sociology

The Conversation recently published an article by Emily Huddart (Associate Head and Professor of Sociology at University of British Columbia) and Tony Silva (Associate Professor of Sociology at University of British Columbia) on how political orientation impacts opinions on climate policy.  Examining the range of climate opinions on the political right, they found that affective polarization drove the variation: “Negative feelings toward the left and positive feelings toward the right were by far the strongest predictors of climate policy attitudes.” Huddart and Silva explain that “If opposition to climate policy is rooted in social and political identity, then strategies for building support need to reflect that reality…this will mean finding core needs that Canadians have in common and seeking policies that can have climate benefits while meeting those core needs.”

The book Trash! A Garbageman’s Story by Simon Pare-Poupart made it onto a New York Times book list called The Nonfiction Everyone Will Be Talking About in 2026. Pare-Poupant’s book investigates society’s relationship with garbage, drawing from his graduate study in sociology. It is “A Montreal garbageman’s sharp and funny memoir/exposé, in which he attempts to convince people to ‘stop imagining that your garbage magically disappears…’”

IOL Cape Argus News wrote a piece about Elena Moore’s (Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Cape Town) inaugural lecture titled Who Cares? The Directions of State–Family Relationships in Changing Times. Moore urges society to rethink the burden of care and argues that the work of care is often invisible. With a team of 40 researchers spanning across Ireland, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Malawi, Moore explores how families, government, and communities share the responsibility of care. In South Africa, Moore’s team found that there are care grant opportunities, but there are also major barriers in the application process. “We all want good care,” Moore said. “But we also want just care relations.”

Abdelilah Farah (Moroccan Sociologist) wrote a commentary piece for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace explaining how Morocco’s Gen Z is developing a new protest culture. The members of Generation Z are mobilizing in an age of rapid technological expansion where they have “developed their political consciousness within a globalized digital environment.” They are departing from traditional modes of protest expression and drawing on cultural influences such as anime, video games, and contemporary music. The commentary explains that “the digital protests of Morocco’s Generation Z can be understood as primarily cultural rather than purely political acts.” Generation Z  maintains a dual consciousness of being “globally connected yet locally grounded in experiences of hardship.”

In an article for The Conversation, Adam Coutts (Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge) argues that the U.K. government’s new action plan Protecting What Matters–which centers social cohesion–is weak and vague. Coutts explains that the “plan frames division through religion, identity and Islamophobia, which are outcomes and proxies, not root causes.” He offers a better framework centering “community resilience: the measurable capacity of neighbourhoods to absorb shocks, resist divisive narratives and recover from crises.”

The Daily Mississippian reviewed Amy McDowell’s (Associate Professor of Sociology and Associate Chair at the University of Mississippi) new book Whispers in the Pews: Evangelical Uniformity in a Divided America. The book is based on an ethnographic study of group culture at an evangelical church that describes itself as welcoming and inclusive. McDowell observed that people within the church community often refrained from speaking about social issues: “People don’t express their doubts, opinions or their disagreements in church spaces,” McDowell said. “People really try not to talk about that stuff.”

New research from Christopher M. Pieper (Senior Lecturer of Sociology at Baylor University) examines the ways the foundation of social life may be reshaped by the rapid advancement of generative AI, mixed‑reality platforms and the global Metaverse. To investigate the shifts in societal morality, relation, and culture Pieper worked with Justin J. Nelson (Associate Professor of Sociology at Campbell University) to develop the theory of “gamism”, a “dominant ideology of our digital future – one that makes all experiences competitive, quantifiable, commercialized and entertaining for the individual user.” This theory operates on the idea that game-like interactions will influence our understanding of self and engagement in social institutions leading to four possible outcomes: utopian, dystopian, balanced, and wild card. This story was covered by Baylor University News.

James Densley (Professor of Criminology and Criminal justice at Metro State University) and Jillian Peterson (Professor of Criminology at Hamline University) wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times about the shift in mass shooter profile and the connection to online platforms. The profile of a typical mass shooter has shifted from a middle-aged isolated man to a younger person highly connected to online social networks. Densely and Peterson explain that both profiles are in deep despair, but younger people have been convinced “that in acting violently he or she is carrying out the only meaningful act possible in a world otherwise devoid of meaning.” Their investigation led them to a trail of online platform activity that celebrates mass murders on Tumblr, Telegram, Discord, TikTok and Roblox. The same algorithm that adjusts to your preferences now leads boys and girls to true crime communities. True crime communities take despair and turn it into a mass shooting performative script. Online platforms have flagged and taken down many of these forums, but their constant resurfacing requires more intentional change to divert attention away from mass shootings and interrupt this destructive performance.

In a recent public lecture, Zeynep Tufekci (Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University) discussed how artificial intelligence, good or bad, will bring destabilizing change. She highlighted three AI advancements that society is not prepared to handle: machines that speak like humans, AI photos and video, and AI imitating human speech. Tufekci encourages young students to start asking “tough questions” and think deeply about this age of rapid advancements in AI and the disillusion it will bring. This story was covered in Today at Elon.

Cynthia Miller-Idriss (Professor of Public Affairs at American University) appeared on The Contrarian, discussing the connections between violence and masculinity. Miller-Idriss describes how people may gravitate toward a “protector” narrative of masculinity in times of economic hardship (when a “provider” narrative of masculinity is less achievable). Miller-Idriss notes that we are in a cultural moment of “hyper masculinity that associates being a man with being violent” and this image appears in recruitment for federal agencies. 

Tressie McMillan Cottom (Professor at the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science) appeared on PBS News Hour to discuss how to fight political exhaustion. McMillan Cottom describes how we often feel tired from passively taking in negative news: “We are tired then, not from doing too much, but from doing too little.” She suggests that political action, rather than disengagement, is the antidote to political exhaustion: “People who feel agentic aren’t as tired; they are not as easily overwhelmed.”

Murat Haner (Assistant Professor  of Criminology & Criminal Justice at Arizona State University), Justin Pickett (Professor of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany), and Melissa Sloan (Professor of Sociology & Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, University of South Florida) wrote an article for The Conversation on U.S. political violence. In the 1970s, the bulk of political violence was aimed at property, now the targets are specific people. In a survey study, the authors found that belief in white nationalism was the strongest predictor for support of political violence and argued that “white nationalism poses substantial danger to U.S. political stability.”

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.

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.

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.”

Ruth Braunstein (Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut) featured a Q&A with Ernesto Castañeda (Professor and Director of the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies and the Immigration Lab at American University) on her Democracy is Hard Substack site, discussing the impact of the “No Kings” protests. “The “No Kings” events are loosely coordinated transnational contentious performances. The question is whether they represent the seed of a social movement and whether onlookers — the American (and increasingly global) public — see them as “legitimate” and sympathetic,” Castañeda commented. “Some critics say the marches had no clear demands; historically speaking, that is not a fatal flaw but indeed a strength.”

OSU News ran a feature on Ashley Railey’s (Assistant Professor of Sociology at Oklahoma State University) work on how rural areas address substance use. “Across the U.S., evidence suggests that people who use drugs are disproportionately viewed as dangerous, to blame for their disease, and unreliable,” Railey explained. “Combined with limited availability of health care services that are often seen in rural areas, these views — or stigma — can prevent people from seeking out and receiving help, limit the provision of services, and create divisions within communities about who is deserving, or not, of treatment and recovery services.”