New & Noteworthy

  • Jordyn Wald’s latest Discovery covers a recent study by Marcus Brooks on colorblind nationalism, examining how online conservatives reshape racial discourse by rejecting “woke” narratives, emphasizing traditional American values, and reframing Black Americans as allies against liberalism.

From the Archives

  • This 2016 piece from the Scholars Strategy Network covers the Supreme Court’s 4-4 deadlock on United States v. Texas on deferring deportations, which left Obama’s deferred action programs blocked, affecting up to five million immigrants. This decision maintained the then legal uncertainty for mixed-status families, limiting their economic opportunities, mobility, and access to education and healthcare.

More from our Partners & Community Pages

Council on Contemporary Families:

Center or Holocaust and Genocide Studies:

New & Noteworthy

  • Our new piece, Social Isolation and “Loneliness” of Young Adults by Jacob Otis, examines how economic insecurity, mental health struggles, and shifting social norms contribute to young adults spending more time at home while still participating in public life. The piece explores the role of stigma, technology, and declining civic engagement in shaping social withdrawal, questioning whether this trend reflects a crisis or an evolving cultural preference.

From the Archives

  • 2025 has seen a number of airplane incidents and tragedies. In this Cyborgology piece, PJ Patella-Rey extends Anthony Giddens’ work to discuss how we are living in an era within which we cannot all be experts on the technologies that we rely on every day, from our phones to airplanes. This requires extreme “trust that the institutions that deliver these devices to us have designed, tested, and maintained the devices properly.” Yet, seeing the amount of plane crashes and other incidents we’ve seen related to air travel, this trust is certainly being tested in the public sphere.
  • In Germany, 5 members of a far-right group have been arrested for allegedly plotting to kidnap the health minister. They are associated with the “Citizens of the Reich,” conspiracy theorists who believe that the German government is illegitimate. Last year, S Ericson summarized research on conspiracy theories, check it out here, “What “They” Don’t Want You to Know About Conspiracy Theories“.
  • March 8th was International Women’s Day. This post from the Council on Contemporary Families highlights research on family wellbeing around the world.

More from our Partners & Community Pages

Council on Contemporary Families

New & Noteworthy

This week’s Clippings includes: Jonathan Rauch wrote in The Atlantic on how Trump’s administration embraces “patrimonialism,” a loyalty-based governing style that breeds corruption. Karyn Vilbig explained in The Conversation how improved views of Black Americans from 2012 to 2020 drove increased support for social welfare programs. The ASA and AFT sued over a federal directive banning race considerations in education, with ASA President Adia Harvey Wingfield warning it harms research and public understanding. Meanwhile, Gallup reports 9.3% of U.S. adults now identify as LGBTQ+, with Jessie Ford telling The New York Times that younger generations see sexuality as a spectrum.

Our new Discovery, Gendered Division of Labor Among the Elite by Daniel Cueto-Villalobos, covers new research by Dr. Jill Yavorsky finding that traditional gender roles remain dominant among the super-rich, shaping broader cultural norms.

From the Archives

Fans have taken to the internet to mourn the deaths of actors Michelle Trachtenberg and Gene Hackman this week. This 2016 piece by Amber Joy Powell explores how the public mourns the death of celebrities, including with online tributes.

A child in Texas died of measles a couple days ago, the first U.S. death from the disease in 10 years. This follows an outbreak of measles in rural communities in West Texas, where rates of opting out of vaccines are high. This piece from 2015, written during a measles outbreak in southern California by Caty Taborda, covers research on the politicization and distrust surrounding vaccines and vaccine refusals.

The imprisoned leader of a Kurdish militant group has urged its members to lay down their arms, potentially putting an end to the organization’s decades-long war with the Turkish government in which 40,000 people have died. Back in 2017, the Kurdish Region of Iraq held an independence referendum. At that time, Dr. John Kendall wrote for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies about the history of Kurdish nationalism.

More from our Partners & Community Pages

Contexts

  • The Winter 2025 issue is available for viewing, covering some soc takes on Trump’s second term, corporations and conservation, VA privatization, and much more!

Council on Contemporary Families

  • A must read opinion reprint from Newsweek by Kirsten Stade, arguing Trump’s expanded Global Gag Rule is the extreme end of a widespread pronatalist ideology that pressures women into childbearing for political and economic gain.

New & Noteworthy

This week’s Clippings includes: Robert Putnam discussed the link between social isolation and populism on PBS News Hour, highlighting how civic engagement can drive moral revival. Florence Becot appeared on The FarmHouse podcast to examine the invisible labor of women in agriculture, including the expectation of raising children while performing farm work. Battle for Tibet, a new FRONTLINE documentary, features Tibetan sociologist Gyal Lo’s research on Chinese boarding schools and their role in reshaping Tibetan identity. Meanwhile, Willam Robinson spoke at Peoples’ Platform Europe 2025 about the deepening crisis of global capitalism, warning of economic stagnation, rising authoritarianism, and environmental collapse in Medya News.

