Search results for great books

Happy New Year!  The “great books in sociology” post I did a few days back got a nice little response (not all of it online) and generated a number of new ideas for the graduate seminar I’ve proposed here in the old U of M Sociology department. And clearly some of you have more than just a book or two to add. So, inspired by these off-the-cuff suggestions, let me ask you a more serious, systematic question: What’s on your list? What books would you use?  Send in your Top Ten list of the greatest books in sociology. I can post some of those here on TSP and, if we get enough to make it meaningful, compile a list of the 10 greatest books of all time. Claude Fischer, for one, thinks there may be less consensus than you might think.

New & Noteworthy

This week TSP’s Caroline Garland published a new Discovery, Hard Work Pays Off?, on work by Rebecca Wetter and Claudia Finger. In this piece, we learn about the buy-in of the belief of meritocracy of German medical students. Students with parents who attended college were more likely to believe their hard work paid off than students whose parents did not attend college — who felt admissions were more dependant on class or influence.

Our Clippings this week features Patrick Sharkey and Megan Kang in The New York Times on gun laws and gun deaths and Michael Rocque in Boston Globe on gun laws and safety in Maine. We also have Adia Harvey Wingfield in the Harvard Business Review on workplace culture and the experience of Black employees, Karen Benjamin Guzzo, Alison Gemmil, and Sarah Hayford on millennial hurdles to having children in The Washington Post (great read), coverage of Pete Simi‘s testimony on the current Trump ballot trial in Colarod in the Ohio Capital Journal, and Gillian Gualtieri in Hyperallergic on the U.S. arts and culture industry.

From the Archives

The Grammy Award Nominations were released on November 10th! Learn more about what these awards mean for artists by reading Contexts recent article by Rose Xueqing Zhang.

Election results came in last week, highlighting some of the stakes and possibilities for next year’s election. Read S Ericson’s Discovery on work by Bart Bonikowski, Yuval Feinstein, and Sean Bock on the national political cleavage.

More from our Partners & Community Pages

Contexts has several new pieces including:

• Arlene Stein’s experience with having her book Unbound: Transgender Men and the Remaking of Identity targeted for a possible book ban.
• Understanding the conditions necessary for megachurches to grow and flourish in the United States by Peter Muzzerall.
• Mia Brantley’s piece on her work on interviews with 35 Black mother’s experiences on parenting.

Council on Contemporary Families has two new reads:

• Sung S. Park writes up her recent study on the experiences of People of Color with Disabilities exposure to inadequate conditions and hazards in their home.
• Jennifer Tabler, Ruby Charak, and Rachel M. Schmitz work with LGBTQ+ people experience with identity-related abuse during childhood and subsequent mental health challenges in adulthood.

New & Noteworthy

Changes to Affirmative Action may impact elite prep schools, which serve as a major pipeline into elite universities. Read Richard Zweigenhaft’s latest Special Feature to learn more.

TSP board member Ellie Nickel’s writes up research by Lauren Rivera and András Tilcsik on Double Discrimination for educational opportunities that students who are Black and Disabled face.

Citings and Sightings

Parents are especially vulnerable to economic shifts and uncertainties. Sociologist Jessica Calarco was featured in The Atlantic and provides insight on some of the risks and realities that parents face.

Russian sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky, a Professor at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences,  was charged with “justifying terrorism” for an online post analyzing the possible fallout of the destruction of the Crimea bridge.

Backstage with TSP

With the American Sociological Association’s annual conference a few weeks away, we will be launching a new podcast, videos, and other content within the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned on Twitter, or X, for more.

More from our Partner and Community Pages

Contexts has new pieces on:

• Police Officer’s determination of what constitutes the “hate” in hate crimes.
• COVID-19 blame and scapegoating in South Korea.
• Meet the editors: Laura Beth Nielsen and Seth Abrutyn

Council on Contemporary Families latest includes:

• LGBTQ health and its connections with State-Level Protections.
• What makes “Great Sex”?

New & Noteworthy

Fathers who spend more time on childcare duties with their young children are more likely to feel that men and women should be treated equally. Read our latest Discovery written up by Caroline Garland on Tomas Cano’s and Heather Hofmeister’s work, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family. 

Citings and Sightings

Marriage patterns in the United States among midlife adults have increased, as perceptions of marriage have become more of a “capstone” life experience. Click here to listen to sociologist Susan Brown’s comments on NPR about this trend.

Backstage with TSP

Behind the scenes, our grad board is working on some new discoveries, special features are being edited, and new YouTube videos for our channel are being developed. Stay tuned for more upcoming content!

More from our Partner and Community Pages

Our partner Contexts has a number of great reads that have been published over the past few weeks, including (but not limited to) what is it to be ukrainian, black sociology: a primer, and the privileged professor. Give one (or all) a read!

Are you the oldest child? Click here to read the Council on Contemporary Families piece on favoritism towards the “prodigal children” by Reilly Kincaid. 

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New and Noteworthy

Although many states have laws requiring judges to order the confiscation of guns when emergency restraining orders including threats of violence are issued, most don’t. On the site, Jacob Otis writes up this surprising finding from Julie Kafka and colleagues.

