To continue honoring the best and most widely disseminated posts on TSP in 2014, we’re moving first into our partner sites. Here are the thought-provoking blockbusters from the editors of Contexts Magazine, the public outreach journal of the American Sociological Society, hosted here online at TSP:

1) “‘I Can Breathe’: The Occasional Fear of Covering Protests,” by Steven Thrasher. A Contexts board member, Thrasher is a professional journalist and photographer with a sociological lens like no other.

2) “Contexts Quicklit: 11 Recent Sociological Findings on Race and the Criminal Justice System,” by Lucia Lykke. University of Maryland grad student Lykke gives a rundown of some of the important numbers for placing today’s widespread protests in, well, context.

3) “Sociology’s Irrelevance in the News,” by Syed Ali. Co-editor Ali largely agrees with Orlando Patterson that sociology, as a discipline, has excused itself from much of the news and offers way to get back in the mix.