This episode we talk with Jessica Holden Sherwood about her book, Wealth, Whiteness, and the Matrix of Privilege: The View from the Country Club. We learn about how country clubs work, the various mechanisms of exclusion utilized by members, and how this relates to larger discourses of privilege.
inequality
This episode we talk with Shai Dromi about his recent article, Penny for your Thoughts: Beggars and the Exercise of Morality in Daily Life. Dromi argues that past studies of the city have mischaracterized interactions between people passing by and people asking for money due to the focus on risk, fear, and crime. Instead, for many people in Shai’s study, homeless people’s requests for money provided a dimension of moral reflection to the urban landscape.
This episode with talk with David Grusky about the social and economic effects of the great recession and what every citizen should know about inequality in the United States.
This episode we talk with Robert Sampson about his new book, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect. In the face of globalization and the widespread belief that the “world is flat,” Sampson shows how the world is actually very uneven, and that local communities make a great difference in how people live their lives across a wide range of phenomenon, from homicide and child health, to leadership networks, teenage pregnancy, altruism, and home foreclosures.
Today we talk with Joe Soss, author of the forthcoming book, Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race, co-authored with Richard C. Fording and Sanford F. Schram. Soss traces the major changes and continuities in welfare provision and poverty governance in the United States over the past 40 years, and the racial, political, and economic factors in creating these policies.
This episode we speak with Tom Stone, the documentary photographer behind the evocative images featured in Mark Rank’s Spring 2011 feature Rethinking American Poverty. The photos are drawn from Stone’s “American Outsiders” series, which you can view online at tomstonegallery.com/art or on flickr.
This week we talk with Richard Lachmann, author of the article, The Roots of American Decline in the Winter 2011 issue of Contexts. Lachmann addresses common misunderstandings we Americans tend to have about our government’s spending, particularly military spending, and the current “fiscal crisis”. Lachmann compares the decline of American dominance with past empires and offers some lessons about what we might do to have a graceful decline as opposed to a painful, violent one.
This week we talk about meth, Iowa and the dystopia of modern young adulthood, with Maria Kefalas from St. Joseph’s University.
Our discussion is centered on Dr. Kefala’s recent book review in Contexts on Nick Redding’s Methland: the Life and Death of an America Small Town. Because the content of Redding’s book pairs well with Kefala’s own fieldwork in Iowa, we discuss the premise that social problems like the use of meth in rural America are really the “symptoms” of the gradual decline these communities have been experiencing in the wake of de-industrialization. Moreover, while issues of crime and drugs tend to be understood as urban issues, Kefalas argues that rural America is experiencing its own decline in term of the opportunities it can offer young people. We conclude with Kefala’s suggestion that we “re-imagine” young adulthood and the types of educational and training opportunities made available to young people in the new global economy.
We also discuss our latest podcast, New Books in Sociology, a joint venture between us here at The Society Pages and the New Books Network.
This episode we talk with humorist Dylan Brody about the power of humor and storytelling to transform the way people look at the world around them. Brody discusses the effects of television on political comedy, the sad state of heroes in our storytelling today, and how he incorporates his political knowledge and ideals into the personal stories he tells before audiences.
After you listen, be sure to check out Brody’s albums:
This week we talk with Shamus Khan about his new book Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School. One the one hand, elite social institutions—such as St. Paul’s—have opened up to women and minorities in recent decades, but on the other hand, inequality has increased and wealth is more concentrated now than since the 1920s. What explains this apparent contradiction between increasing openness yet rising inequality? Khan draws on his experiences as a student and then researcher at St. Paul’s to help answer this question.
This episode we talk with Shai Dromi about his recent article, Penny for your Thoughts: Beggars and the Exercise of Morality in Daily Life. Dromi argues that past studies of the city have mischaracterized interactions between people passing by and people asking for money due to the focus on risk, fear, and crime. Instead, for many people in Shai’s study, homeless people’s requests for money provided a dimension of moral reflection to the urban landscape.
This episode with talk with David Grusky about the social and economic effects of the great recession and what every citizen should know about inequality in the United States.
This episode we talk with Robert Sampson about his new book, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect. In the face of globalization and the widespread belief that the “world is flat,” Sampson shows how the world is actually very uneven, and that local communities make a great difference in how people live their lives across a wide range of phenomenon, from homicide and child health, to leadership networks, teenage pregnancy, altruism, and home foreclosures.
Today we talk with Joe Soss, author of the forthcoming book, Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race, co-authored with Richard C. Fording and Sanford F. Schram. Soss traces the major changes and continuities in welfare provision and poverty governance in the United States over the past 40 years, and the racial, political, and economic factors in creating these policies.
This episode we speak with Tom Stone, the documentary photographer behind the evocative images featured in Mark Rank’s Spring 2011 feature Rethinking American Poverty. The photos are drawn from Stone’s “American Outsiders” series, which you can view online at tomstonegallery.com/art or on flickr.
This week we talk with Richard Lachmann, author of the article, The Roots of American Decline in the Winter 2011 issue of Contexts. Lachmann addresses common misunderstandings we Americans tend to have about our government’s spending, particularly military spending, and the current “fiscal crisis”. Lachmann compares the decline of American dominance with past empires and offers some lessons about what we might do to have a graceful decline as opposed to a painful, violent one.
This week we talk about meth, Iowa and the dystopia of modern young adulthood, with Maria Kefalas from St. Joseph’s University.
Our discussion is centered on Dr. Kefala’s recent book review in Contexts on Nick Redding’s Methland: the Life and Death of an America Small Town. Because the content of Redding’s book pairs well with Kefala’s own fieldwork in Iowa, we discuss the premise that social problems like the use of meth in rural America are really the “symptoms” of the gradual decline these communities have been experiencing in the wake of de-industrialization. Moreover, while issues of crime and drugs tend to be understood as urban issues, Kefalas argues that rural America is experiencing its own decline in term of the opportunities it can offer young people. We conclude with Kefala’s suggestion that we “re-imagine” young adulthood and the types of educational and training opportunities made available to young people in the new global economy.
We also discuss our latest podcast, New Books in Sociology, a joint venture between us here at The Society Pages and the New Books Network.
This episode we talk with humorist Dylan Brody about the power of humor and storytelling to transform the way people look at the world around them. Brody discusses the effects of television on political comedy, the sad state of heroes in our storytelling today, and how he incorporates his political knowledge and ideals into the personal stories he tells before audiences.
After you listen, be sure to check out Brody’s albums:
This week we talk with Shamus Khan about his new book Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School. One the one hand, elite social institutions—such as St. Paul’s—have opened up to women and minorities in recent decades, but on the other hand, inequality has increased and wealth is more concentrated now than since the 1920s. What explains this apparent contradiction between increasing openness yet rising inequality? Khan draws on his experiences as a student and then researcher at St. Paul’s to help answer this question.