Worth a Read (Sociologically Speaking)

Although homophobic lyrics were once common, mainstream rappers now apologize for using slurs and share the spotlight with LGBTQ artists. Matthew Oware writes on the changing culture of hiphop for The Conversation.

Citings and Sightings

This week Shiny, Happy People, a docuseries about reality TV family the Duggars, and the fundamentalist Christian organization they belong to, premiered featuring sociologist Danielle Lindeman, who emphasized that the men in the family profited off the labor of their wives and daughters, whose births and weddings drew viewers.

More from Our Partner and Community Pages

ALL of partner Contexts Spring 2023 issue is open access for just a few more days! Check out the table of contents and download great content for your to-be-read list while you can.

First-generation college graduates are often the advantaged members of their disadvantaged class while people who don’t graduate college like their parents are often relatively disadvantaged. For Council on Contemporary Families‘ blog Anna Manzoni and Jessi Streib share their findings on what differentiates first-generation students, as well as students who do not follow in their parents’ footsteps to college, from their peers.

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New and Noteworthy

Whether parents are less happy than adults with out kids varies by race and gender in surprising ways according to recent research from Jennifer Augustine and Mia Brantley written up for the site.

From the Archives

Warmer weather have you in the mood for some spring cleaning? Read this archive piece rounding up research on the sociology of dust (?), the division of household labor, and why cleaning is a gendered task as you sweep out those winter cobwebs.

Backstage with TSP

This week Matthew Desmond visited the University of Minnesota to give a public talk on his new book Poverty, by America. Our Society Pages’ board packed a few rows at the very front of the auditorium. It was a fun opportunity to see how long-form sociological work is translated to a live public, especially as we had just read a few chapters of the book together. The presentation was engaging and rich with stories of real people, as is typical of Desmond’s work. We even snagged a few funny inscriptions during book signing time (which you can see above).

More from Our Partner & Community Pages

Dawn Brancati wrote for Sociological Images on how pandemic lockdown measures actually reduced ISIS activity, removing crowd cover and public gatherings such as markets.

Ginevra Floridi wrote for Council on Contemporary Families’ blog on their new research finding that wealthier college-educated parents send more money to their young adult children as inequality increases, such as in the years following the Great Recession.

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Image description clockwise from upper left 1. Older couple holds hands around a tree. 2. Mars Rover 3. An asian chef holds her hands over a plate, seasoning the food 4. Coach Deion Sanders on the Jackson State sideline at the 2021 SWAC Championship 

New and Noteworthy

Because critics assess them based on “authenticity” and consumers expect them to be cheap, gourmet ethnic restaurants struggle to stay afloat and gain recognition. Check out this new discovery from Gillian Gualtieri written up by board member Abigail Palmer.

Citings and Sightings

Insider spoke with sociologist Janet Vertesi on how her ethnographic work with NASA helps shows that, unlike the general public, scientists do not anthropomorphize the robots they work with but they do feel deeply connected to the technology.

Backstage with TSP

Given Twitter’s uncertain future, and the energy of our board members, particularly our enthusiastic undergrads, we are considering what alternative social media platforms TSP might use to showcase our public sociology work. We aren’t yet sure what this will look like but we are having fun thinking about how we could make TSP go viral and feeling grateful for the advice and participation of a younger, and more trend-sensitive, generation. Do you showcase your academic work on other platforms? Do you wish TSP was on a social media site that you love? Drop us a line at tsp@contexts.org.

From the Archives

This week, we lost co-founder of Sesame Street, Dr. Lloyd Morrisett. Dr. Morrisett leaves behind a powerful legacy of public children’s programming that works to reflect the sometimes tough realities of kids lives, such as parental incarceration.

More from our Partner and Community Pages

Contexts spoke with Dr. Ethan Raker about why he is excited about Contexts‘ arrival at the University of British Columbia (spoilers: Great opportunities for grad students! Showcasing UBC’s unique soc perspective! The great Trends section!)

For Engaging Sports Dawn Norwood reflects on what the history of athletics at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and the reality of the financial and racial inequalities shaping college athletics can tell us about renewed attention to HBCUs.

For Council on Contemporary Families’ blog Brittany Stahnke Joy shared her research on what aspects lead to long-term success in marriage.

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Image attribution, clockwise from upper left. 1.“Untitled” by Sofia_Shultz_Photography is licensed under “Pixabay License“ 2. “January 2004 – Mars Rovers Landed” by NASA is in the public domain 3.  “Chef Pam is working on her dish in “The Table” restaurant“ by Thexprojectbkk is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 4. photo via 2C2K Photography licensed under CC BY 2.0

(Clockwise from top left) A man sits in front of a document, cup of coffee, and laptop, his head resting in his hands; Father helping daughter with schoolwork; Art Shell, then head coach of the LA Raiders, reaching for a handshake; A Kaiser Permanente ad trumpets the organization’s involvement in 2017’s Washington, D.C. Capital TransPride celebration. Image attributions at the end of the this post.

