Welcome to our first roundup of 2018! We’re glad to have you. In addition to more “Best of 2017” posts, we’ve got new pieces for you on how children learn rules for romance in preschool, race in adoptive families, and reflections on the NFL protests throughout 2017.

The Editor’s Desk:

On the Eds’ Desk this week, Doug Hartmann reflects on the NFL National Anthem Protests in 2017 and how they might be remembered in the future.

Office Hours:

*~* Best of 2017 *~*

Best of 2017: Mimi Schippers on Polyamory and Polyqueer Sexualities,” with Allison Nobles. In this episode we talked with Mimi Schippers about the ways our cultural disposition toward compulsory monogamy reproduces inequalities and limits the ways we can view relationships.

Discoveries:

Children Learn Rules for Romance in Preschool,” by Allison Nobles. New Research in Sociology of Education finds that children in preschool classrooms learn that heterosexual relationships are normal and that boys and girls have different roles to play in them.

Clippings:

*~* Best of 2017 *~*

Best of 2017: Gendering Gender-Neutral Occupations,” by Caity CurryThe Globe and Mail covered research from Laura Doering and Sarah Thébaud examining how gender-ambiguous occupations become gendered over time.

From Our Partners:

Sociological Images:

Small Books, Big Questions: Diversity in Children’s Literature,” by Evan Stewart.

Social Studies MN:

Communicating Corporate Social Responsibility,” by Allison J. Steinke.

Contexts:

It’s Better to be Angry Together,” by Philip Cohen.

Hurricane Party,” by Rachel Tolbert Kimbro.

Where Intersectionality is a Strategy,” by Eric Stone.

Facing Race in Adoptive Families,” by Chandra Reyna.

And a Few from the Community Pages:

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Photo Credit: Nathan Rupert, Flickr CC

In case you were otherwise occupied, on Christmas Day the Associated Press named the “NFL National Anthem Protests” the top sports story of 2017. In a year of many huge sport stories both on and off the field, the AP said the story was the “runaway winner” for its staff. This doesn’t surprise me at all. I’ve studied sports-based social activism for a long time, but I’ve never had more media calls and requests for interviews in my career than these past few months.

The single biggest reason for the story, I’m pretty sure, involves our President’s seemingly unprompted and unusually profane attacks in September on football players who had engaged in demonstrations and the NFL. For better or for worse, Trump’s attention provoked a tidal wave of unprecedented gestures of protest and support across the league (and across both racial lines as well as those of management and ownerships) that gave the story its scale, scope, and intrigue. But there’s much more to say about it than that, much more.  I’ve been tracking this all fall as part of my own research project on the “new era” of African American athletic activism we are currently witnessing, and I am going to pull some of that together in a commentary with my sport and politics collaborator Kyle Green.  We are hoping to run that piece in the lead-up to the Super Bowl here in the Twin Cities at the end of January, so stay tuned!

There are two points I’d like to address here, by way of year-end retrospective: “kneeling” and “remembrance.” On kneeling, why do athletes feel the need to protest?

“Why do they do it?” is far and away the most common question I get from journalists and regular folks alike. Underlying this inquiry is the sense (a) that these demonstrations are disrespectful and (b) that professional athletes are super-rich, superstars who should be so satisfied with their lives and salaries and fame that they’d have no reason to complain or be angry, much less act out in public. At best, they see African American athlete activists as spoiled complainers, more interested in politics, making news, and making money than anything else. For many Americans, athletic protests are as incomprehensible as they are inappropriate.

Based on the athletes I’ve talked to and my earlier research on black athletic activism in the 1960s, I see the issue quite differently. and commitments. In a society that continues to be plagued by disproportionate police brutality, persistent racial gaps, and overt bigotry and bias, they feel compelled to do or say something. Sometimes it is in support of communities of color—their communities—who continue to face persistent racism and discrimination. Sometimes it is quite personal, stemming from their own ongoing individual experiences with racism and discrimination. And almost always it is quite principled and reasoned, with a clear understanding of the costs and consequences (which are far more real and extensive than most of us realize). Athlete activists don’t take their activities lightly or think of them as disrespectful or anti-American. Quite the contrary, they understand activism as consistent with the higher moral standards, ideals, and aspirations of both American democracy and sport culture.

But there is something else here too: It is also the fact that many —to make it seem like everything is okay. This was a major motivator for the African American athletes who participated in protests in the year leading up to the 1968 Olympic Games. As high jumper Gene Johnson explained in support of the “Olympic Project for Human Rights:”

“The United States exalts its Olympic star athletes as representatives of a democratic and free society, when millions of Negro and other minority citizens are excluded from decent housing and meaningful employment” (Race, Culture, and the Revolt, 2003, p. 84).

