Originally posted October 9, 2018.

In recent months, a homeless encampment of over 300 people — most of whom are American Indian — has formed along a highway noise wall in Minneapolis. The encampment has been self-proclaimed the “Wall of Forgotten Natives” by residents and Indigenous activists who point out that much of Minneapolis is built on stolen Dakota land. Social and health service providers have mobilized around the encampment, and city officials have worked with community leaders to begin a relocation of people at the encampment to more stable housing on Red Lake Nation land. The wider context for the establishment of the camp, American Indian solidarity and resistance to disbanding the camp, as well as the government’s response, all highlight the process of settler colonialism.

In the United States, settler colonialism is defined as the control of land and its resources by white settlers who seek political power/control in a new space (i.e. like “regular” colonialism) through both displacement and violence against Indigenous persons in order to eventually replace the Native population (i.e. unlike “regular” colonialism). Until recently, studies of Indigenous people have largely been absent from sociological research and some have referred to this as sociology’s “complicity in the elimination of the native.” Scholars have begun to incorporate settler colonialism into research on the domination and dispossession of various racial and ethnic groups.

• Michael Warren Murphy. 2016. “No Beggars Among Them: Primitive Accumulation, Settler Colonialism, and the Dispossession of Narragansett Indian Land.” Humanity & Society 42(1): 45-67.
• Evelyn Nakano Glenn. 2015. “Settler Colonialism as Structure: A Framework for Comparative Studies of U.S. Race and Gender Formation.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1(1): 54-74.

In Minnesota, American Indians face the consequences of settler colonialism everyday: generational trauma from historical violence and boarding schools while at the same time, confronting a host of contemporary inequities in health, exposure to violence and the foster care system between Natives and non-Natives. At the national level, the U.S. government’s urban relocation programs during the 1950s serve as further examples of settler colonial logic and contemporary homelessness among Minnesota’s urban Natives today and their political response. While these policies encouraged Natives to move from what were economically deprived reservations to what was promised as training and employment in urban areas, they faced intense discrimination. By 1969, unemployment among urban Natives was nearly ten times the national average and Native incomes were less than half of the national poverty level.

• Theodore D. Graves. 1974. “Urban Indian Personality and the “Culture of Poverty.” American Ethnologist 1(1): 65-86.
• Matthew C. Snipp. 1992. “Sociological Perspectives on American Indians.” Annual Review of Sociology 18: 351-371.

After the U.S. government failed to assimilate Native people through relocation in the 1950s, their attempt to end the legal status of what it meant to be a “federally recognized tribe” led to American Indian resistance across the United States and into the social movement fold of the 1960s and 1970s. Founded in 1968, the American Indian Movement was started in Minneapolis, and Minnesota is a historically important site of resistance to settler colonialism among Native peoples. American Indians continue to resist settler colonial practices and beliefs today. One example of this includes Indigenous protests against federally recognized holidays like Columbus Day and Thanksgiving, which are embedded in settler colonial stories of the past that “whitewash” events and stereotype Indigenous people. Other acts of resistance include ceremonies acknowledging genocide and other violent acts by the U.S. government. Just last spring, Dakota activists illustrated such resistance to the Walker Art Center’s decision to host a piece of a “scaffold” similar to that of 38 Dakota men who were hanged following the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.

• Erich W. Steinman. 2012. “Colonial Power and the American Indian Sovereignty Movement: Forms of Domination, Strategies of Transformation.” American Journal of Sociology 117(4): 1073-1130.
• Erich W. Steinman. 2016. “Decolonization Not Inclusion: Indigenous Resistance to American Settler Colonialism.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 2(2): 219–36.

The “Wall of Forgotten Natives” highlights both the settler colonial practices that make such a homeless encampment possible but also demonstrate how American Indians have continually resisted settler colonial ideas and actions.

The authors respectfully acknowledge that the University of Minnesota stands on Dakota and Ojibwe peoples’ traditional lands.  

Originally posted August 6, 2018.

Teenager Maedeh Hojabri was recently arrested and imprisoned by Iranian authorities for posting Instagram videos of herself dancing in her bedroom. People around the globe were stunned at the news, although such punishment and censorship is sadly a common phenomenon. In Iran, Hojabri’s actions violated conservative legal norms that impose a strict dress code and condemn women for exposing their hair or dancing in public. More than a century of social science research can help shed light on why governments criminalize the violation of expected gender norms.  

Classical sociological theory argues that state actors use legal sanctions to exert control and enforce moral sentiments, in an attempt to garner social solidarity. The criminalization of dancing, for example, enforces and legitimizes the morality of conservative values and strict social control. To protect dominant social values, elites may use the penal system as a tool to persecute and discriminate against social minorities. The dominant group’s repression of subordinate groups derives from hierarchies that operate around patriarchal, racial, religious, class, national, political, or ethnic distinctions. Hojabris’ case illustrates repression based on patriarchal norms.