New and Noteworthy

While the majority of National Football League players are Black, most head coaches are white. On the site, Marissa Kiss, Earl Smith, and Angela J. Hattery question why there as so few Black permanent head coaches when these same men are trusted to lead in the interim.

Worth a Read (Sociologically Speaking)

From our “Best of 2022” awards, Daniel Cueto-Villalobos summarizes social science research on emotion and precarity that puts interest in the “Great Resignation” into social contexts.

Citings and Sightings

Following Damar Hamlin’s collapse in last week’s Monday-night football game, socio-cultural anthropologist Tracie Canada wrote for Scientific American on the violence Black men experience in football, drawing on the work of sociologists Billy Hawkins and Harry Edwards.

From the Archives

Today it’s Friday the 13th! In honor, check out this piece from partner Sociological Images on how horror films show us our collective nightmares.

From our Partners and Community Pages

Richard J. Petts writes for Council on Contemporary Families’ blog on his research examining the gap between dads’ interest in being involved fathers and their actual contribution to domestic labor, arguing that we have to expect fully engaged dads to achieve gender equality.

Deni Mazrekaj writes for Contexts on the discrimination trans people face in the workplace and how we can work to combat this inequality.

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Image attribution (clockwise from top-left) “Computer Man Stressed Work” by Caio Triana is licensed under CC0; “Untitled” by ddimitrova is licensed under “Pixabay License“; “Art Shell in 2006” by Keith Allison is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0; “2017.05.20 Capital TransPride Washington, DC USA 5177” by Ted Eytan is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

This week around eight inches of snow fell here in the Twin Cities, forecasts now call for a heavy downfall of great reads…

New and Noteworthy

New board member Diana Hoerner wrote up research from TSP alum Amy August showing that, when preschool teachers rely on peers to reinforce appropriate behavior, this encourages selective inclusion and exclusion that fosters social isolation for some kids and not others.

Worth a Read (Sociologically Speaking)

In the wake of the attack on Club Q, Greggor Mattson wrote for Contexts blog on the complexities and realities of gay bars in the United States, places of community and celebration that only enter the spotlight after tragedy.

Citings and Sightings

The Indian Child Welfare Act is on the Supreme Court’s docket this year, The 74 spoke with Frank Edwards about the “enormous amounts of bias” present in the child welfare system, especially when teachers are expected to act as the eyes and ears of the system.

From the Archives

Merriam Webster named “gaslighting” as the word of the year, check out this piece from the archives on the “sociology of gaslighting.”

Backstage with TSP

This week, nominations for our “Best of 2022” went out. We rounded up exceptional pieces from our board members, partner, and community pages. It is a really fun opportunity to reflect on the year and all that we have accomplished. We look forward to announcing the winners and re-running this pieces in our “Best of” series during the semester break.

More from our Partner and Community Pages

“woman, life, freedom” and the progressive academe by Maryam Alemzadeh for Contexts.

Sitcoms and Social Networks by Evan Stewart for Sociological Images.

From Prussia With Love: The Palace That Got To Live Twice by Henning Schroeder for Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ blog.

Keeping Ties with Problematic Parents by Emma Bosley-Smith and Rin Reczek for Council on Contemporary Families’ blog.

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The winds of (seasonal) change are blowing here in Minnesota! As the leaves turn on the banks of the Mississippi River we’re breaking out the flannel and cozying up with some great soc reads…

From the Archives

October is breast-cancer awareness month. Check out this piece from alum Sarah Catherine Billups on “The Politics of Pink”

Citings and Sightings

Jireh Deng interviewed sociologist Anthony Christian Ocampo for the Los Angeles Times on his new book, Brown and Gay in LA: The Lives of Immigrant Sons

Alumni Spotlight

In honor of The Society Pages’ tenth anniversary in 2022 we’re highlighting the contributions and ongoing work of our superb alumni!

Board member Jacob Otis sat down with Dr. Sarah Shannon to reflect on Sarah’s TSP experience.

Dr. Sarah Shannon was on the inaugural graduate board! During her time in TSP, she learned the value of writing for a public audience and how accessible writing can have an impact on audiences.  Behind the TSP curtain, Sarah reminisced about the opportunities that came with board membership. She remembers meeting renowned social scientists, networking with fellow students, publishing her work, and building confidence. Reflecting back 10 years since the founding of TSP, Sarah’s fondest memories are of the people she connected with and the relationships made. She remembers goofing off in board meetings, sharing food, and laughing together.

Currently, Sarah is an associate professor of sociology and director of the criminal justice studies program at the University of Georgia. Her research has been cited by everyone from prominent punishment scholars to former President Barack Obama. Sarah is also an award-winning teacher and public scholar, who facilitates the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program in Georgia’s Clarke County Jail .

More from Our Partner and Community Pages

Shelby Astle wrote for Council on Contemporary Families’ blog about her new research finding that, in conversations about sex with their parents, kids are more willing to share if they talk more frequently and openly about it.

Michelle Mueller wrote for Contexts’ blog about how the responsibility for addressing systemic inequality should not fall to marginalized groups, themselves.

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