New and Noteworthy

Board member Mason Jones wrote up research from John Leverso and Chris Hess on how Chicago gang members’ relationship to masculinity changes as they age.

Worth a Read (Sociologically Speaking)

Jamie L. Small wrote for the Conversation on her research about boys, sexual assault, and sports. She found that communities and perpetrators struggled to grasp the severity of the sexual assaults, particularly as it threatened the presumed heterosexuality of those involved as well as the community’s reputation.

Backstage with TSP

Last week we continued our exploration of social science writing with a guest: Dr. Michael Walker. Dr. Walker’s new book, Indefinite: Doing Time in Jail, uses different narrative voices, rich description, and emotion to help the reader understand the rhythms and patterns of life in jail. We spoke with Dr. Walker about how to use field notes in the process of writing, finding supportive readers for works-in-progress, and navigating credibility and vulnerability when writing ethnography. We enjoyed having Dr. Walker in and his visit left us thinking about how to incorporate coverage of long-form qualitative writing on the site. If you have ideas, let us know at tsp@contexts.org!

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Eliza Brown wrote about the “chore” of having sex to conceive and the gendered labor involved for women for Council on Contemporary Families’ blog.

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Worth a Read (Sociologically Speaking)

Daniel Cueto-Villalobos rounded-up research on job insecurity, expectations for work, and emotion that puts the “great resignation” into sociological perspective

New and Noteworthy

For Contexts’ blog Alfredo Huante and Michael L. Rosino analyze coverage of the backlash against teaching critical race theory to distill the tenets of this racialized moral panic

Citings and Sightings

Axios spoke with Marianne Cooper to provide context for new findings that show that young women do out-earn young men in a limited number of metro areas

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Nikoleta Sremac wrote about the external and internal pressures threatening Serbia’s official position of neutrality in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ blog

L. Dugan Nichol wrote about the precarious labor conditions of professional skateboarders for Engaging Sports

Amy L. Stone wrote about their research on queer carnival and how Mardi gras celebrations offer an opportunity for parents of LGBTQ people to provide support for the Council on Contemporary Families’ blog

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Board member S Ericson covered new research from Samuel L. Perry, Kenneth E. Frantz, and Joshua B. Grubbs showing that who identifies as anti-racist is complex with, for instance, many Americans identifying as both color-blind and anti-racist.

Worth a (Look), Sociologically Speaking

Sangyoub Park wrote for Sociological Images on the emotional experience of seeing gochujang, Korean red chili pepper paste, on the shelf in American grocery stores while the United States has experienced a sharp rise in racism and hate crimes against Asian-Americans.

Citings and Sightings

Junia Howell spoke with Marketplace for their Morning Report on the release of the Biden administration’s plan to decrease racial inequity in home appraisals. Howell’s research shows that appraisals of homes in mostly white neighborhoods are three times higher than those in Black or Latinx neighborhoods.

More from Our Partner and Community Pages

Women can run the world (or at least my city) but men continue to hide from equality at home! by Barbara Risman for Council on Contemporary Families’ blog

Meyer Weinshel wrote on Marking Women’s History Month for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ blog

SJSU HonorsX from Dispatches from a Dean

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Spring is in the air here in Minnesota and we’re back with some fresh social-scientific finds :)

New and Noteworthy

Léa Pessin and Elena Maria Pojman released a data visualization in Socius comparing the gendered division of household labor according to different-sex couples’ race and ethnicity.

Citings and Sightings

Ilana M. Horwitz wrote an op-ed for the New York Times on her research examining how teenagers’ religious upbringing shapes their educational outcomes. In particular, she focuses on how religious involvement may prevent despair and enable academic achievement in working-class adolescent boys.

Worth a Read (Sociologically Speaking)

St. Patrick’s day may have been yesterday, but this classic TSP piece from Neeraj Rajesakar, rounding-up research on how Irish people in the U.S. “became” white is always relevant.