• Emile Durkheim, 1933. The Division of Labor in Society. New York: Macmillan.
• Joseph R. Gusfield. 1967. “Moral passage: The Symbolic Process in Public Designations of Deviance.” Social Problems 15(2): 175-188.
• Michelle Alexander. 2012. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press.

The state may also use the penal system to demonstrate competence and authority. Penal repression allows the state to demonstrate its sovereign capacity and reassert political authority under threat. The case of criminalizing dancing in Iran thus illustrates how public authorities use penal policy to address a legitimacy crisis. Many scholars link the loss of public confidence in the political system to the rise of punitive populism and the ascendancy of penal severity in and outside the United States.

• David Garland. 2001. The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Jonathan Simon. 2007. Governing through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Jesse Wozniak. 2016. “We Are Going To Prove We Are A Civil and Developed Country: The Cultural Performance of Police Legitimacy and Empire in the Iraqi State.” British Journal of Criminology 57(4): 906-923.

The penal state has become a central instrument for the exercise of authority. It can protect conservative values and strengthen the power of political elites, who exploit the penal system to legitimize their political agendas. While criminalizing dancing seems odd in the United States, in Iran it serves to enforce moral rules, extend social control, and demonstrate state power.

Originally posted August 17, 2018.

Since its inception last October, the #MeToo campaign has extended beyond the red carpets of Hollywood and into other public arenas like high schools and universities, religious organizations, and military bases. Sexual harassment, assault, and rape within carceral environments such as jails, prisons, juvenile detention facilities, and immigrant detention facilities, however, have received comparatively little public or media attention. And when such reports are made, they are often met with public indifference or ill humor with jokes like “Don’t drop the soap!” Nevertheless, there is a a small but growing base of social science research that shows how confined persons experience both the threat and the act of sexual violence.

In contrast to the #MeToo movement in the larger society, much of the research on sexual violence against those incarcerated has explicitly focused on men and male facilities. Male facilities have long been marred by reports of sexual violence, in part due to norms of hypermasculinity that encourage violence as a sign of heterosexuality. Men are expected to prove that they are not “fags,” “punks,” or “bitches” to avoid being targeted for rape. Yet, confined men who exhibit a smaller stature and present perceived feminine characteristics face a greater likelihood of experiencing sexual violence during their stay.

• Don Sabo, Terry A. Kupers, and Willie London. 2001. Prison Masculinities. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
• Aliraza Javaid. 2018. “Male Rape, Masculinities, and Sexualities.” International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 52: 199-210.

Women also face staggering rates of sexual violence behind bars. In addition to instances of rape through aggressive physical force, guards sometimes coerce women into sex in exchange for certain benefits such as visits, phone calls, food, and cigarettes. Due to transgender discrimination, trans women are often confined with other male inmates, where they face an even greater risk of harassment, assault, and rape, both by their peers and the guards who control them. Despite increased legislation and advocacy following the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), most detained victims do not report the abuse to authorities. For one, guards themselves are often the perpetrators of sexual violence and wield the authority to dismiss an inmate’s claims. Moreover, victims may not disclose for fear of retaliation, shame, guilt, the loss of benefits, and questions about their (hetero)sexuality.

• Kim Shayo Buchanan. 2007. “Impunity: Sexual Abuse in Women’s Prisons.” Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 42: 45-87.
• Valerie Jenness and Sarah Fenstermaker. 2016. “Forty Years After Brownmiller: Prisons for Men, Transgender Inmates, and the Rape of the Feminine.” Gender & Society 30(1): 14-29.

While sexual violence no doubt pervades many carceral settings, researchers also study other forms of sexual activity, sexuality, and sexual social control among confined persons. Recent work, for example, shows that LGBQ inmates often develop consensual and caring sexual relationships within confinement. Yet, institutional restrictions on sexual activity through mandates like PREA criminalize these consensual relationships. Scholars suggest that such restrictions are not necessarily rooted in concerns over public safety and consent, but rather decades-long discrimination against same-gender sex.

• Jay W. Borchert. 2016. “Controlling Consensual Sex Among Prisoners.” Law & Social Inquiry 41(3): 595-615.
• Helen Eigenberg. 2000. “Correctional Officers and Their Perceptions of Homosexuality, Rape, and Prostitution in Male Prisons.” Prison Journal 80(4): 415-433.

As we continue to grapple with the social and political reckoning of Me Too, social science researchers can help disrupt the “sociological silence of sexual violence” and draw attention to power differentials across settings in which people are particularly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. Highlighting confined persons’ lived experiences of sex and sexual violence within carceral settings, then, contributes to larger conversations around sexual consent and power, as well as the reform (or abolition) of incarceration.

