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!

Summer Bloggin’, Happened So Fast

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...

Don’t Call it a Comeback

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).

Until then, feast your eyes on this! more...

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.

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...

Yet Another Airport Post

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...

Use Twitter to Refine Your Writing

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...

Finishing Strong

Here in Minnesota it appears (knock on wood) that the terrible long winter is behind us–which means that finals are upon us, commencement is coming, and grades will soon be due. And even as academic terms wrap up all over the country, the Pages remain vibrant. Highlights from the past week include:

–a public criminology post on the new Minnesota law that makes it illegal for employers to ask about an applicant’s criminal history until an interview is granted or a job is offered;

–the introduction of a brand new TSP blog, Walt Jacobs’s “Dispatches from a New Dean”

–and the two latest “data based” columns from cyborgology–one on health, the other on love;

Digging back in the archive a bit, you might also take a look at Jennifer Lee’s provocative piece on Asian American exceptionalism and what she calls “stereotype promise“–which we are re-releasing now with video!

The bad news is that our great friend is heading out of town. The spine-crushingly good news is that Professor Walt Jacobs will now be contributing regularly to the TSP community pages, in his Dispatches from a New Dean. A sociologist and recent chair of African and African American Studies in Minnesota, Walt’s just starting a new job as the social sciences dean at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.

As you might have heard in his podcast on race and comedy, Walt has a keen eye and ear for the telling detail. He’s also a terrific academic leader, who uses sociology to good advantage in organizing people and resources. In Dispatches, Walt will be sharing these experiences, showing how a good social scientist wrestles with the demands and opportunities of higher administration. I’ve never met anyone in academic administration who worked harder or with greater sensitivity to the needs and interests of a larger community. Did you hear the line about commitment and breakfast? [That is, in a bacon and egg breakfast, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.] Well, Walt is committed. He’s heading off to Wisconsin and, by all reports, living amongst the first-year sociology students. We’re sorry to see him go, but so happy he’s staying on TSP.