Crowdfunding Gaps for Female Gun Violence Victims by Dylan DiGiacomo-Stumm writes up research by Catherine Burgess and Jennifer Carlson. They found in their study of 535 GoFundMe campaigns that race and gender shape how victims are portrayed and the financial support their families receive, with white women and girls raising significantly more money than Black and Latinx victims.

Sociology in the News | Ep.8 | Elizabeth Bruch and Amie Gordon’s Dating App “Revel” of our TSP Podcast produced by Forrest Lovette includes TSP Board members Jordyn Wald, Emma Goldstein, Mason Jones discussing Elizabeth Bruch and Amie Gordon‘s recent coverage in The Pulse on “Revel“, a dating app for students at the University of Michigan that doubles as a research tool to uncover college dating patterns.

From the Archives

SNL just celebrated 50 years of comedy, including decades of political satire. From presidential impressions to Weekend Update, the show has shaped how audiences engage with politics. But humor isn’t just entertainment—it reflects and shapes social norms. Learn more about how comedy and politics intersect in this TSP Roundtable.

Recently, the IRS cut 6,000 jobs as we come up on tax season. This NPR article suggests these job cuts mean that American taxpayers will have a harder time getting information about taxes this year. This Discovery from 2019 covers how some policies place the burden of taxation unfairly on the socioeconomically disadvantaged, while perceptions of the fairness of tax heavily depend upon whether people view the government as competent.

Earlier this week, Trump called Ukrainian president Zelenskyy a “dictator”, accused him of corruption and misuse of foreign aid, and blamed Ukraine for starting the war with Russia. A piece published by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 emphasizes the importance of upholding and remembering truths about past violence. Additionally, this Sociological Images piece written right before Trump’s first presidency discusses similarities between the leadership and rhetorical styles of Trump and Putin, and is interesting to return to over eight years later.

More from our Partners & Community Pages

Contexts

Council on Contemporary Families

First Publics

  • Teaching the Sociological Multiverse by Jonathan Wynn explores the “sociological multiverse,” emphasizing the importance of teaching multiple theoretical perspectives to foster critical thinking, resist one-dimensional explanations, and challenge assumptions in an increasingly polarized world.

New & Noteworthy

This week’s Clippings includes: Zeynep Tufekci comments on the Trump administration’s NIH funding cuts, warning they endanger America’s biomedical research infrastructure. Elizabeth Bruch and Amie Gordon launched Revel, a University of Michigan dating app that doubles as a research tool to study relationship dynamics. Meanwhile, Ruby Lai examined Hong Kong’s subdivided flats, Musa Al-Gharbi commented on corporate responses to anti-D.E.I. efforts, and scholars mourn the passing of Michael Burawoy.

Accents are Seen and Heard by Eleanor Nickel writes up work by Ethan Kutlu, who found that visual racial cues influence how listeners perceive accentedness, with participants more likely to rate speech as accented when shown an image of a South Asian woman, regardless of the actual accent. This research highlights how racial biases shape not just visual judgments but also auditory perception.

From the Archives

As of February 11th, 2025, 27 religious groups are suing the Trump administration over mandates allowing ICE agents into sensitive locations like places of worship. This 2018 Contexts piece by Genesis Torres and Kim Ebert highlights how institutions manage immigration control, claiming increased security while immigrants face extreme threats.

On January 8th, thousands protested in Union Square against Trump’s order to withhold federal funding from hospitals providing gender-affirming care. A similar protest in 2017 opposed his policies on women, immigrants, and marginalized groups. Read this 2017 piece by Jacqui Frost to explore how gender shapes protest and the vital roles activists play in social movements.

Last week, Pope Francis condemned Trump’s mass deportation plans, citing biblical calls to “welcome the stranger” and opposing JD Vance’s use of Catholic theology. This 2015 piece by Jack Delehanty explores divisions in the U.S. Catholic Church on social justice.

More from our Partners & Community Pages

Contexts

  • michael burawoy: an absolute gem by Marcel Paret honors Michael Burawoy, a groundbreaking Marxist sociologist and passionate advocate for social justice, passed away early this February, leaving behind a legacy of transformative scholarship and mentorship.
  • 23 and we? by Parker Muzzerall write up research by Amina Zarrugh and Luis Romero, who studied 568 YouTube videos to see how genetic ancestry tests affect people’s ideas about race. They found that many test users define race by DNA percentages instead of culture or history, which may bring back traditional ideas about race based on bloodlines.

