post on Facebook as well.

The college admissions scandal has brought concerns about meritocracy to the fore, but sociologists know that the myth of meritocracy also extends beyond college and into the workplace. Recently Daniel Laurison talked to The Atlantic about his new book, The Class Ceiling: Why It Pays to Be Privileged.  Laurison and his coauthor, Sam Friedman, studied how elites in London profited from their privilege. In addition to being able to rely on financial assistance from parents when they were starting out in their career, Laurison and Friedman found that the culture and personnel of professional firms benefited upper-class workers.

One way that affluent workers get a leg up is that they are more likely to be similar to those who are already in the workplace, and informal systems of “sponsorship” often operate as workers helping out others who are similar to them. Laurison said,

“One of the big ideas of the book, for me, is it’s really hard for any given individual in any given situation to fully parse what’s actual talent or intelligence or merit, and what’s, ‘Gosh, that person reminds me of me, or I feel an affinity for them because we can talk about skiing or our trips to the Bahamas.’ Part of it is also that what your criteria are for a good worker often comes from what you think makes you a good worker.”

Another challenge for non-elites in the workplace are the unwritten rules. Laurison and Friedman pointed out how the culture of “studied informality” of one television studio actually functioned as an unwritten dress code, with right and wrong ways to be informal. Laurison told The Atlantic,

“There were all kinds of things, like who puts their feet up on the table and when they do it, when they swear—things that don’t seem like what you might expect from a place full of high-prestige, powerful television producers. But that was in some ways, I think, more off-putting and harder to navigate for some of our working-class respondents than hearing “just wear a suit and tie every day” might have been. The rules weren’t obvious, but everybody else seemed to know them.”

Laurison and Friedman advocate for shifting workplace culture to be more similar to codes of conduct familiar to middle and working class individuals, not simply trying to teach upper-class codes to those who are trying to climb the ladder. And, of course, they note that if wages weren’t so stratified both within and between workplaces there wouldn’t be such extreme economic consequences to these systems of informal knowledge and networking.

Moderating online comments and communities is not for the faint of heart. Racism and sexism run rampant in some online forums, as emojis and crass language regularly target users of various demographics. Sociologist Katherine Cross suggests that development of artificial intelligence (AI) could be a way to lighten the load for human moderators currently attempting to manage the behavior of millions of users. In an interview with The Verge, Cross uses an AI character named Ami that she created as part of a fictional short story as an exemplar of what AI could be in the future: Ami exercises empathy and emotion in ways that current AI technology can’t, but eventually should. To this end, Cross brings up a few important considerations about AI and moderating digital communities:

1. Development of AI technology that will replace humans is inevitable. Cross points out that most tech companies are looking to automate their moderation processes. “It’s the only solution they can see to the scalability problem that’s particularly acute on social media platforms or huge games where human mods can’t keep up with the actions of millions of users,” Cross says.
2. There needs to be a bigger workforce of human community managers who can use AI tools to aid their work. While the future of AI is bright, Cross notes there are some community behaviors that AI can’t pick up as threatening — like the use of emojis. “Black Twitch streamers, for instance, have been harassed by people using monkey, fried chicken, or banana emoji, whose racist semiotics are easily understood by other humans, but that would be totally baffling to even the most sophisticated machine learning algorithm.”
3. “Reason and emotion are not opposites; they inform one another, powerfully.” Cross notes that Ami, as a fictional AI character, is an exemplar of how technology and empathy could combine: “Ami is truly intelligent and, above all, empathetic. Her distinguishing feature as an AI is her capacity to feel the pain of others and feel a responsibility to do something about it, while also possessing the suprahuman powers of a computer. Currently, our real-world AI are only pseudo-AI, and they are woefully inadequate when pitted against the powerful, dynamic forces of human creativity at its worst.”

Following taunts from President Trump and other Republican officials, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren took a DNA test to “prove” her American Indian ancestry last fall. However, the political spectacle did not involve the Cherokee Nation’s determinations of who can rightfully claim their heritage, and for many American Indians, DNA tests have no bearing on deciding tribal heritage. The weight placed on these tests today harkens back to antiquated concepts of race, ethnicity, or tribal status as genetics — stripping the historical, cultural, and social meanings that shape them. Outsider attacks on tribal sovereignty are also an example where American Indian identity has been defined and controlled in the United States. In a recent Weekend Edition on NPR, social scientists weigh in on how determinations of American Indian identity have changed over time, and how who is “counted” as American Indian often depends on the method used for evaluating this identity.  

Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, the U.S. Census has been key in tracking shifts for—and perhaps even influencing—the likelihood for one to identify as American Indian. According to census statistics, the American Indian population tripled from 1960 to 1990. Sociologist Carolyn Liebler argues that this shift is due to changes in the way the Census measured racial identity; instead of relying a census worker’s determination of someone’s race, participants were allowed to choose their own race starting in 1960. According to Liebler, before 1960 census workers

“[were] not necessarily going to see a person who’s American Indian as American Indian. And it was fairly rude, as kind of it is now, to ask someone what race they are. So the [census worker] would just write it down.”

The ability for one to self-classify, therefore, is likely part of the change in population. Anthropologist Russell Thornton, a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, believes that the change may also be due to American Indian activism. He argues that the Civil Rights Movement empowered American Indians to be activists and lay claim to American Indian identity. According to Thornton,

“People that didn’t want to admit any Indian ancestry now thought it was kind of OK to be, quote, ‘Indian’ – even fashionable.”

Even the process to legitimate one’s claim as American Indian—and a citizen of a particular tribe—is debated in some tribal nations. Sociologist and member of the Cheyenne Nation, Desi Rodriguez-Lonebear states,

“[This process] has broken up families. It influences who individuals choose to partner with and have children with. It really permeates every part of our existence, in reality, as native peoples.”

Serving as an advisor for the Census Bureau, she urges policy makers and researchers to listen to American Indian communities as identities continue to shift and change.