The Obama Era, the 2012 Election, and Systemic Racism

We are not a fully democratic country. We never have been and now are moving only very slowly in that direction. To understand the 2012 election and key political events in the Obama era, we must look at the larger … Read More

Calculating Obama’s Chances

“Will Obama win?” It’s the question that keeps Chris Matthews and Bill O’Reilly alike awake at night (poor Chuck Todd hasn’t slept in years). As the 2012 presidential election creeps up, members of the pundit class are beginning to lay … Read More

Woman Enough to Win?

Sex-testing of elite female athletes has grown out of and reinforces athletic inequities. Read More

Southern Culture on the Skids

In his new book Coming Apart, Charles A. Murray argues the white working class is doomed to poverty because more and more of them are abandoning the American values of hard work, family, and faith. The book reiterates the … Read More

The Sociology of Silver

Nate Silver's method of public intellectualism famously brings statistics to the people, but paradoxically, stats remain an elite form of knowledge. Read More

Are Some Universities Too Big to Fail?

Fixing the for-profit education and student loan debt systems may be expensive, disruptive, and unpopular, but when some institutions are both too big to fail and too big to succeed, something must be done. Read More

The Perils of Transcendence

Black politicians who want to claim post-racialism may find themselves on rocky terrain when they also aim for post-partisanship, as New Jersey's Cory Booker is learning. Read More

Invisible Children and Invisible Ugandans, with Amy Finnegan

The Society Pages reached out to Amy Finnegan to learn more about Invisible Children, Ugandan activists, and the framing of an atrocity. Read More

Revisiting Unequal Childhoods with Annette Lareau

Kia Heise and Jack Lam talk with Annette Lareau about the second edition of Unequal Childhoods, the results of concerted cultivation, and ethnographic research methods. Read More

Love, Family, and Incarceration: A Conversation with Megan Comfort

Megan Comfort explores the relationships created and sustained even through prison bars, as well as the secondary prisonalization that shapes women's identities on the outside. Read More