Or, as the OPHR organizing pamphlet put it: “We must no longer allow this country to use black individuals of whatever level to rationalize its treatment of the black masses.” 

So, that’s kneeling, now for remembrance. A few weeks back I was interviewed by a Time reporter for a special 50th anniversary retrospective issue on the tumultuous year of 1968. Among other things, the reporter asked me what my research on Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s iconic victory stand demonstration taught me about the meanings and implications of the protests of Colin Kaepernick and his NFL brethren. “How will we remember what is going on today, 50 years from now,” she wanted to know?

Social scientists like me, I told her, are loath to make predictions. However this topic is one where I was willing to make an exception. I’m pretty confident that one day in the not-to-distant near future, Kaepernick and company will be remembered far more positively across the American populace than is currently the case. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if, once the specifics of this moment and the larger racial politics that are unfolding are behind us, these athlete activists come to be revered as courageous, admirable, or even heroic—certainly ahead of their time. If you’re interested, my little quote to this effect can now be found in print on page 92 of the latest issue of Time (dated Dec. 25/Jan. 1) as well as online here.

Such historical re-remembering is a familiar pattern in American culture. It happened to our collective conceptions of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Muhammad Ali. Perhaps most pertinent to this discussion are the memories that surround the perpetrators of one of the most iconic sports demonstrations of all time, Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s 1968 clenched first, victory stand demonstration at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Today, most Americans celebrate Smith and Carlos as heroes of the Civil Rights Movement; back in 1968, they were seen as villains, traitors, and worse.

History and memory—what happened and how we think about what happened—are two different things. All too often, the way we remember and romanticize images, individuals, and events comes at the cost of forgetting all of the actual social issues and context that gave rise to them in the first place. As this year draws to a close and we begin to look to the future, let us not lose sight of the racial disparities and social injustices at the root of the biggest sports story of 2017.

Looking to bring in the new year with some sociological perspective? We’ve got you covered. This week we’ve got some great new pieces and some of our best from over the year.

Office Hours:

*~* Best of 2017 *~*
Lisa Wade on American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus,” with Amber Joy Powell and Allison Nobles. Voted best podcast of 2017 by the TSP board, in this episode we talked with Wade about the complexities involved in navigating the ‘hookup culture’ found on college campuses.

Discoveries:

Shining a Light on Lower Crime in Brazil,” by Caity Curry. New research in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology finds that electricity policies in areas that previously had little to no access to electricity can be an essential tool for crime control.

*~* Best of 2017 *~*
Minority Men doing ‘Women’s Work’,” by Allison Nobles. Research in The Sociological Quarterly finds that all groups of racial minority men are more likely than white men to work in female-dominated jobs.

Clippings:

Promoting Women Reduces Sexual Harassment,” by Natalie Alteri. Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev tell the Harvard Business Review that more women in leadership roles is vital to remedying sexual harassment culture in the workplace.

From Our Partners:

Sociological Images:

Listen Up! Great Social Science Podcasts,” by Evan Stewart.

And a Few from the Community Pages:

Last Week’s Roundup

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TSP Edited Volumes

Looking for some reading material for your winter break? You’ve come to the right place. We’ve got some great new pieces this week, as well as a new issue from Contexts and a brand new TSP volume, Give Methods a Chance. We’ll also be rolling out our *Best of 2017* over the next few weeks, so you can catch up on all the great posts from the year. Enjoy!

There’s Research on That!:

Navigating Multiracial Identities,” by Allison Nobles and Amber Joy Powell. The latest royal wedding announcement got us thinking about the complexities of being multiracial in an increasingly diverse global world.

*~* Best of 2017 *~*
Revisiting Rape Culture as Survivors Say ‘Me Too’,” by Amber Joy Powell. In the midst of over 500,000 women and men saying #MeToo, we highlighted research on the causes and consequences of rape culture in the United States.

Discoveries:

Showing Off Your Sacred Side,” by Evan Stewart. New research in Sociological Science finds that Muslim women who have children aren’t necessarily more religious, but they are more likely to signal their religiosity to others in public.

Clippings:

Why Athletic Scandals Seem Standard in Higher Education,” by Jean Marie DeOrnellas. In a guest post for SalonRick Eckstein argues that problems with the NCAA are a symptom of larger problems with corporatizing higher education in the U.S.

From Our Partners:

Contexts:

Check out the Fall 2017 Table of Contents and see below for the first pieces to go online.

Race, Class, and the Framing of Drug Epidemics,” by Rebecca Tiger.

