Socks. A simple pair of socks.

Amidst everything that seems to be going haywire in our world these days, it is good, right, and necessary to take this day and reflect on all that we have to be thankful for in our lives. There are many blessings I personally am thinking of this morning–family near and far, house and home, health (except for the deranged disk in my back), meaningful work, caring colleagues, great students, engaging friends. But thing I keep coming back to this morning is this pair of socks I’ve been wearing once a week every week this past fall.

It is a pretty cool pair of socks. They are mostly white, 3/4 length athletic socks with thick red and blue strips that encircle the calf. Think of 1970s ABA swagger and hip-ness, and you kind of get the picture. I’m pretty sure I’m the envy of all when I wear them. Truth be told, they are probably a bit too stylish for me. But they are also so thick and absorbent and comfortable that I’d wear even if they weren’t cool.

So they are great socks, yes. But what I really like about these socks is that every week when I put them on–and I do wear them once a week without fail–I think of my former graduate student Kyle Green. Kyle, you see, is the one who gave me these socks. He presented them to me as a going away present just after he defended his wonderful dissertation study (an ethnography of mixed martial arts) and before he left for his new, first job in New York (Utica College). They were one of the most unusual going-away gifts I’ve ever gotten from a student. I think he gave them to me because we had a lot of fun playing pickup basketball together on Thursday nights. And why I’ve come to love them–and am grateful for them this morning–is because they remind me of Kyle and how much I enjoyed working with him, and how proud I am of what is doing out there on his own. It is my weekly “Kyle moment,” as I told him yesterday when he was telling me about this great new methods project he’s been working on for TSP.

So its really not the socks I’m thankful for this morning as it is Kyle–and all of the people like Kyle (and so many of you!) who help make my life so meaningful and satisfying and wonderful.

Well, folks, it has been a bit of a rough week here at TSP with bad news abroad and at home. We’re thankful to be here doing what we do, though, and we’re glad to be able to share it with you. Here’s a look at what we were up to on the site this week.

The Editors’ Desk:

“Refugee Realities” Doug Hartmann rounds up work on refugees from across TSP.

There’s Research on That!:

“Dunce Caps and Jump Suits: Discipline and Policing in Schools.” Amber Powell and Ryan Larson look at the research on what happens when we treat students like suspects.

Discoveries:

 Clippings:

From Our Partners:

Scholars Strategy Network:

“How the Privatization of “GED” High School Equivalency Degrees Has Created New Roadblocks for the Poor” by Janet Page-Reeves. Research shows that private education services might turn GEDs to GE-Don’ts.

Council on Contemporary Families:

“What Helps Women Entrepreneurs Flourish?” Sarah Thébaud shows us how good family policy supports entrepreneurs just as much as employees.

Contexts:

“Six Lessons of Suicide Bombers” by Robert J. Brym. A classic Contexts piece re-posted in light of last week’s tragic events in Paris.

“Not a Snowball’s Chance for Science.” Research from Dana R. Fisher, Joseph Waggle, and Lorien Jasny looks at the echo chamber on climate science.

And a Few from the Community Pages:

• Cyborgology on everything from normal terror to Taco Bell.
• Sociology Lens asks big questions about piracy and 3D printing
• Families as they Really Are looks at how we live now

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Last month, The New Yorker published a great, extended form piece documenting the long, complicated, terrifying, and still uncertain journey of one Syrian refugee from his homeland to a new country in Europe. “Ten Borders: One Refugee’s Epic Escape from Syria,” by Nicholas Schmidle, is certainly investigative journalism rather than social scientific analysis, but the article paints a moving, deeply human portrait of what these folks—so often marginalized, dismissed, or even demonized—are going through. Here on The Society Pages, we’ve also taken quite a few looks at different angles on migration, immigration, and the refugee experience. Here are a few pieces you may find interesting:

“The Invisibility of Today’s Women Refugees,” by Katharine Donato. A TSP special feature on how female refugees’ movements are often masked by social forces that shape the timing of their moves.

“‘Traditional Women’ and Modern Migration,” by Allison Nobles. Reporting new research from Anju Mary Paul in Social Forces.

