Georg Simmel once said that the opposite of love isn’t hate, but indifference. While cultural sociologist Eva Illouz’s new book might help us understand what Simmel meant, the publisher’s blurb suggests more materialist insights: “This book does to love what Marx did to commodities: it shows that it is shaped by social relations and institutions and that it circulates in a marketplace of unequal actors.”
Colleges and universities all tout the value of diversity on campus, but what’s the real payoff? This brand new study finds that in classroom discussions African American students are more likely to invoke media depictions of race/religion and describe unique personal experiences with them, thus enriching and expanding the quality of teaching and learning on these topics.
The big new blockbuster (and its paper predecessor) is chock full of sociological insight and intrigue, but among the most important and least understood themes are the relationships among authority, injustice, and consent. This classic study of Appalachia—a place with obvious parallels to Katniss Everdeen’s District 12—provides an insightful and compelling overview.
If you were at all interested in this weekend’s atheist march on Washington, you might want to take a look at this paper.
Written and researched by a Minnesota team that included Joe Gerteis, author of the recent TSP White Paper on religion and American political culture, this widely cited study was among the first to document and analyze negative public perceptions of atheists in American public life. (For a decidedly non-academic take on the paper, see p. 61-62 of Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (and So Can You!).)
As the Sanford, FL city commission voted “no confidence” in their police chief following the shooting of teen Trayvon Martin, this article is instructive in what legal scholars like Donald Black call violent “self-help”—a tactic vigilante citizens may use when they feel their government is not providing control and protection. In a classic piece, Smith and Uchida test this ideas, finding higher weapon ownership in areas in which police are perceived as ineffective and citizens report feeling vulnerable.
Today, the Supreme Court heard opening arguments in two cases regarding the possibility of life without parole as a sentence for juvenile offenders. This article reports data from polling in four states that challenges the idea that the public supports such incarceration over rehabilitation approaches for youth offenders. It remains to be seen what the Court will decide.
Scholars and journalists alike often truncate the roots of social movements by pointing to simple origin stories, predicated on the publication of seminal books like Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, Michael Harrington’s The Other America, or Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed. The truth is that books and intellectualism have a role, but it’s more often symbolic and a function of collective memory than collective action. For a fuller story, these authors believe we must consider social and historical factors outside the world of big, singular ideas (or big, singular expressions of those ideas).
Despite complaints about the organization behind the purposefully viral campaign to raise awareness about the Ugandan atrocities perpetrated by Joseph Kony (a number of which have been catalogued here), it’s clear that Invisible Children has been incredibly effective in gaining visibility for their cause. Look to Keck and Sikkink’s classic work to examine other activist networks and gain a better understanding of the information, symbols, leverage, and accountability these networks use to gain power in the international sphere.
The authors of this brand new article use data from 21 different European countries to examine the impact of ethnic composition on perceptions of neighborhood safety. The basic take-away is that the more immigrants (or non-Europeans) there are in a community, the lower the perceptions of safety in those neighborhoods. But, while people believe they’re less safe, it’s interesting to keep in mind recent U.S. findings that higher immigrant proportions in neighborhoods actually appear to lower crime rates.
This well-crafted and engaging new book looks at women involved in Direct Home Sales, selling things like Tupperware and Mary Kay cosmetics at house parties among friends. The authors explore emotional fulfillment, work-life balance, and fun in a flexible work model and a billion-dollar industry. To learn more about other “feminist economies,” our own Cyborgology posted “Pinterest and Feminism” just yesterday!