Archive: Feb 2025

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

• winter 2025 table of contents is available free for limited time!
• letter from the editors: winter 2025 by Seth Abrutyn and Amin Ghaziani on their final year as Contexts editors, Seth Abrutyn and Amin Ghaziani reflect on heartbreak and hope.

Council on Contemporary Families

• 3 Qs with Abigail Ocobock Marriage Material: How and Enduring Institution is Changing Same-Sex Relationships by Alicia M. Walker covers Abigail Ocobock’s research on how legal same-sex marriage reshapes LGBTQ+ relationships, blending resistance to heteronormativity with new pressures, constraints, and evolving expectations of commitment.

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

• How Incarceration Exposure Affected Pregnant Women During the COVID-19 Pandemic, by Alexander Testa and colleagues, used data from the 2020 PRAMS survey and found that women with incarceration exposure experienced nearly twice as many pandemic-related stressors as their peers, including food insecurity, homelessness, and domestic violence.

Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

• Revisited Realities of Nuclear Violence in Silent Fallout: Baby Teeth Speak by Sarah Humiko Lam on the 1960s, the Baby Tooth Survey measuring exposed radioactive contamination in children, leading to the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty.

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

• whose parents are paying? by elena g. van stee highlights new research by Kimberly Goyette and colleagues on college spending, showing that Asian American parents—particularly recent immigrants—pay more for their children’s education than White parents, despite lower average incomes, with spending differences disappearing by the third generation.
• status consistency wanted by sophie x. liu on research by Christopher Marquis, András Tilcsik, and Ying Zhang covering status consistency in hiring, showing that applicants with both elite education and attractiveness are favored for high-status jobs, while those with mismatched traits face disadvantages, highlighting new dimensions of inequality in labor markets.
• the wages of digital emotional labor by sophie x. liu writes up research by Paulina d.C. Inara Rodis on how racialized women navigate online spaces, showing that despite advocating against racism and sexism, they often refrain from responding due to the emotional toll and heightened visibility, highlighting the burden of “digital emotional labor.”
• is authentic dating possible? by giora ashkenazi, highlighting an analysis of AI in dating, arguing that authenticity has always been a social performance shaped by symbolic interaction, and suggesting that meaningful connections can emerge by expanding our comfort with vulnerability in digital and real-world interactions.

Council on Contemporary Families

• Beyond “Good” Sex: Unlocking the Secrets to “Great” Sex by Alicia M. Walker on what makes sex truly great, highlighting the importance of sexual skills, responsiveness, and mindfulness in fostering deeper intimacy, mutual connection, and greater satisfaction beyond physical techniques.

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

• shedding the wealth by Colter J. Uscola covers research by Julian Posada on Venezuelan gig workers losing earnings to costly intermediaries and volatile crypto transactions.
• intergenerational costs also by Colter J. Uscola summarizes research by Veronica L. Horowitz, Ryan Larson, Robert Stewart, and Christopher Uggen on how monetary sanctions extend beyond individuals, leaving intergenerational stigma and financial strain on disadvantaged families.
• a woman walks into a brothel… by Parker Muzzerall writes up Eileen Tsang‘s research on women who purchase sex from male workers, seeking intimacy, pleasure, and gender role reversal—challenging traditional views of commercial sex.

Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

• Musk for Forgetting, against Democracy by Joachim Savelsberg unpacks Elon Musk’s support for Germany’s far-right AfD and the recent 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Council on Contemporary Families

• Cherished Family Possessions, Celebrity, and News Coverage of the Los Angeles Fires by Michelle Janning writes on the LA fires shattering, the city’s mythical image, highlighting the deep cultural significance of home, possessions, and family narratives—even as celebrity losses blurred lines between relatability and privilege.

First Publics

• Creating Space for Constructive Conflict in Teaching Theory by Tess E. Starman writes on her experiences teaching sociological theory at a conservative-leaning Catholic university through embracing disagreement, power-sharing, and critical engagement by actively applying theory to real-world social issues.