Double. Am I in trouble?Scheduling strikes again! But the great news for you, dear readers, is that, while I’ve been immersed in creating our first volumes to publish with W.W. Norton, our authors, bloggers, and volunteer grad board members have continued to put out exciting new pieces on The Society Pages. Here’s what they’ve been doing in the past couple of weeks! more...
SocImages Reminds Us All How It’s DoneThis week, SocImages saw its most popular post ever, and with good reason. “The Balancing Act of Being Female; Or, Why We Have So Many Clothes” contained a provocative image by art student Rosea Lake (one easily used in a classroom without uproar) and Lisa Wade’s thoughtful, sociological take. What was particularly interesting (I absolutely invite you to take a look and read through the comments if you haven’t already) is the way that Wade went in an unexpected direction and, in a tightly wrapped commentary—maybe 500 words or less?—used the image to help readers think not only about body policing and the ways in which women are (ahem) hemmed in when it comes to clothing choices, but how privilege dictates who can and cannot follow the “rules” of dressing appropriately. 12,000+ likes on Facebook and some 80,000 individual visitors later (not to mention readers on the Huffington Post, which has since reposted the piece), a lot more of the Internet is thinking sociologically. Take a read; it’s fantastic.
Here’s what the rest of us got up to this week: more...
Doubling Down!Loyal readers may have noticed the absence of a roundup last week; shuffled schedules led to shuffled writing, and so this week we’ll have a double dose of goodness to share. Please enjoy what the TSP crew has been rustling up in the past couple of weeks. more...
It’s been a quiet week in Lake Woebegon…As this week, stretching out from Christmas to the New Year, generally is. But that isn’t to say that The Society Pages has gone dark; perhaps just a bit dusky, enjoying this still moment before the New Year comes on with its full force. Here’s a bit of what we were up to this week. more...
It’s the Fi-nal Roundup! Of the year…And it’s going to be a short one, given travel and a luckily contained but still exciting house fire early this morning. All’s well, but such things do tend to cut into the time available for waxing poetic (or waxing anything, for that matter). A programming note: on January 1st, we will share our most-trafficked post from each section of the site as its own sort of Annual Roundup. Stay tuned! more...
Avoiding the Holiday SlideI’ve now ostensibly spent over half my wee life in college. First, as an undergrad, then a grad student, then some more undergrad, staff time, and now as a sort of academia groupie (let’s just say I loiter around a sociology department more often than some find “normal”). And yet, this is the first time in all those years that I’ve really felt the “holiday slide.” My brain essentially tried to go on vacation, starting the day before Thanksgiving (for our international readers, this year’s Thanksgiving was on Nov. 22). I’ve fought back valiantly, but not nearly so valiantly as our authors and grad students, who continue creating great work week after week—undeterred, like the post office, by rain, sleet, or the allure of two weeks without writing an exam, a recommendation letter, a grant application, a survey, or a holiday card. more...
Can. You. Dig it?No, there aren’t a lot of reasons to reference “The Warriors” on the Editors’ Desk. I could spin some, sure: it’s a cool cultural relic; the various gangs all try on personality and self through costume and affiliation; it involves crime, deviance, and social movements, etc. But really, I just wanted to ask Cyrus’s great rhetorical question, “Can you dig it?” Just as the Moon Runners and the Van Courtland Rangers can come together, so, too, do educators, researchers, policy makers, students, and wonderfully interested and curious people from the public here on TSP. And we definitely dig it. After the clip, check out some of this week’s latest and greatest from around the site. Hope you have as much fun reading it as we do making it. more...
Good AdviceSo, this week, I heard an interesting piece of advice for writers, and it’s been knocking around in my head. Here’s the thing: it’s great, pithy advice. And it’s obviously sexist. So here’s the adaptation at which I’ve grudgingly arrived: “When writing an essay, think of it like shorts. You want ’em long enough to cover the business, and short enough to keep things interesting.” more...
Living in the past!A vegetarian, I can’t blame tryptophan. Thus, it must be some sort of “tater-drunk hangover”—or a strong desire not to step on Chris’s excellent post from yesterday—that brings this Friday Roundup on a Saturday. Let’s all just pretend it’s yesterday and enjoy what The Society Pages offered up in a cornucopia (Smörgåsbord?) of social science goodness this week. more...
On the road again…Greetings from Chicago, temporary TSP HQ! As dear Doug is off electrifying the Fargo-Moorhead area with his insights into Midnight Basketball and its neoliberal underpinnings, Chris and I are in the City of Broad Shoulders attempting to, I suppose, look broad (posture helps) at the American Society of Criminology meetings. We’re all dumbstruck at the presence of Stephen Pinker and have seen standing room only attendance at many sessions, even when wonderful restaurants and great sights tempt from just outside the conference hotel. At meetings like these, we get a certain jolt of rededication to TSP, meeting with authors as excited about open-access, de-jargon-ified (I’m an editor, let’s call that a word now) social science as we are. Here’s hoping for many very busy Friday Roundups to come, building on the conversations we’re all having on the road. more...
