Now available! With Getting Culture, the fifth in our series of paperback readers with W.W. Norton & Co., it feels like we’ve really hit our stride. The new volume features work on the “stuff” of religion, fast fashion and global production, musical tastes, same-sex marriage, and so much more—all bolstered and rounded out by “TSP tie-ins” that bring readers to the site for interactive content and a discussion questions and activities section for reading groups. Oh, and it’s only $15. Stop by Norton’s booth at the ASA conference or check out our series online. We’re awfully proud.
Also, if you’ve already picked up a copy, be sure to log on to thesocietypages.org/culture for links and additional content. Our TSP topic page on culture continues to be updated weekly, so you can always get your culture, culture, culture there, too!
“Back to School Research,” by Doug Hartmann and Chris Uggen. Some of the fresh sociology research on education and learning as featured on TSP, its partner sites, and its Community Page blogs.
That collective sigh you hear isn’t just kids and college students bemoaning the start of a new school year. The chorus is rounded out by professors and researchers tanned from fieldwork (or, more likely, pale and blinking after emerging from weeks in libraries). Luckily, all their hard work means we have lots of new research on education to share as we, collectively, head back to our campuses and classrooms. Here’s a taste of what our prolific friends at the TSP Community Page Education & Society have published recently:
“A Hate Crime By Any Other Name,” Ryan Larson. Whether we call a domestic attack a hate crime or terrorism has implications for and is shaped by public perception.
With all of the attention (rightfully) focused on the Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision, we’re a bit worried that the ruling about health care policy–one of the signature programs of Obama’s Presidency–may have gotten a bit lost in the blogosphere. Fortunately, our friends at Scholar’s Strategy Network have been on top of it. You can find links to all of their most recent commentaries and interviews here. If your time is limited, here’s a few to look at:
“Same-Sex, Different Attitudes,” by Kathy Hull. A historical look at the push for marriage equality and the shifts in Americans’ attitudes toward civil rights for gays and lesbians.
“The Return of the Confederate Flag,” by C.N. Le. A 2008 piece examines the resurgence of the Confederate Flag and considers its changing meanings in changing macro-level contexts.
Sociological snacks, academic dishonesty, perceptions of illegal immigration, incarcerated parents, the crime drop, exacerbating the education gap with Adderral, and when we care about economic inequality, all this week on The Society Pages. Also, be sure to check out our topics pages for Gender, Culture, Inequality, Race, Crime, Politics, and Teaching to get our graduate board’s latest picks from around the web!
“Shamus Khan on Historical Data,” with Kyle Green. The author of The Practice of Research, Shamus Khan says, “I love very micro-level analyses where you can see what one person is doing or what is happening on the ground…
As summer starts, sociology blossoms! There’s a new issue of Contexts magazine (all content is available for free from SAGE publications for 30 days!), new podcast episodes, and more for your summer reading list.
“Grandmothers on the World Stage,” by Doug Hartmann. The Atlantic wonders if women like Hillary Clinton find age an advantage in politics, playing what they call “the granny card.”
Edmon de Haro’s Atlantic.com depiction of Clinton’s age advantage.
“Why Age May Be Hillary’s Secret Weapon” is the cover tease for a provocative little piece in the new issue of The Atlantic (June 2015) on women, aging, culture, and power in contemporary society. The piece starts by pondering why, in an evolutionary context, female humans live so long and what role(s) postmenopausal women fulfill for the species. This science-y context sets the stage for an essentially sociological attempt to explain why “people of both sexes may feel more comfortable with ambitious older women than with ambitious younger ones.”
The bulk of the article reviews a body of social scientific research on the biases women face in the workplace and society at large, and how some of these constraints may be mitigated as women get older and, especially, become grandmothers. The larger implication is that candidate Clinton and others are actively “playing the granny card” in positioning their public images against other stereotypes about women in positions of authority and power.
A lot of the work comes out of psychology (especially the experimental stuff) but some sociological contributions find their way in as well. Indeed, there is a quote from Stanford sociologist Shelley Correll, and even an in-print reference to the American Journal of Sociology! And the overarching conclusion or claim is more positive, more progressive than what usually comes out of such research: “…the current cohort of female eminences grises may herald an era when aging, for women, ceases to be an enemy, and even becomes a friend.”
The main problem is that I’m not exactly sure if there really is a new generation of powerful women turning age to their advantage. Is this a real phenomenon or social trend? Certainly, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren are making headlines in United States politics, and Angela Merkel as German Chancellor is historic. And I’m happy to see Janet Yellen and Christine Lagarde in positions of economic leadership (as Chair of Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors and Head of the International Monetary Fund, respectively). But who else are we talking about? Does four or five or even a dozen or two dozen such women—gratifying as that might be in and of itself—really constitute a cultural transformation? Even The Atlantic admits the sample size is small. It could well be that we are drawing some pretty big conclusions and implications out of some developments that are quite recent and fairly limited.
Perhaps I shouldn’t nitpick an article that is doing the honorable work of promoting and assessing the rise of women’s status and power in society and bringing social science research to bear on issues of public interest and significance. I am fully on-board with both aims. Still, the sociologist in me can’t help but want to know whether we are talking about real social shifts and trends or just some exceptional—albeit exciting—individual-level developments. The answer to that question has some very real implications for how we use the research and the meaning and significance we draw from all of this.
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Now available! With Getting Culture, the fifth in our series of paperback readers with W.W. Norton & Co., it feels like we’ve really hit our stride. The new volume features work on the “stuff” of religion, fast fashion and global production, musical tastes, same-sex marriage, and so much more—all bolstered and rounded out by “TSP tie-ins” that bring readers to the site for interactive content and a discussion questions and activities section for reading groups. Oh, and it’s only $15. Stop by Norton’s booth at the ASA conference or check out our series online. We’re awfully proud.