Segregation in Social Networks on Facebook,” by Bas Hofstra, Rense Corten, Frank van Tubergen, and Nicole Ellison.

Closeted Womanhood,” by Ellie Malmrose.

Crime is Even Lower in Diverse Immigrant Neighborhoods,” by Hannah Kleman.

Social Studies MN:

Who Puts Politics on TV?” by Allison J. Steinke.

And a Few from the Community Pages:

Last Week’s Roundup

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Welcome to another week at TSP! We’ve got some great work on LGBT parents, how parole officers define work for formerly incarcerated Black women, and how the Census categorizes multiracial individuals in the United States.

There’s Research on That!:

LGBT Parents Widen Definitions but Face Challenges,” by Caity Curry and Allison Nobles. We compiled social science research on how LGBT parents expand definitions of families, as well as legal challenges they face, and children’s outcomes.

Discoveries:

How Parole Officers Define Work for Black Women,” by Amber Joy Powell. New research in Gender & Society demonstrates how parole and probation officers limit what counts as “work” for formerly incarcerated Black women.

Clippings:

Cleaning Racial Identity in the U.S. Census,” by Lucas LynchThe Atlantic talked with Robyn Autry about the difficulty of categorizing racial identity for multiracial individuals in the United States.

Latinx Immigrants Perceive Discrimination Differently,” by Nahrissa Rush. NPR spoke to Emilio Parrado about why Latinx immigrants perceive less discrimination than those born in the United States.

From Our Partners:

Sociological Images:

SocImages Classic—The Ugly Christmas Sweater: From Ironic Nostalgia to Festive Simulation,” by Kerri Scheer.

Contexts:

Helicopter Parents in the Hospital,” by Danielle Koonce.

Swedish Parents get the Interview,” by Lucia Lykke.

Fewer Kids, More Equality,” by Carrie Clarady.

Health, Now and Later,” by Justin Maietta.

And a Few from the Community Pages:

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Welcome back everyone. This week we’ve got new pieces on tax reform and inequality, whiteness on American television, and sexual harassment in sports media. See below for that and more from this week at TSP.

There’s Research on That!:

Why Tax Reform Matters for Inequality,” by Jean Marie DeOrnellas. The tax bill is still under discussion by Congress, so we rounded up research on how tax policy affects the structure of social inequality in America.

Discoveries:

Dance, Authenticity, and Multiculturalism,” by Neeraj Rajasekar. New research in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity reveals the complexities of dancing as an expression of ethnic identity.

Clippings:

How Whiteness Shapes the Stories We See on TV,” by Jacqui Frost. The Washington Post talks to Darnell Hunt about the ways people of color are represented in the shows we watch.

Social Movement Pathways to Power,” by Lucas Lynch. In a recent New York Times piece, Kenneth T. Andrews argues that social movements can bring about change through exercising different types of power.

From Our Partners:

Sociological Images:

What Drives Conspiracy Theories?,” by Evan Stewart.

How Hate Hangs On,” by Evan Stewart.

Contexts:

Hope in the Sweatshops of Buenos Aires,” by Matías Dewey, Katherine Walker, and Sarah Pabst.

Get Tough on the Huddled Masses,” by Polina Zvavitch.

Of Porn and Prayer,” by Brittany Dernberger.

Council on Contemporary Families:

Women’s Sexual Lives May Not Be About What We Think: Pragmatism in Women’s Infidelity,” by Alicia Walker.

And a Few from the Community Pages:

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The end of the year is getting closer, and we’ve been in a reflective mood at TSP this week. We’ve got some thoughts on the history of American individualism by editor Doug Hartmann over at The Editors’ Desk, a roundup of research on rapid attitudinal changes toward LGBTQ rights, and some historical examples of why it’s important to worry about normalizing white nationalism.

The Editors’ Desk:

Self-Reliance and the ‘Least of These’,” by Doug Hartmann. Reflecting on what he’s thankful for this season and what he’s hopeful for in the years to come, Doug talks Little House on the Prairie, American individualism, and being grateful for our communities.

There’s Research on That!:

Organizational Harassment and a Culture of Secrecy,” by Isabel Arriagada. Social science research explores the social dynamics of sexual harassment in the workplace and the conditions that prevent reporting.

Progress and Uncertainty for LGBTQ Communities,” by Allison Nobles and Caity Curry. Research on past shifts in attitudes towards same-sex relationships provide insight on what the future may hold for the LGBTQ community.

Discoveries:

Cracking Jokes and Dealing Drugs,” by Caity Curry. New research in Criminology finds that drug dealers often use wit as a way to mitigate the riskiness of their occupation.

