Worth a Read (Sociologically Speaking)

For Mother’s Day we rounded up some of our best pieces over the years on the challenges of motherhood plus a few additional good reads on motherhood we haven’t covered.

New and Noteworthy

Board member Isabel Arriagada created this short and engaging video highlighting new research from John Leverso and Chris Hess on how gang members’ conceptions of ideal manhood changes as they age.

Citings and Sightings

Over at the Conversation, Matt Williams interviewed sociologists Amanda Jean Stevenson and Constance Shehan on how their research provides historical context and clarifies the health risks involved if the Supreme Court does overturn Roe v. Wade.

From the #TSPClassics Collection

During this big news week, we have some TSP and partner pieces that provide social science context for the current political moment.

• Allison Nobles on the people that fought to provide abortions before Roe v. Wade
• Ilana Horwitz, Kaylee Matheny, and Natalie Milan writing for Contexts on how more abortion restrictions might lead to women dropping out of college
• Allison Nobles and Amber Joy Powell wrote for us on the connection between race and reproductive control.

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Worth a Read (Sociologically Speaking)

Board member Jacob Otis rounded up social science research on police complaints that shows that police reform is not about just removing a “few bad apples” from duty and will require systemic change

New and Noteworthy

Arielle Kuperberg and Pamela Stone wrote wrote about their new article on depictions of stay-at-home dads for the Gender & Society blog. They found that portrayals of stay-at-home dads have become more positive over time, but only for dads who lost have lost jobs, not those voluntarily choosing to be primary caregivers.

Citings and Sightings

New York Times’ reporter Noam Scheiber spoke with sociologists Ruth Milkman and Barry Eidlin for a piece on the role of college-educated workers in recent unionization efforts at workplaces such as Amazon, Starbucks, and REI.

Backstage with TSP

Last week we read an excerpt from Eric Kleinenberg‘s book Palaces for the People, and thought more about the possibilities for public sociology in partnership with local libraries. We’re always thinking about ways to find new audiences, new “publics,” for our writing in connection with our mission of bringing important sociological findings to more readers. We felt there is clear harmony between the goals of the Society Pages, the important role of libraries as community spaces, and librarians’ work to connect community members with information and resources. We’re not exactly sure what’s next on this but we’re definitely going to keep thinking about how to bring public sociology to the libraries.

More from our Partner and Community Pages

Mayor Weinshel wrote Against the Brittleness of Memory: Complex Parallels on Yom HaShoah for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ blog.

Council on Contemporary Families’ blog shared Ariana Rose’s piece Amsterdam Black Women Refusing Myths of Color-Blindness

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New and Noteworthy

Board member Jacob Otis wrote up research from Kate Watson and her colleagues on the challenges school social workers faced during covid-19 pandemic to meet student’s basic needs, emphasizing that the importance of schools extends beyond academics.

Citings and Sightings

Axios covered the latest data drop from the Shift Project, led by sociologists Daniel Schneider and Kristen Harknett, highlighting that most hourly workers at big chains make less than $15 an hour and 80% of low wage workers that qualify for free services still pay fees for tax prep.

Worth a Read, Sociologically Speaking

Council on Contemporary Families’ blog reposted a piece from Ranita Ray on her research about the harassment Black, Latinx, Asian, and recent immigrant girls face in school classrooms.

More from our Partner and Community Pages

Council on Contemporary Families’ blog re-posted Joseph Coleman’s piece When Therapists Encourage Family Cutoffs

Henning Schroeder wrote on the entwining of war and family lore through the lens of a twice-glazed Easter bunny for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ blog.

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New and Noteworthy

Jean Marie Maier wrote up new research from Vincent Roscigno, Jill Yavorsky, and Natasha Quadlin showing that women experience less dignity at work despite reporting similar levels of job satisfaction as men.

Citings and Sightings

Julie Beck interviewed two friendship researchers, sociologist Rebecca Adams and psychologist Rosemary Blieszner, on how their decades-long friendship and their research inform one another for the Atlantic’s column “The Friendship Files.”