Council on Contemporary Families

Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

New & Noteworthy

This week’s Clippings by Mallory Harrington includes Raka Ray and Geoffrey Pleyers’ reflections on the passing of Michael Burawoy, a towering figure in public sociology whose work shaped labor studies, ethnographic methods, and the discipline as a whole. Max Besbris commented on the rapid rebuilding of the Palisades after California’s wildfires, noting that wealthy residents will dictate the terms of recovery; Aldon Morris and Harry Edwards weighed in on the state of the U.S. under the Trump administration, warning of potential unrest; Ulrike Bialas discussed the crisis of young, homeless migrants in Paris; and George Kassar applied Norbert Elias’ theories on the “civilizing process” to digital norms and Netiquette.

This summary of pieces by us and our partners by me explores the Super Bowl’s cultural significance, covering topics like politics in sports, racial disparities in NFL coaching, the concussion crisis, nationalism in football, sexism in fandom, the 2016 Take a Knee movement, masculinity in commercials, corporate influence in ads, and Super Bowl consumer habits.

I also published a new Discovery from research by Sarah Lageson and Robert Stewart on the inaccuracy of private background checks, revealing widespread false negatives and positives that impact employment, housing, and education, while calling for stronger regulation and privacy protections.

From the Archives

Trump recently signed an order, to go in effect immediately, that bans transgender women from competing in female sports, specifically targeting the 2028 Olympic Games to be held in Los Angeles by denying Visas for transgender athletes. This Special Feature from 2023 by Chris Knoester highlights how the anti-trans movement in sports focus on reinvigorating sex and gender binaries, often conflating the two, while also obscuring the need for higher support for womens’ and girls’ sports.

On Wednesday, the CDC released a new report about U.S. maternal mortality. They found that pregnancy-related deaths declined for every race or ethnic group tracked in the report except Black women. In this 2019 piece summarizing research on the topic, Amy August and De Andre’ Beadle discuss how Black Americans, especially women, experience worse health outcomes than white Americans, and Black women are over three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes.

More from our Partners & Community Pages

Contexts

Council on Contemporary Families

New & Noteworthy

This week’s Clippings by Mallory Harrington includes Swiss sociologist and mental health advocate Jennifer Walter’s Threads post on the Trump administration’s “shock doctrine” to cognitively overwhelm citizens; Tonika Lewis Johnson and Maria Krysan’s new book, Don’t Go: Stories of Segregation and How to Disrupt It, highlighting how warnings to avoid Chicago’s South and West sides reinforce harmful segregation; Ardeshir Geravand’s caution that Iran’s soaring inflation may foment social unrest if citizens’ legitimate paths to economic mobility remain blocked; and Jamie Lee Kucinskas’s forthcoming The Loyalty Trap: Conflicting Loyalties of Civil Servants Under Increasing Autocracy, on the challenges American civil servants faced during Trump’s first term.

Our latest podcast episode includes TSP Board members Jordyn Wald, Emma Goldstein, and Forrest Lovette discussing Tressie McMillan Cottom recent opinion piece in The New York Times on “Dry January”, or avoiding drinking alcohol during the month of January.

Francesca Bernardino‘s new piece, Listening to Music (and Being Tracked) In the Streaming Age, writes on research by Michael James Walsh in Media, Culture & Society, covering how music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music blur the line between personal listening habits and public identity. These social media-like elements heighten self-consciousness and spotlight the burden of constant data collection.

From the Archives

According to a recent NYT article, 33% of 8th graders read at a “below basic” level according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. COVID-19 and the move to online classes (which has been associated with absenteeism) has been one suggested source of the decline, as well as the increased shift of reading on devices. Check out this Discovery from 2022 on how virtual schooling had (and has) impacts beyond the classroom.

President Trump signed an executive order directing the Education Department to prioritize funding school choice programs and making alternative schooling more accessible to families. This TROT from 2019 reviews research on school choice and public education, showing that school choice can reinforce inequality.

The Super Bowl is this weekend. Check out this list of some sociology pieces by us and our partners before the big game.

More from our Partners & Community Pages

Contexts

Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Council on Contemporary Families

First Publics

New & Noteworthy

Our latest Clippings by Mallory Harrington covers sociology making headlines, including Tressie McMillan Cottom‘s critique of the moral politics surrounding “Dry January”; Brooke Harrington’s analysis of the antidemocratic ambitions of tech “broligarchs” on The Daily Show; Joan Donovan’s insights into the evolving role of political disinformation in Trump’s campaigns and the broader internet landscape; Volodymyr Paniotto’s examination of Ukraine’s shifting social dynamics and demographic crisis amid the ongoing war; Hannah Wohl and Lindsey Cameron’s exploration of the illusory autonomy of gig economy workers in industries like ride-sharing and adult content; and Zeynep Tufekci’s incisive critique of Mark Zuckerberg’s approach to hate speech moderation and the monetization of divisive content on Meta platforms.