Clippings:

How the Average Joe Helped Crime Control,” by Isabel Arriagada.  Patrick Sharkey and doctoral students Gerard Torrats-Espinoza and Delaram Takyar talk to the New York Times about how community groups are connected to lower crime rates.

What Makes Dad Do the Dishes?” by Natalie Alteri. Slate published an article by Jill Yavorsky who explains six major factors that contribute to a more equal sharing of household responsibilities.

How Dual-Earners Make it Work,” by Allison Nobles. The BBC talked to Phyllis Moen about balancing work and life in a dual-earner relationship.

From Our Partners:

Sociological Images:

Why We Worry About Normalizing White Nationalism,” by Evan Stewart.

When Social Class Chooses Your College Major,” by Jacqui Frost.

Council on Contemporary Families:

DACA Decision, ‘A very painful thing’,” by Tasia Clemons.

And a Few from the Community Pages:

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Photo by Lorie Shaull, Flickr CC

Thanksgiving break once again provided me with some time for reflection mingled in with all the feasting and football. This year I found myself dwelling upon two rather random bits of reading I had come upon in earlier in the month. One was the reviews of a new biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, she of “Little House on the Prairie” fame. The other was a small series of confessions on my social media feed from sociologists who “admitted” to being fascinated with or even inspired by Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead in adolescence. Both Wilder and Rand, their stories and the worldviews embedded in them, have long held sway over me and (I think) many Midwestern, middle class folks like me.

When many of my ilk and generation think of “Little House,” they recall the 1970s NBC television series featuring Melissa Gilbert as the young Laura and Michael Landon as “Pa.” But for me it is the books. I remember my second grade teacher, Miss Froemsdorf, reading through the series to us in afternoon break times and study halls. In my faded, fuzzy, and probably totally erroneous memory, it seems like my classmates and I spent the entirety of our primary years at Trinity Lutheran listening to the stories from Little House in the Big Woods onward.

Was that even possible? Could we possibly have devoted that much classroom time to listening to these books rather than studying multiplication tables or learning to read and write? Probably not, but my recollection reflects as much on the power of the stories as the accuracy of memory. And indeed what captured my imagination and thus represents such an essential aspect of my elementary school education was Pa’s restlessness, his relentless (if often ill-fated) desire for land of his own, his drive for independence–and the almost complete and utter devotion of his wife and girls to the cause. This was the freedom and self-reliance I was learning to revere. The pioneering, frontier spirit made manifest. American individualism at its finest. 

I didn’t really read and engage the works of Ayn Rand until the summers of my early college years. This was when “objectivism” was experiencing one of its periodic renaissances among conservative students on campus during the Reagan era. Remember the Oliver Stone movie “Wall Street?” “Greed is good,” Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko told us. By then, I was a bit more inclined to be critical. Still, it wasn’t hard for me to see the appeal, to see how that self-reliant worldview –buttressed by Rand with an unrelenting celebration of the magic of markets and overt attacks on the state–would speak to my grade school self, my inherited midwestern German Lutheran sensibilities.

How to make sense of these works and ideas now? First and most important is to point out all that is missing from these romanticized visions of America and social life more generally: the institutional and technological complexities of modern society; the power of industry (especially railroads and banks and other titans of industry in “using” settlers to create towns and tame land that they knew was not fit for farming); the government role in regulating–and indeed making–markets; cities, technology, supply chains. And this is not to mention poverty and inequality, the dispossession and near extermination of Natives Americans, the great violence of the military, and the realities of hard lives full of death, disease, debt, devastations of all kinds for the masses. I’m talking, in short, of the invisibility of all things sociological.

That said, those of us who care about “the social” need to remember the deep, enduring appeal of these books and stories. Limited and problematic as they may be, stories about families like the Ingalls or of Howard Roarch or Horatio Alger embody in narrative form the core values and beliefs of vast swaths of our citizens and the nation itself. They are the vehicles by which the values of self-reliance and competition and individual responsibility have been inculcated in so many of us, and become such a deep, enduring part of our selves. In fact, I realize now that a great deal of my intellectual development in college and then graduate school was unlearning (or at least complicating) the intuitive logic of these ideas, remaking my own intuitive, organic sensibilities and beliefs.

I pondered these themes over a weekend where I heard and saw friends all over the country posting thoughts about “being thankful” and “feeling blessed.” Yes, yes–such sentiments are appropriate. But thankful for what and blessed by whom? Is it ourselves, our individual selves? Perhaps. For many Americans, such sentiments also go to some larger, less easy to explain force or powers. Again, fine as far as it goes. But gratitude is also, I’m convinced (and I think we too often neglect to realize or acknowledge this), about us as communities. All of us have tons of support and assistance from others along the pathways of our lives. We don’t do it on our own. Ever. There are many others around us, upon whom each of us depends and relies.  We should be thankful for and feel blessed by all of these folks, and of the communities in which we are all embedded.