“Refugees and Social Instability: There’s Research on That!” by Evan Stewart and Miray Phillips. Social science on the motives and meaning of migration shows a clear difference in why refugees and migrants travel, but also how the places where they move can blur the lines between the groups.

“Fifty Years of ‘New’ Immigration: Viewpoints,” by Shehzad Nadeem, John D. Skrentny, Jennifer Lee, Zulema Valdez, and and Donna R. Gabaccia. A Contexts magazine collection of essays on U.S. immigration since 1965.

And, of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my latest book, Migration, Incorporation, and Change in an Interconnected World, with Contexts co-editor Syed Ali.

Happy Friday! Be sure to stop by TSP and check out what we’ve been up to this week.

There’s Research on That!:

“Prescription Drug Use on the Rise,” by Caty Taborda. How pharmaceutical companies convince us we need pills for problems we didn’t even know we had.

Discoveries:

“Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric Raises Gun Sales,” by Neeraj Rajasekar. “In short, anti-immigration legislation and rhetoric can shape public attitudes, and social anxiety can predict the likelihood that locals ‘lock and load.'”

Clippings:

“The Sociology of North Carolina Barbecue,” by Eamon Whalen.  John Shelton Reed talks to The New Yorker and explains how “barbecue is to the American south what wine and cheese are to Europe.”

“Racial Profiling? There’s an App for That,” by Eamon Whalen. Leslie Hinkson talks to The Washington Post about the potential consequences of crime monitoring apps.

From Our Partners:

Scholars Strategy Network:

“Why America’s Women of Color Have Lost Ground Since the Great Recession,” by Marion Johnson. Limited access to health insurance, minimal representation in the government, and discriminatory voter ID laws all contribute to this troubling trend.

Contexts:

“College Men Having Sex With Men: Are They Exclusively Tops or Bottoms? (No),” by Eliza Brown and Paula England. Research shows that most men are “versatile” rather than always one or the other.

And a Few from the Community Pages:

• Feminist Reflections reflects on rape culture and pop music.
• Cyborgology asks why we don’t like our neighbors and peeks at Mizzou’s Yik Yak.
• Sociological Images looks at resistance to trans-friendly public bathrooms and asks who gets to break the rules.
• Give Methods a Chance talks to Clifton Evers about mobile video ethnography.

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Hello everyone! With the candy consumed and the early evenings setting in, we have rounded up the latest work at TSP to brighten your morning! Here is a look at what we’ve been up to:

Special Feature:

“The Invisibility of Today’s Women Refugees” by Katharine Donato.

“…most of the images I have seen are of men making the trip from Syria and other countries to Western Europe…I know that the gender composition of most displaced persons and refugees generated by warfare is balanced, half men and half women. So where are the women among these refugees?”

Office Hours:

“Sharmila Rudrappa on Global Surrogacy” with Sarah Catherine Billups. Sharmila Rudrappa explains why India has become an increasingly popular destination for American couples searching for affordable pregnancy assistance.

The Editors’ Desk:

Clippings:

Discoveries:

“When and Why Arab Americans Mobilize for Protest” by Miray Philips. New research from Wayne Santoro and Marian Azab shows how political repression brings new activists into the fold.

From Our Partners:

Scholars Strategy Network:

And a Few From the Community Pages:

• Sociological Images discusses civil disobedience and Barbie—everything you need in a morning read!
• Cyborgology talks research ethics and launches Theorizing the Web 2016!
• Education & Society looks at research on how digital tutoring can charge more, and offer less, than a face-to-face study buddy.

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This fall I’ve been working on the address I’m supposed to give as President of the Midwest Sociological Society in Chicago this coming March (23-26). Playing off of our program theme of a year ago, it is tentatively titled: “Sociology and its Publics: The Next Generation.” Among the themes I’ve been reading about and trying to think through are the social conditions and institutional infrastructures of public engagement—and very high on that list are all the new social media forms that began to appear just as the thing we call “public sociology” was beginning to be named and championed by Michael Buroway.

If you are interested in such topics, Kieran Healy has a great piece on social media and public sociology that you should take a look at. It is based on a talk he gave recently at UC–Berkeley.

