Archive: Jul 2020

Welcome back! This week we feature two new installments each in our Wonderful/Wretched series on racial dynamics in the Twin Cities and in the podcast series, Give Theory A Chance. We also bring you pieces examining how men’s share of housework and childcare has changed since the pandemic and how English soccer teams have gotten involved in Black activism.

Special Features:

“Wonderful/Wretched Memories of Racial Dynamics in the Twin Cities, Minnesota” by Walter R. Jacobs. In this series, social scientists with ties to the Twin Cities share their stories and reflections about experiencing race in the “Land of 10,000 Lakes.”

• “Start the Conversation” by Jocelyn Gutzman
• “Everybody’s Going Uptown” by Rodolfo Aguilar

From Our Partners:

Council on Contemporary Families:

“Men pick up (some) of the slack at home: New national survey on the pandemic at home” by Virginia Rutter.

From Our Community Pages:

• Engaging Sports examines English soccer’s support for the Black Lives Matter movement and the fight against global racial injustice.
• In its latest podcasts, Give Theory a Chance interviews Saida Grundy about the influence of W.E.B. DuBois on sociology and her work and Shamus Khan on teaching the canon.

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Welcome back! This week we bring you a new installment in our Wonderful/Wretched series on racial dynamics in the Twin Cities along with an analysis of the role social trust may play in combating the pandemic. We also feature an interview with Editor Doug Hartmann about athlete activism and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Special Features:

“Wonderful/Wretched Memories of Racial Dynamics in the Twin Cities, Minnesota” by Walter R. Jacobs. In this series, social scientists with ties to the Twin Cities share their stories and reflections about experiencing race in the “Land of 10,000 Lakes.”

• “Bless Me with a Name” by Özlem Ersin
• “In Transit” by Thomas X. Sarmiento

In “Power of Social Trust and the Pandemic,” Ron Anderson explores how the social forces of trust and solidarity may influence peoples’ beliefs, attitudes and social relationships in the time of COVID-19.

Editors’ Desk:

We repost “Athlete Activism from Black Power in 1968 to Black Lives Matter: An Interview with Douglas Hartmann,” by Estelle Brun, a Research Assistant at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS). Hartmann discusses the parallels between two eras of powerful sports protest.

From Our Partners:

Council on Contemporary Families:

“Will COVID-19 Push Women Out of the Labor Force?” by Barbara Risman.

Contexts:

“Vaccines, Masks, and Routine Disruptions during COVID-19” by Rashawn Ray and Fabio Rojas.

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This interview originally appeared in the in July 2020 Sport and Geopolitics Program of the Geopolitical Sports Observatory.

THE SEPARATION BETWEEN SPORTS AND POLITICS?

American presidents have often been labeled as “Sport Presidents” (Green and Hartmann 2012), utilising sport to benefit their image and popularity.

IRIS: How can the myth of “sports and politics don’t mix” be explained?

DR HARTMANN: I think it starts from our idealised conception of both sports and politics, idealised in the sense of their stereotypical definitions and commonsense cultural conceptions. On the athletic front, we think of sport generally as a very pure, safe and even positive, unifying kind of space or social force. For some people, it’s not idealised but more just a matter of entertainment or distraction from other things. The biggest idea is that sport is supposed to be somehow special, separate and distinct from everything else in our regular social lives, and that we have to protect that. On the politics side, I think a lot of people, in the United States at least, think of politics as dirty, complicated and inherently contested and conflicted. You can see almost right away that these two don’t go together very well. And, in fact, much of this modern thing we now call sport was built around this distinction, the idea or ideology, the mythology of sport being sacred, progressive and safe from other things, explicitly in contrast to their idea of the dirty complicated politics of the real world; from its inception, the sporting establishment has wanted it to be sanitized or safe from that.

The reason we sometimes call it a myth is that, in reality, sport and politics are deeply, almost inherently and always intertwined. Often, we don’t recognize this because some of what we scholars would say is political isn’t constructed or understood as political by those who are doing the actual talk about sports and politics in society. Some of the best examples would be around nationalism and the use of flags and anthems in ceremonies that celebrate the nation-state in athletic arenas. While many participants just think of this as normal or typical and not particularly controversial (and thus not “political”), from an analytic point of view, this can be seen as a kind of politics, a politics of culture and symbolism used to celebrate and reinforce certain notions of nation and identity. Because so many people agree with the messages, or just take them for granted or even ignore them, it seems harmless or apolitical even though its political content and function are pretty overt when you think about it. And so there, I think, is kind of the root of the challenge—that, on the one hand, sports and politics are always intermingled in many ways that we often can’t see or aren’t aware of, but that we think they shouldn’t be both because of our conception of sport as a special place and politics as a problematic one.The root of the challenge is that, on the one hand, sports and politics are always intermingled in many ways that we often can’t see, but that we think they shouldn’t be because of our conception of sport as a special place and politics as a problematic one.

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Hello, hello! This week we bring you a new installment in our Wonderful/Wretched series on racial dynamics in the Twin Cities along with sociological research exploring how social and genetic factors combine to influence educational attainment. We also share two #TSPClassics: the first rounds up research on abortion providers in the pre-Roe v. Wade era, while the second explores heterosexual attitudes towards same-sex relationships.

Special Features:

“Wonderful/Wretched Memories of Racial Dynamics in the Twin Cities, Minnesota” by Walter R. Jacobs. In this series, social scientists with ties to the Twin Cities share their stories and reflections about experiencing race in the “Land of 10,000 Lakes.”

• “Rethinking Minnesota Nice” by Danielle Lavin-Loucks

If you are a social scientist who also has ties to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul but now lives elsewhere, we’d love to include your stories as a component of this collective action. Stories from White social scientists as well as from social scientists of color are welcome, as we aspire to document the full range of experiences of the racial dynamics of the Twin Cities. Please send your reflections to Walt Jacobs at walt.jacobs@sjsu.edu by July 10.

Discoveries:

“How Genes and Gender Influence Educational Attainment” by Amy August. New research examines the interplay between genes and the environment to help us understand how gender inequalities in educational outcomes have changed over time.

From Our Partners:

Council on Contemporary Families:

“How Can Colleges Define Consent and Reduce Unwanted Sex? No easy answers here.” by Virginia Rutter.

#TSPClassics Collection:

With the Supreme Court’s decision this week to strike down a Louisiana law restricting abortion, we bring back “Abortion Providers before Roe v. Wade,” a TROT by Allison Nobles that rounds up historical research on abortion providers before abortion was legal in the United States.

And, as Pride month draws to a close, we share “Acceptance vs. Advocacy of LGBTQ Rights” by Isabel Arriagada. This piece recalls a Los Angeles Times op-ed in which sociologist Amin Ghaziani explains that heterosexuals are often willing to extend ‘formal rights’ to gay couples, but they are less willing to demonstrate political engagement or material support.

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