And thinking about others brings me to one other point. It also gets me thinking about those of us in America and all over the world who haven’t been so blessed or so lucky. What do we think of them? Do we turn a blind eye? Do we blame them for their own misfortune, or even for other problems in our communities? Too often, I’m afraid that’s exactly what we do. I wish we could do better. And I wonder whether an understanding of thankfulness more attentive to others might not also help make us feel thankful but act in more generous and compassionate ways to others, towards those whom our religious icons have often called “the least of these.” 

There is an episode in one of the recent reviews of the Ingalls biography where either Laura or her daughter Rose (who did so much to bring the Little House books to fruition) bring an interviewer down to the fruit cellar of their farm house to show them all of the produce that has been bottled and canned and put away for the winter. “This,” they tell the interviewer, “is all the welfare we need.” I am convinced the Ingalls women totally believed this–and believed that canned food for the winter is all anyone else needed or could ask for as well. Heck, this is a family who suffered through and saw many family and friends die difficult deaths of famine and disease; this was a family who even believed that a plague of grasshoppers who destroyed their crops in the 1930s was divine retribution for the New Deal. They lived their self-reliance. However, I also believe it doesn’t have to be that way. I believe that we, together, can do better.

In other words, I ended my weekend thinking not about being thankful as an individual, but rather by looking for hope for our collective lives together.

If you you’re avoiding Black Friday shopping, recovering from a big meal, or just need some sociology in your life, we have the gobbledy-goods! This week we have new research on beliefs about meritocracy in the United States and China, social science on the meanings of “white supremacy,” and reflections on the role of private schools for inequality in higher education.

There’s Research on That!:

What is ‘White Supremacy’?” by Neeraj Rajasekar. Social science helps us parse out different meanings of the phrase,”white supremacy.”

Discoveries:

Who Believes in Bootstraps?” by Lucas Lynch. New research in The Sociological Quarterly finds that Chinese are more likely than Americans to believe hard work is not the only key to success, despite both countries having long histories of meritocracy.

Clippings:

Will Private Schools Pay Up?” by Evan StewartThe New York Times talked with Charlie Eaton about how private schools play a part in inequality in higher education.

 

From Our Partners:

Sociological Images:

Season’s Greetings from America’s Men,” by D’Lane R. Compton.

Silencing Sexual Harassment Complaints in Pakistan and the US,” by Fauzia Husain.

 

Social Studies MN:

Chatbots, Mobile Apps, and the Future of Journalism,” by Allison J. Steinke.

 

Council on Contemporary Families:

Revisit: A Review of National Crime Victim Victimization Findings on Rape and Sexual Assault,” by  Jessica L. Wheeler.

Revisit: Women not enrolled in Four-Year Universities and Colleges Have Higher Risk of Sexual Assault,” by Jennifer Barber, Yasamin Kusunoki, and and Jamie Budnick.

 

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Welcome back! We’ve got a great roundup for you this week, with new research on the ways national conflicts shape beliefs about immigration, social science on the relationship between wealth and well-being, and some answers to the age-old question — pen or iPad?

There’s Research on That!:

Wealth and Well-Being,” by Allison Nobles. Social science shows that the GOP’s new tax plan risks widening already significant wealth and income gaps in the U.S.

Pen or iPad? Taking Notes in a Digital Age,” by Jean Marie DeOrnellas. Ever wondered whether taking notes by hand really makes a difference?

Discoveries:

Historical Conflict, Modern Xenophobia,” by Brooke Chambers. New research in Social Forces finds that nations with high levels of past territorial loss or conflict are more likely to base their national identity around a shared ethnicity, rather than shared citizenship.

Clippings:

Safe Spaces and Political Identities on Campus,” by Nahrissa Rush. Jeffrey Kidder discusses conservative criticisms of liberal “safe spaces” with the Washington Post and what these critiques illustrate about conservative identity.

‘Masculinity Threats’ and Mass Shootings,” by Nahrissa Rush. In a recent article for QuartzTristan Bridges and Tara Leigh Tober reflect on the ways American masculinity help explain the prevalence of mass shootings in the U.S.

From Our Partners:

Sociological Images:

What’s Trending? A Rise in STDs,” by Evan Stewart.

Contexts:

Durkheim Lives!” by the Contexts’ Editors.

Council on Contemporary Families:

Millennials Changing Binaries (in more ways than one, of course),” by Braxton Jones.

And a Few from the Community Pages:

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