Worth a Read (Sociologically Speaking)

Council on Contemporary Families’ blog reposted a piece from Kendra Hutchens on her research on crisis pregnancy centers and how centers organize their work around “ministry,” seeking to avoid framing their activities as manipulating vulnerable pregnant people.

Backstage with TSP

Last week friend of the site and colleague Dr. David Knoke joined us for a discussion of his course “Social Science Fiction.” We discussed the potential for works of fiction to offer insight into social problems and help us forecast the future. We also thought about how reading literature such as science fiction might help students develop a sociological imagination and the ability to think beyond the current status quo. Although we work in non-fiction at TSP, it’s always helpful to think and read widely and this conversation certainly sparked thought!

More from Our Partner and Community Pages

Sheer Ganor reviewed Minneapolis Institute of Art’s exhibit “Envisioning Evil: “The Nazi Drawings” by Mauricio Lasansky” for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ blog.

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New and Noteworthy

Board member Mason Jones wrote up research from John Leverso and Chris Hess on how Chicago gang members’ relationship to masculinity changes as they age.

Worth a Read (Sociologically Speaking)

Jamie L. Small wrote for the Conversation on her research about boys, sexual assault, and sports. She found that communities and perpetrators struggled to grasp the severity of the sexual assaults, particularly as it threatened the presumed heterosexuality of those involved as well as the community’s reputation.

Backstage with TSP

Last week we continued our exploration of social science writing with a guest: Dr. Michael Walker. Dr. Walker’s new book, Indefinite: Doing Time in Jail, uses different narrative voices, rich description, and emotion to help the reader understand the rhythms and patterns of life in jail. We spoke with Dr. Walker about how to use field notes in the process of writing, finding supportive readers for works-in-progress, and navigating credibility and vulnerability when writing ethnography. We enjoyed having Dr. Walker in and his visit left us thinking about how to incorporate coverage of long-form qualitative writing on the site. If you have ideas, let us know at tsp@contexts.org!

More from Our Partner and Community Pages

Eliza Brown wrote about the “chore” of having sex to conceive and the gendered labor involved for women for Council on Contemporary Families’ blog.

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Worth a Read (Sociologically Speaking)

Daniel Cueto-Villalobos rounded-up research on job insecurity, expectations for work, and emotion that puts the “great resignation” into sociological perspective

New and Noteworthy

For Contexts’ blog Alfredo Huante and Michael L. Rosino analyze coverage of the backlash against teaching critical race theory to distill the tenets of this racialized moral panic

Citings and Sightings

Axios spoke with Marianne Cooper to provide context for new findings that show that young women do out-earn young men in a limited number of metro areas

More from Our Partner and Community Pages

Nikoleta Sremac wrote about the external and internal pressures threatening Serbia’s official position of neutrality in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ blog

L. Dugan Nichol wrote about the precarious labor conditions of professional skateboarders for Engaging Sports

Amy L. Stone wrote about their research on queer carnival and how Mardi gras celebrations offer an opportunity for parents of LGBTQ people to provide support for the Council on Contemporary Families’ blog

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New and Noteworthy

Board member S Ericson covered new research from Samuel L. Perry, Kenneth E. Frantz, and Joshua B. Grubbs showing that who identifies as anti-racist is complex with, for instance, many Americans identifying as both color-blind and anti-racist.

Worth a (Look), Sociologically Speaking

Sangyoub Park wrote for Sociological Images on the emotional experience of seeing gochujang, Korean red chili pepper paste, on the shelf in American grocery stores while the United States has experienced a sharp rise in racism and hate crimes against Asian-Americans.

Citings and Sightings

Junia Howell spoke with Marketplace for their Morning Report on the release of the Biden administration’s plan to decrease racial inequity in home appraisals. Howell’s research shows that appraisals of homes in mostly white neighborhoods are three times higher than those in Black or Latinx neighborhoods.

