There’s no mistaking it: this week’s talk focused on the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the Floridian who killed teenager Trayvon Martin in February 2012. Below, you can find some of the week’s pieces about Martin, Zimmerman, and privilege here on The Society Pages, as well as a few other topics we hit on.
In the meantime, I’ve gotten two other suggestions of palate cleansing items to bring to your attention: more...
“The Home Stretch (Or: Introducing Our Third Book),” by Doug Hartmann. In which Doug details some of the coming content for Color Lines and Racial Angles, TSP’s third reader from W.W. Norton (the first two volumes are due out by the end of the year).
“The People’s Art,” by Letta Page. If a society is enriched by its art, is it impoverished by keeping that art in museums?
“A Gender Gap and the German Model,” by John Ziegler. An emerging education gap shows women outstripping men in the race for diplomas in the U.S. Does Germany offer a solution?
“‘Spiritual’ Scofflaws,” by Evan Stewart. What happens when there’s neither an angel nor a devil on your shoulder.
“A New South Africa?” by Erin Hoekstra. In post-Apartheid South Africa, Somali refugees are everyone’s target.
The latest mock-up of the cover for our third TSP volume.
If you are a parent with kids in summer sports, like myself, you may recognize the feeling: the last regular season games are wrapping up, the playoffs are about to begin, and, oh-so-tantalizingly, then comes the freedom of a completed season and, hopefully, some well-earned rest and relaxation. That home stretch feeling is kind of the phase we are in here at The Society Pages with our new race volume, the latest installment in the series we are partnering on with W.W. Norton & Co.
The volume will be called Color Lines and Racial Angles, and it will feature about a baker’s dozen of the best pieces on race and diversity that have been developed on our site thus far. You may recall, for example, Jennifer Lee’s piece on “stereotype promise” or Wendy Roth’s article exploring the creation of a “Latino” race. There have been roundtables with distinguished scholars discussing the media and Trayvon Martin in the weeks immediately following his death and the history and future of American immigration, and a few weeks ago we ran a provocative little treatment of the social origins of the term “white trash” by Matt Wray. And waiting patiently in the pipeline are pieces on Native American mascots, diversity discourse, and environmental racism, as well as an interview exchange with Michelle Alexander, author of the prominent and controversial crime and punishment tome The New Jim Crow.
Along with TSP tie-ins that bring readers back to our Community Pages to further explore the topics in the volume, as well as discussion questions and group activities for reading groups and classrooms, these pieces will form the core of the new book—and they’ll remain freely available on our website. But you’ll have to be patient, of course! Over the next week or so, we’ll be doing final revisions and editing, tweaking the introduction, pulling all of the files together for delivery to our editors and designers at Norton. We hope to have the finished product ready in time for 2014 teaching (the first two volumes, The Social Side of Politics and Crime and the Punished, are expected to publish before the end of 2013). In the meantime, you can revisit our already-published pieces and look forward to some spectacular ones on the way. Here’s to summer reading!
For real. It’s the end of June. What happened? Here in Minnesota, it’s a blur of downed trees and hot, muggy days. And yet, the hits keep comin’. Here’s what TSP was doing (when the power was on). more...
You know, come to think of it, I’m sure I’ve used that title before somewhere on the site. But you know what? I haven’t used it enough. So there.
Hrm. After skipping last week, I’ve got a lot to round up, so let’s just go with that. In the meantime, know that we’ve been putting the finishing touches on the second of our TSP readers with W.W. Norton & Co., Crime and the Punished, which is now slated for a fall release. If you look closely in the picture at right, you can see three of our cover images coming into focus (they’re not finalized, but they’re looking sharp).
Social facts have been the focus of several conversations around TSP “world headquarters” recently as we’ve begun to formulate our plan for next year. It is our continuing mission to best represent and explain the value and contribution of sociology to public discourse and the understanding of society. One of sociology’s most important contributions is basic: we report empirical information about how people live and how the world they live in is organized. Often these facts are kind of demographic or quantitative—poverty and income rates, for example, or the number of people having kids, that sort of thing. But sometimes the facts we collect and contribute are of a more cultural or subjective nature, about how folks think about various things, how they understand the worlds that they live in, what they value or aspire to.
All of this took on new salience over the weekend when I read this little post from our old friend Jeff Weintraub. Weintraub, a specialist in social and political theory, recommends a recent column on conspiracy theories from Andrew Sullivan–who insists that there is important insight to be gained from taking even the most ludicrous conspiracy talk seriously–as well as several recent contributions to the scholarly literature on conspiracy theories, urban legends, and the like. Coming from the state that elected Jesse Ventura governor once upon a time, this seems like a literature worth delving into. But what really caught my attention was simply how Weintraub framed his post:
Mass delusions, including paranoid conspiracy theories and other widely shared myths, may be factually and logically absurd, but it’s important to remember that they’re also social facts worth noticing and trying to understand—and if enough people believe them, they can sometimes be quite important and consequential social facts.
Absolutely. We may disagree as to the truth value of these theories and claims, but we can’t dismiss those who hold them. And beliefs, even crazy ones—perhaps especially crazy ones—reveal important things about how people think. They can also have powerful consequences if and when believers act upon them. And so all beliefs are “facts” about the social worlds we live in. We must take those beliefs and those believers seriously if we are to understand social worlds and the people that compose them. Conspiracy theories as social facts–just another one of those great, social oxymorons that make it so much fun to be a sociologist.
Paul Revere by John Singleton Copley, 1768 Courtesy of MFA Boston & Wikipedia via Slate
An elegant design, compelling evidence, and a timely story rendered exceptionally well. Sociologist Kieran Healy’s wonderful post on using metadata to find Paul Revere (and/or Jack Black) is now attracting megareaders at Slate. more...
In this morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer, sociologist Chip Gallagher reminds us that two formative events in the history of American race relations unfolded just hours apart, fifty years ago today: JFK’s ground-breaking speech demanding that the federal government address institutional racism against African Americans and the murder of NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers. Gallagher uses the anniversary to reflect on the “undeniable… progress that has been made” and how much more remains to be done to “level the playing field.” Gallagher writes, “Social scientists are fond of pointing out that when individuals, typically white individuals, discuss racism, they use the past tense,” but wonders, “How much has changed in 50 years? Is our democracy self-correcting, with our moral arc consistently bending toward justice…?” He concludes with a open challenge: “What we should be asking ourselves is, Where are the speeches like Kennedy’s that appeal to the citizenry’s better angels to right a social wrong? Where are the pleas to Americans on moral and ethical grounds by those who can use the bully pulpit to raise public awareness of the social inequalities that continue to plague our nation?”
This is becoming a frequent activity: writing the Friday Roundup from an airport. By my count, it’s at least the fourth I’ve written from a row of pleather seats. The wifi is spotty, the company is unpredictable, and my power cord frequently drops out of the not-so-conveniently-located power source tower. And yet, for this scaredy-cat, writing the Roundup is not only a great way to get my arms around what happens on our website each week—it’s become an excellent distraction from flight fears! Thus, on to the Roundup. No writing tips this week other than to write something today. Getting used to jotting down good phrases or dictating them into your iPhone for future use is a good way not to lose those fleeting treasures. more...
As a prematurely old person (that is, I’m technically 33, but I make a suspicious number of references to “those damn kids” and know the difference between e.g. and i.e.), I can be wary of social media. Still, I’ve found one way Twitter is really useful for the writers I advise: forced brevity. more...
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