From the Archives

President Trump has pulled back directives that bar Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol from arresting people who are suspected of being undocumented in previously “sensitive” areas that include schools, churches, courthouses, hospitals, and others. Check out our recent Discovery by Leonardo LaBarre, Undocumented Driving, Threats of Deportation, & Childhood Trauma, which covers research about the ripple effect of these immigration policies on children.

On Sunday, February 2, the Grammys will be awarded to US musicians. Read another recent piece, The Making of a #1 Song by S Ericson, from last year if you want to know more about how music charts are calculated in the US.

Backstage with TSP

The TSP board met for our first time for Spring Semester. This semester we are going full steam ahead on some new TROTs, summarizing social science research on a variety of topics.

More from our Partners & Community Pages

Contexts

  • rural rainbows by Sophie X. Liu covers a study in the Canadian Review of Sociology, showing that mental health outcomes among LGB Canadians vary across urban and rural contexts, and is influenced by gender and partnership status. While partnered gay men in rural areas report the highest levels of mental well-being, bisexual individuals—especially women—consistently face significant mental health disadvantages, highlighting the need for supportive rural environments.
  • youth migrants and long-delayed family reunification by Daniel Jenks and Ernesto Castañeda summarize their new book, Reunited. It challenges the media’s portrayal of unaccompanied minors from Central America, revealing their journeys as family-driven efforts to reunite amid long separations and rising violence, highlighting the visible struggles at the border and the often-invisible challenges of reintegration.

Council on Contemporary Families

  • Finding a Home During the Affordable Housing Crisis by Steven Schmidt covers his research in the American Sociological Review, highlighting how low-income renters in Los Angeles rely on social ties to navigate the challenges of unaffordable housing, using support from friends and family to secure leases, cover deposits, and find temporary housing. However, racial disparities in the financial resources available through these networks widen housing inequalities, with white renters often accessing better options and outcomes compared to Latina/o renters.

Engaging Sports

New & Noteworthy

I Hate the Elite…Sometimes, by S Ericson from Yuchen Luo’s study, explores how Trump’s presidency altered populist views among his supporters. Luo’s research reveals that many Trump voters, feeling represented by him, became less populist between 2016 and 2020, though their attitudes toward elite groups largely remained unchanged. Will Trump’s second term follow suit?

From the Archives

Historical snow falls hit the Southern United States and fires still rage in California, bringing climate change back (again) into public discussions. This Roundtable piece from 2016 covers the “climate” at the time, for Climate change. Highlighting stark differences in climate policies from nearly 10 years ago, and its connection to social inequalities and environmental justice movements, this piece again brings into question if 2024 will be more of the same.

Pardons and commutations are also a frequently discussed topic. Read Pardons, Commutations, and the Distribution of Clemency by Ryan Larson and Veronica Horowitz to gain some historical context.

More from our Partners & Community Pages

Council on Contemporary Families

New & Noteworthy

Gender, Cultural Change, and the Catholic Church, adapted by Jordyn Wald from work by Christine Delp, examines the evolving role of women in the Catholic Church amidst cultural shifts. The article highlights Pope Francis’s 2024 synod, which, while falling short of ordaining women as deacons sparked ongoing debates about gender roles.

From the Archives

Stunning Embers by Jenny Davis brings us back to 2019-2020 for the Australian fires. This piece highlights a unique response to “disaster tourism,” where emergency services not only closed roads to prevent unnecessary risks but also leveraged social media to control the narrative and discourage unsafe behaviors.

The Missing Story behind the Coverage of the Trump Inauguration: Class by Sarah Diefendorf and Emily Kalah Gade argues that disparities in attendance between Trump’s 2017 inauguration and the Women’s March reflect how class, race, and cultural capital shape political mobilization. Their analysis may prove relevant in the coming weeks as Trump’s 2024 inauguration approaches.

More from our Partners & Community Pages

Contexts

Council on Contemporary Families

  • What’s Missing in Sex and Relationship Education for Sexual Minority Men? by James Newton writes up his research highlighting the inadequacy of traditional sex and relationship education for sexual minority men — revealing that schools, families, and even modern sources like social media fail to fully address their unique needs. The findings emphasize the urgent need for inclusive programs that teach relationship skills, intimacy, consent, and HIV prevention in ways that resonate with diverse sexual orientations.