Almost as if by ESP, Joel Best of the University of Delaware sent me this little reflection he wrote about the evolution of media coverage of his research on fear and Halloween over the years. It seems both timely and appropriate to share (with his permission).

“Experiencing the Death of Print.”

In 1985, I published my research on fears of Halloween sadism, first in a sociology journal and then in Psychology Today magazine. My principal finding—that I could not find any reports of children being killed or seriously injured by contaminated treats received while trick-or-treating—struck the press as newsworthy, and I wound up giving a couple dozen interviews that year.

That was the beginning of a seasonal job. For 31 years, I have fielded late-October calls from reporters at all sorts of media—a few hundred in all, I suppose. The great majority came from newspapers. Typically, a reporter would be assigned to write a story about Halloween safety and, not really knowing how to proceed, she’d often check LEXIS-NEXIS to see what other reporters wrote on the topic the previous year, find me quoted, and then give me a call.Print journalism may not be dead, but it doesn’t seem that healthy.

This year had a normal amount of traffic—eight requests for interviews, which covered the usual topics. But there was one difference: I spoke to only one newspaper reporter. All the other interviews were for podcasts, websites, or other Internet-based media.

We hear a lot about the death of print: newspapers and magazines have declining circulations. Young people, in particular, prefer to get their news through electronic means. As a result, newspapers are publishing fewer pages of news and employing fewer reporters to write stories. The inevitable result is fewer feature stories about Halloween safety, and therefore fewer print journalists contacting me. Print journalism may not be dead, but it doesn’t seem that healthy. Once again, Mills has been proven right: the sociological imagination can link my personal experiences to larger public issues.

Happy Halloween weekend all! Before you put on your costumes, turn on your favorite scary movies, and embark on a self-induced candy coma, check out the treats we have for you over at TSP this week.

There’s Research on That!:

“#ShoutYourAbortion Shouts Back at Stigma,” by Amber Powell and Jacqui Frost. Sociological research details why women have generally felt compelled to stay silent about having abortions and the potential benefits of speaking up.

“Fantasy Sports and the Culture of Fandom,” by Evan Stewart and Alex Snidarich. Thinking of trying your luck on a fantasy sports website? Find out what they offer beyond the promise of money.

Clippings:

“The Context of Cult Violence,” by Miray Philips. Bernadette Barton talks to Broadly Vice about the recent violence in an upstate New York church and how isolated religious groups get away with and justify abuse.

“The Missing Women of Wikipedia,” by Eamon Whalen. Julia Adams talks to The Atlantic about the gender imbalance of Wikipedia’s editors.

Discoveries:

Check out “The Personal (Financial) is Political” by Evan Stewart to put Wednesday’s Republican debates in context.

From Our Partners:

Contexts:

“Regulating Unpredictable Schedules to Cut Down the Chaos.” Naomi Gerstel and Dan Clawson suggest much needed changes to shift some of the burden of unpredictable schedules off of employees and onto employers.

Scholars Strategy Network:

“Can Pro-Choice and Pro-Life Activists Recognize the Socioeconomic Realities of Abortion?” by Hannah Phillips. Why the two sides of the abortion debate need to come together and agree to be “pro-women.”

Council on Contemporary Families:

“Promoting Marriage among Single Mothers: An Ineffective Weapon in the War on Poverty,” by Kristi Williams. What is effective? Supportive social and economic family policies.

And a Few From the Community Pages:

• Sociological Images gets into the Halloween spirit with a sociology of zombies, a look at Halloween as an alcoholiday, and their annual “Sexy What?!” Halloween post.
• Sociological Lens talks the sociology of debt and finance.
• Feminist Reflections reflects on man buns and feminist mentoring.
• Cyborgology turns 5 and revisits how Black Lives Matter hacked the social system.
• Families As They Really Are reports on the state of women’s reproductive health.

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Hello, everyone! TSP has been buzzing with everything from elections abroad to academics at home this week. Here’s a look at our latest work.

There’s Research on That!:

“Is #MasculinitySoFragile?” Allison Nobles and Aisha Upton look at the research that makes this hashtag resonate.