More from Our Partner and Community Pages

Women can run the world (or at least my city) but men continue to hide from equality at home! by Barbara Risman for Council on Contemporary Families’ blog

Meyer Weinshel wrote on Marking Women’s History Month for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ blog

SJSU HonorsX from Dispatches from a Dean

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Spring is in the air here in Minnesota and we’re back with some fresh social-scientific finds :)

New and Noteworthy

Léa Pessin and Elena Maria Pojman released a data visualization in Socius comparing the gendered division of household labor according to different-sex couples’ race and ethnicity.

Citings and Sightings

Ilana M. Horwitz wrote an op-ed for the New York Times on her research examining how teenagers’ religious upbringing shapes their educational outcomes. In particular, she focuses on how religious involvement may prevent despair and enable academic achievement in working-class adolescent boys.

Worth a Read (Sociologically Speaking)

St. Patrick’s day may have been yesterday, but this classic TSP piece from Neeraj Rajesakar, rounding-up research on how Irish people in the U.S. “became” white is always relevant.

Backstage with TSP

This week in our word meeting we’re discussing writing about quantitative findings using a report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. At TSP we’re always trying to strike a balance between reporting social science findings with enough detail to make it clear why they are notable and interesting, and making sure we don’t overwhelm our readers with lots of facts and figures. This is a goal that is important to us as it lies at the center of our mission to make social scientific findings more accessible to a broader public. It is also a never-ending process that we continue to work on perfecting so we look forward to having a board discussion this week to share more ideas for improvement. If you have any *hot tips* drop us a line at thesocietypages@contexts.org.

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New and Noteworthy

Board member Daniel Cueto-Villalobos covered new research from Alfredo Huante on the process of gentefication in Boyle Heights and the tensions that arise when wealthy newcomers share long-term residents’ ethnic identity, but not their class position or skin tone.

Worth a Read, Sociologically Speaking

Council on Contemporary Families’ blog featured writing from Kenneth R. Hanson on his research exploring why some people choose synthetic partners (sex dolls) over human ones.

Citings and Sightings

Episode seven of The Boston Globe’s Black News Hour featured sociologist Saida Grundy. Grundy spoke about social citizenship for Black Americans and the necessity of social change in the episode which reflected on the tenth anniversary of Travyon Martin’s killing.

Backstage with TSP

Last week we read Joseph Gusfield’s chapter “Two Genres of Sociology: A Literary Analysis of The American Occupational Structure and Tally’s Corner” together and reflected on long-form writing in sociology. As a board, we are interested in thinking about ways to incorporate more coverage of long-form sociological writing on the site since books are not always a good fit with some of our standard formats. Reading Gusfield together, we were focused on how writers in long-form have to choose an audience and decide what they can assume that audience knows about the topic at hand. This is something we think about a lot at The Society Pages: who is our imagined audience, and what do we expect them to know? We’re always trying to strike a balance between making our writing as accessible as possible, to share sociological findings with a broad public, and keeping our pieces short and engaging.

More from Our Partner and Community Pages

Truth, Memory, and Solidarity with Ukraine and A World Disappearing Before Our Eyes… from the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

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New and Noteworthy

We covered new research from Maia Cuchiarra that shows that Black low-income mothers and parenting instructors understand the purpose of parenting differently and this shapes whether or not they think it is ever appropriate to use physical discipline.

Worth a Read, Sociologically Speaking

Our partner Council on Contemporary Families’ blog posted a research summary from Dana M. Johnson and colleagues on the reasons people choose to self-manage their abortions by obtaining abortion medications online and how policy changes could help increase abortion access.

Citings and Sightings

As we gear up for another election cycle, WBUR spoke with R. L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy on how courting suburban voters means acknowledging the suburbs increasing racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity.

More from Our Partner and Community Pages

Swastikas in the Bathrooms and Memory Politics and Memory Solidarity: An Interview with Jelena Subotić from Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ blog

End of the journey as a dean from Dispatches from a Dean

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