Backstage with TSP

This week in our word meeting we’re discussing writing about quantitative findings using a report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. At TSP we’re always trying to strike a balance between reporting social science findings with enough detail to make it clear why they are notable and interesting, and making sure we don’t overwhelm our readers with lots of facts and figures. This is a goal that is important to us as it lies at the center of our mission to make social scientific findings more accessible to a broader public. It is also a never-ending process that we continue to work on perfecting so we look forward to having a board discussion this week to share more ideas for improvement. If you have any *hot tips* drop us a line at thesocietypages@contexts.org.

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Board member Daniel Cueto-Villalobos covered new research from Alfredo Huante on the process of gentefication in Boyle Heights and the tensions that arise when wealthy newcomers share long-term residents’ ethnic identity, but not their class position or skin tone.

Worth a Read, Sociologically Speaking

Council on Contemporary Families’ blog featured writing from Kenneth R. Hanson on his research exploring why some people choose synthetic partners (sex dolls) over human ones.

Citings and Sightings

Episode seven of The Boston Globe’s Black News Hour featured sociologist Saida Grundy. Grundy spoke about social citizenship for Black Americans and the necessity of social change in the episode which reflected on the tenth anniversary of Travyon Martin’s killing.

Backstage with TSP

Last week we read Joseph Gusfield’s chapter “Two Genres of Sociology: A Literary Analysis of The American Occupational Structure and Tally’s Corner” together and reflected on long-form writing in sociology. As a board, we are interested in thinking about ways to incorporate more coverage of long-form sociological writing on the site since books are not always a good fit with some of our standard formats. Reading Gusfield together, we were focused on how writers in long-form have to choose an audience and decide what they can assume that audience knows about the topic at hand. This is something we think about a lot at The Society Pages: who is our imagined audience, and what do we expect them to know? We’re always trying to strike a balance between making our writing as accessible as possible, to share sociological findings with a broad public, and keeping our pieces short and engaging.

More from Our Partner and Community Pages

Truth, Memory, and Solidarity with Ukraine and A World Disappearing Before Our Eyes… from the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

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New and Noteworthy

We covered new research from Maia Cuchiarra that shows that Black low-income mothers and parenting instructors understand the purpose of parenting differently and this shapes whether or not they think it is ever appropriate to use physical discipline.

Worth a Read, Sociologically Speaking

Our partner Council on Contemporary Families’ blog posted a research summary from Dana M. Johnson and colleagues on the reasons people choose to self-manage their abortions by obtaining abortion medications online and how policy changes could help increase abortion access.

Citings and Sightings

As we gear up for another election cycle, WBUR spoke with R. L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy on how courting suburban voters means acknowledging the suburbs increasing racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity.

More from Our Partner and Community Pages

Swastikas in the Bathrooms and Memory Politics and Memory Solidarity: An Interview with Jelena Subotić from Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ blog

End of the journey as a dean from Dispatches from a Dean

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New and Noteworthy

After the Child Tax Credit’s historic expansion ended in December, board member Jacob Otis helps us think about what’s next reviewing research on the history of the Child Tax Credit and how it supports families.

Worth a (Look), Sociologically Speaking

Board member S Ericson writes up a data visualization from Benjamin Elbers in Socius showing trends in residential segregation over the past thirty years. Elbers shows that segregation is going down, overall, but is increasing between some racial groups.

Backstage with TSP

I had the pleasure of announcing in this week’s meeting agenda that one of our fearless leaders, Doug Hartmann, is bringing bagels to our board meeting today. (We may be happily munching away on them as you read this). One of the things we missed most about going virtual during covid was the opportunity to gather together in-person not only to get work done but also to be in community with one another. As with all things covid, we aren’t sure what’s next but we feel grateful that, for the time being, we feel safe to be together and carefully lower our masks to take bites of our bagels!

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Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ blog spotlights student Tibisay Navarro-Mana.

Council on Contemporary Families’ blog posted writing from Naomi Lightman and Anthony Kevins, sharing their research on how family policy changes might decrease inequalities in unpaid care work.

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New and Noteworthy

Board member Daniel Cueto-Villalobos wrote up new research from Samuel Perry and colleagues that explores the relationship between White Christian nationalism and denial of anti-Black discrimination and racial injustice.