“Mass Incarceration’s Challenges for Black America: Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Edition.” Amber Powell rounds up research from the sociologists featured in Coates’ latest article for The Atlantic.

Discoveries:

“Fact or Fiction: NFL Players More Criminal than General Population” by Amber Powell. Research from Wanda Leal, Marc Gertz, and Alex Piquero shows the answer may surprise you!

Give Methods a Chance:

Vinnie Roscigno on Mixed Methods Research. “I feel more confident when I can pull off this blending of methods…this type of sociology is poignant. It’s powerful.”

Clippings:

“Men Who ‘Wait for Marriage‘” by Amber Powell. Sarah Diefendorf talks to The Huffington Post about her research on male abstinence support groups.

“An Academic Bind: ‘Publish or Perish’ Means Playing It Safe” by Miray Philips. A study on the sociology of studies. So meta.

“Surviving Gun Violence” by Eamon Whalen. “Getting shot really changes a person’s social world”

From Our Partners:

Scholars Strategy Network:

“The Complexities of Black Youth Suicide” by Kimya N. Dennis

Contexts:

“Something’s Going on North of the Border, Eh?” Howard Ramos gives us a look at the Canadian elections this past week.

And a Few from the Community Pages:

• Sociological Images talks planned obsolescence and the links between masculinity, marines, and My Little Pony
• Cyborgology talks authenticity in political campaigns and small town internet
• Sociological Lens analyzes the airport

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Happy Friday everyone! We’ve got lots of great new stuff on the site this week, so be sure to stop by and check it out!

There’s Research on That!:

In “The Politics of Pink,” Sarah Catherine Billups reviews research that complicates the “pink culture” surrounding breast cancer awareness campaigns.

Discoveries:

“‘Traditional Women’ and Modern Migration” by Allison Nobles. Anju Mary Paul finds that, despite what looks to be a break from traditional gender norms, migrant women often frame their movement as a means to fulfill their roles as mothers and wives.

Office Hours:

Joanna Kempner talks to Matt Gunther about the “Gender Politics of Migraine.”

Clippings:

“Discrimination Harms Transgender Health,” by Allison Nobles. Lisa R. Miller and Eric Anthony Grollman talk to US News about the disproportionate discrimination trans people experience and how that relates to poor health outcomes.

“Can Being Buried Alive Be a Good Thing?” by Neeraj Rajasekar. Margee Kerr talks to ABC News about the benefits of overcoming our fears.

From Our Partners:

Scholars Strategy Network:

“Are Gender Stereotypes A Problem For Female Candidates?” by Nichole Bauer.

Contexts:

“Pete Wells: Nytimes Food Critic, Accidental Sociologist,” by Josh Page.

“What 5 Disciplines (Not Sociology) Say About Ex-offender Re-entry,” by Brittany Dernberger

And a Few from the Community Pages:

• Education and Society on the social construction of first generation college students.
• Girl w/Pen chooses mercy for Planned Parenthood.
• Cyborgology talks Playboy putting clothes on and the social nature of computer programming.
• Feminist Reflections points to powerful women in politics.
• Sociological Lens uses Bourdieu to analyze literary fiction awards.

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Hello everyone! Here’s a look at what TSP has been up to this week.

The Editors’ Desk:

“Thoughts on immigration policy and race,” by Doug Hartmann, on the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act.

There’s Research on That!:

Discoveries:

“Higher Education Lowers Depression” by Sarah Catherine Billups. New work from Shawn Bauldry captures the difference a degree makes for disadvantaged populations.

Clippings:

From Our Partners:

Scholars Strategy Network:

“How Erratic Schedules Penalize Workers.” by Naomi Gerstel. “Just-in-time” scheduling is great for employers, but just not enough for working families that need a stable workday.

Contexts:

“Black in Black Rock City.” Steven Thrasher explores race at Burning Man.

And a Few From the Community Pages:

• Sociological Images on American gun laws and the tragedy of the false negative
• Cyborgology talks bad news on Facebook.
• Families As They Really Are looks at the new U.S. Department of Education college scorecard
• Sociology Lens looks at race and the politics of natural hair.

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