Hello again everyone! This week we have a roundup of both classic older pieces and some great new ones. See below for sociological insights into everything from lottery tickets, to MLK day, to racial diversity on TV.

Clippings:

“Remembering Martin Luther King Jr.” by Hollie Nyseth Brehm. On Monday, Americans will celebrate the life of MLK, Jr., but this classic Clipping explains how the ways MLK is remembered and celebrated are often contested.

Discoveries:

“Talking Trash: High-Status Explanations for Watching Low-Brow TV,” by Sarah Catherine Billups. It’s awards season, meaning that many of us are reflecting on the movies and TV shows, both good and bad, we watched over the last year. This piece from last year might help you defend some of your choices…

There’s Research on That!:

“Back in Living Color? Diversity on TV,” by Stephen Suh. Awards season also all too often reveals the underlying racial and gender dynamics that play out in the entertainment industry. Check out this great piece for research on racial diversity in American television.

From Our Partners:

Contexts:

“Before You Buy Your Lottery Ticket, Consider This,” by Kasey Henricks.

“Who Thinks Sex with Same-Sex Partners is ‘Wrong’?” by Jessie Ford and Paula England.

“Suicide’s Gender Divide,” by Lucia Lykke.

Also, check out Context’s first “Ask a Sociologist,” with Jennifer Lee.

Scholars Strategy Network:

“How to Break America’s Logjam on Guns and Gun Violence,” by Philip J. Cook and Kristin Goss.

And a Few from our Community Pages:

• Feminist Reflections reflects on women’s graffiti and men’s grooming.
• Sociological Lens reviews Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men.
• Cyborgology talks robocalls, algorithmic writing, and the radical promise of the rustbelt.

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Hello, everyone! TSP is back from winter break with coverage on everything from wage inequality to man buns. Here’s a look at what we’ve been working on this week.

Discoveries:

“On Noisy Neighbors” by Evan Stewart. Research from Ori Schwarz shows how class and culture condition the way we listen.

“How Stigma Can Pay” by Caty Taborda. David S. Pedulla‘s work shows how some negative stereotypes can cancel each other out.

Clippings:

“Women Who Wait to Have Kids Healthier at 40” by Allison Nobles. Kristi Williams tells Huffington Post why the clock might not be ticking so fast.

“Saudi Women’s Success” by Miray Phillips.  New research traces progress in gender equality.

There’s Research on That!:

“The State of Queerness in the Middle East and North Africa,” Miray Phillips looks at how history helps us understand the political stakes of LGBT issues across the region.

From Our Partners:

Contexts:

“Dorothea Lange and the Art of the Caption.” Rae Meadows shows how Lange blended picture and text to produce a better social understanding.

“Culture of Overcompensation” by Joey Brown. New research from Jerry Kim, Bruce Kogut, and Jae-Suk Yang looks at how network structures cut bigger checks for CEOs

Scholars Strategy Network:

And a Few from the Community Pages:

• Cyborgology talks moral panic and man buns 
• Sociological Lens reflects on sociological theory and Star Wars
• Sociological Images looks back at the best of 2015

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Hello again everyone and Happy New Year! We are slowly easing into the new year with a roundup of all the TSP posts that were voted Best of 2015, along with a few new pieces from our community pages that might pique your interest.

Best of 2015!

Best TROT!: “Is #MasculinitySoFragile?” by Allison Nobles and Aisha Upton.

Best Discovery: “The KKK’s Living Legacy,” by Evan Stewart.

Best Office Hours: “David Pellow on Nonhuman Members of the Community,” with Erik Kojola.

Best Clipping: “Women at the Top Find the View Depressing,” by Caty Taborda.

From Our Partners:

Contexts:

“Protest Works,” by Melissa Brown. How social movements can effect social outcomes.

And a Few from the Community Pages:

• Feminist Reflections on family work policies and David Bowie.
• Cyborgology talks Jedi mind tricks, how fashion bias reproduces racism, and why the DNC can shut down a campaign.
• Families As They Really Are corrects assumptions about the correlation between housework and sex.
• Sociological Lens attempts to measure happiness.

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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.