Worth a (Watch), Sociologically Speaking

Isabel Arriagada created a short and informative video that summarizes this piece from Jillian LaBranche on how the meaning of diamonds is intertwined with their place in global conflict (Just in time for Valentine’s Day <3).

Backstage with TSP

This week we reincorporated “archive pitches” into the regular business of our board meetings. With an archive pitch, board members search through the (literally) thousands of posts on our pages and find a piece that connects with a current event, news story, or something on their mind. We promote these archive pitches on the site and social media and use them as springboards for new ideas. Our archive pitches are both useful reminders of how extensive and useful our backlog is and motivation to write something new when one of us discovers that we don’t actually have anything on (insert important and timely issue).

More from Our Partner and Community Pages

Council on Contemporary Families’ blog posted a piece from Shannon Cavanaugh covering research showing that women are less likely to initiate romantic contact online but have more success when they do

For the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ (CHGS) blog Remco Ensel wrote on “The Betrayal of Anne Frank”: Genocide research in the time of mass media and Kurt Borchard explained the significance of The COPE Visitor Center in Laos

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Board member Mason Jones wrote up research from Vicki Lens that shows that, in family law court rooms, low-income moms face expectations of what “good mothers” do that do not acknowledge the structural barriers they face when parenting.

Worth a Read, Sociologically Speaking

Board member Jake Otis rounded up social science research that places the current wave of labor strikes in context.

Backstage with TSP

This week we turned our focus to writing and will discuss the first chapter of Becker’s classic Writing for Social Scientists. It’s an excellent book and the first chapter got me thinking about vulnerability and shame in the writing process. Becker does a great job of articulating that part of what makes writing so difficult is that we have to be vulnerable. When we write we are putting ourselves out there. We worry about getting it right at TSP. We worry that maybe we aren’t quite capturing what the author meant by that phrase, or maybe we don’t really understand the complex statistical technique used in that exciting new article, so maybe we shouldn’t write about it for the site. But we do anyway, in part, because we have the advantage of being really close to why writing in spite of fear matters. We hope our writing helps bring social scientific findings to a a public that would otherwise not have access to them. Having such a lofty vision means that the stakes can feel really high at times but it also helps motivate us to work together to get words on the (digital) page.

More from Our Partner and Community Pages

Council for Contemporary Families’ blog re-posted a piece from Tyler Jamison on the skills needed to break-up a partnership with care.

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Board member Jake Otis covered new research from Daniel Meyer and Yoona Kim that found that most noncustodial parents are actually satisfied with the child support system, especially if they know the name of a child care worker they can call with questions.

Worth a Read, Sociologically Speaking

Our Hannah Schwendeman rounded-up research on the challenges of mothering in poverty, particularly given the limitations and stigma associated with the welfare system in the United States.

Citings and Sightings

Minnesota Public Radio’s Angela Davis spoke with sociologist (and UMN alum) Amy Blackstone about why more people are choosing not to have children.

Backstage with TSP

As always, we’re working on some super-secret projects behind the scenes that we’re not quite ready to announce yet. What we can say is one of our initiatives this semester involves connecting current board members with TSP alums. We’re excited to help build connections based on shared interests and expertise. A strength of ours has always been our amazing graduate board and it is a credit to our longevity that we can now create a network that links board members past and present and across career stages!

More from Our Partner and Community Pages

Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ contributor Henning Schroeder wrote on how controversy in France demonstrates increasing European obsession with flags as nationalist symbols.

Also for CHGS, Catherine Guisan wrote about why we should all care about the shuttering of two Russian NGOS that documented human rights abuses. Meyer Weinshel wrote on Holocaust remembrance day on how the end of the Holocaust was not immediate but, rather, long and uncertain.

Judith R. Smith wrote for the Council on Contemporary Families’ blog on the often-overlooked experiences of older mothers parenting difficult adult children.

Monte Bute wrote for his blog, backstage sociologist, on how his brushes with mortality inspire him to seek new homes for his expansive book collection.

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