Hello, everyone! As the semester winds down at TSP, we are gearing up to announce our Best Posts Of 2015! Keep an eye on the site around the end of December to see which social science stories made a splash this year. For now, here is a list of the latest to tide us all over.

Clippings:

“What ‘Chi-Raq’ Gets Wrong About Gangs In Chicago” by Eamon Whalen. Jason Harrington talks about the changing social structure of gang violence in the New York Times

From Our Partners:

Scholars Strategy Network:

“What Public Housing Officials Can Teach Us about Overcoming Racial Discrimination.” Katherine Levine Einstein shares her surprising research on low rates of racial discrimination in public housing.

Contexts:

“7 things maps tell us about neighborhoods.” Rose Malinowski Weingartner reviews new research mapping everything from grocery stores to gender differences in the way kids travel.

“Unemployment and Well-Being” by Lucia Lykke. New work from Calvo, Mair, and Sarkisian shows how high national unemployment hurts everyone.

“Mumbai Sleeping.” Dhruv Dhawan offers a documentary photo essay on the sociology of sleep.

And A Few From The Community Pages:

• In the wake of anti-immigrant rhetoric, ThickCulture asks how much support an American National Front party would actually get
• Sociological Images looks at race, residence, and which children get asthma.
• Girl w/Pen talks about the real relationship between religion and abortion politics.

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Hello there! The semester may be winding down, but that has not stopped us from producing some great content this week. Come check it out!

There’s Research on That!:

“Corporate Denial of Climate Change Risks,” by Erik Kojola. Research finds that everything from corporate greed to everyday anxieties helps fuels climate change denial.

Discoveries:

“Constrained Classroom Choices,” by Sarah Catherine Billups. “School choice seems to simply reinforce existing gaps: those likely to benefit from school choice are already privileged enough to transfer schools.”

Clippings:

“Can Conservatives Get Climate Change?” by Neeraj Rajasekar.  Riley Dunlap and Aaron McCright talk to The Huffington Post. 

From Our Partners:

Scholars Strategy Network:

“Community Environmental Projects as a Gateway to Greater Citizen Participation,” by Dana R. Fisher.

Contexts:

Editors Syed Ali and Phil Cohen preview the new issue in Science and Politics.

But wait – there’s more! Check out two new Viewpoints pieces that feature multiple scholars on the same issue.

“It’s High Time.” Craig Reinarman, Wendy Chapkis, and Jake Browne on legalizing marijuana.

“Black and Blue.” Shehzad Nadeem, Sudhir Venkatesh, Laurence Ralph, Elliott Currie, and Katherine Beckett on police violence.

Also, don’t miss…

“Strike Days for Public Sector Workers in Quebec,” by Avi Goldberg.

“Book Gift Ideas” from the Contexts grad team.

And A Few From The Community Pages:

• Give Methods a Chance talks quantitative data analysis.
• Cyborgology is all about twitter this week – on how its makes us feel bad and the tweetability of Trump.
• Sociological Images looks at wealth inequality and the business of buyouts.
• Sociological Lens on profiting from precarity.

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Hello! It’s TSP. We were wondering if after all these days you’d like to see … our latest coverage of work in sociology!

Discoveries:

“(Re)Locating Recidivism” by Ryan Larson. New research from David S. Kirk shows how natural disasters can also make natural experiments in neighborhood composition.

Office Hours:

“Andrew Perrin on American Political Publics.” Jack Delehanty talks with Andrew Perrin about his new book, American Democracy: From Tocqueville to Town Halls to Twitter.

Clippings:

From Our Partners:

Scholars Strategy Network:

“The Roots and Impact of Outrage-Mongering in U.S. Political Opinion Media.” Sarah Sobieraj and Jeffrey M. Berry discuss their research on when and why political media gets mad.

Contexts:

Contexts rolls out the Fall 2015 Table of Contents, free to read for the first month!

“Context is Everything.” Joshua Page talks to New York Times food critic Pete Wells

And a Few From the Community Pages:

• It’s all about the internet this week, with Cyborgology examining white supremacy and Girl w/ Pen looking at masculinity in online spaces.
• Sociological Images talks Millennials and tolerance and brings back the Black Friday posts

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Hey everyone! We hope you are all having a restful holiday weekend. Despite the short work week, we have a long list of great new pieces for you to check out.

There’s Research on That!:

“#MedicatedAndMighty: The Social Construction of Stigmatized Illness,” by Sarah Catherine Billups. “Patients’ lived experiences with an illness confirm or challenge expert knowledge, contributing to the continual shaping of the biomedical and cultural understandings of the condition.”

“Why Hazing Happens,” by Neeraj Rajasekar. How power dynamics normalize hazing and silence opposition to it.

Discoveries:

“Segregation, North and South,” by Aisha Upton. Angelina Grigoryeva and Martin Reuf find that the history of residential segregation shapes the regional manifestations of segregation today.

Office Hours:

“Sanyu Mojola on Love, Money, and HIV.” Sarah Catherine Billups talks to Sanyu Mojola about HIV rates among African women.

Clippings:

“Netflix Presents: The Sociology of Dating,” by Allison Nobles. Aziz Ansari uses sociological insights in his new show, Master of None.

“Immigration Myths,” by Miray Philips. The Washington Post covers research by Mary Waters to dispel myths about the causes and consequences of immigration.

From Our Partners:

Council on Contemporary Families:

“Moynihan’s Half Century: Have We Gone to Hell in a Hand Basket?” by Philip N. Cohen, Heidi Hartmann, Jeffrey Hayes, and Chandra Childers.

And a Few From the Community Pages:

• Sociological Images talks TV dinners and 23 facts about Thanksgiving.
• Sociological Lens investigates disruptive innovations.
• Cyborgology explains why we need more empathy.
• Families As They Really Are reflects on mothering and resistance.

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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.