• Elizabeth A. Armstrong, Miriam Gleckman-Krut, and Lanora Johnson. 2018. “Silence, Power, and Inequality: An Intersectional Approach to Sexual Violence.” Annual Review of Sociology 44: 99-122.
• Didier Fassin. 2017. Prison Worlds: An Ethnography of the Carceral Condition. Cambridge: Polity Press.

During this year’s midterm elections, six states adopted Marsy’s Law, a measure that aims to amend state constitutions so that they treat victims’ rights as equal to defendants’ rights in the criminal justice system. Observers like the American Civil Liberties Union warn that the law circumvents due process — particularly the presumption of innocence — by allowing victims the right to deny evidence to defendants and their counsel, and in some states, even curtail the amount of time a defendant can appeal a conviction. The law’s popularity and ensuing debates highlight two key lines of research, the power of victim rights movements in the United States and the racial and gender privilege underlying perceptions of victimhood.

Although different segments of the victim rights movement have different origins, scholars typically point to the 1960s as the time when victim rights hit the national scene. Since then, the mainstream movement has led to state statutes to provide victim restitution, and increase funding for victims’ services. Scholars suggest that while the victim rights movement has had some positive impacts, it occurred alongside the “get tough on crime” movement that facilitated the prison boom. For example, the advocacy of predominately white, elite feminist movements on punishments for rape and domestic violence was viewed as a victory in addressing violence against women. However, it also resulted in a form of “carceral feminism” that increased punitive responses in criminal justice policies in lieu of reforms in other areas such as welfare and other social services.

• Katherine Beckett and Theodore Sasson. 2004. The Politics of Injustice: Crime and Punishment in America. SAGE Publications.
• Marie Gottschalk. 2006. The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America. Cambridge University Press.
• Nancy Whittier. 2016. “Carceral and Intersectional Feminism in Congress: The Violence Against Women Act, Discourse, and Policy.” Gender & Society 30(5): 791–818.

Other scholars note that the mainstream victim rights movement privileged some victims over others, minimizing and ignoring violence against Black women, Indigenous women, other women of color, and trans women. Research shows that Black women are more likely to experience interpersonal violence but media and even laws often frame “victims” of crimes as white — especially white women. Of the 51 laws named after crime victims in the United States since 1990, only four are named after Black victims, and only three after Hispanic victims. Scholars like Beth Richie show how this dominant political discourse of “preventing crime” not only obfuscates Black women’s experiences with violence but also criminalizes their responses to protect themselves through mandatory arrest and other criminal procedures.

• Teresa C. Kulig and Francis T. Cullen. 2017. “Where Is Latisha’s Law? Black Invisibility in the Social Construction of Victimhood.” Justice Quarterly 34(6): 978–1013.
• Beth Richie. 2012. Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation. NYU Press.
• Shatema Threadcraft and Lisa L. Miller. 2017. “Black Women, Victimization, and the Limitations of the Liberal State.” Theoretical Criminology, 21(4): 478–93.

Heightened news coverage and social media attention to the Cyntoia Brown case serves as a clear example of this disparity, demonstrating who U.S. society values as victims and survivors of sexual and other forms of violence. Thus, while Marsy’s Law may seem on its surface to bring an equal playing field to victims in the criminal justice process, researchers and policymakers must pay attention to the broader context from which it emerged and how this law may not only diminish due process, but also privilege certain types of victims over others.

Check out this TROT for more on the racialization of victimhood for missing girls.  

For insight into a social movement that centers women of color as survivors of sexual, domestic, and state violence, check out INCITE!

During his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Brett Kavanaugh repeatedly referred to his experiences in high school and high school athletics in ways that depicted sports as wholesome and beneficial for youth. While not denying the benefits of sports, sociological research highlights the detrimental impacts of athletic involvement as well. And in contrast to Kavanaugh’s characterizations, this research shows that athletic participation is often associated with substance use and abuse, violence, and risk-taking among boys and young men in the United States.

The connection between athletic involvement and alcohol use is well-established through research, and the connection is especially pronounced for white male athletes at the top of their peer status hierarchy. Ironically, being high-status in high school drives both alcohol use and some of the protective features of sports, like connection to school and higher grades. Nationally representative surveys have also demonstrated that involvement in organized sports is associated with binge drinking in college, and that binge drinking continues after actual athletic participation ends. Recent work on drug use indicates that male athletes are more likely to be prescribed opioids, accidentally overdose, and have used opioids recreationally than non-athletes or female athletes.

• David Eitle, R. Jay Turner, and Tamela McNulty Eitle. 2003. “The Deterrence Hypothesis Reexamined: Sports Participation and Substance Use among Young Adults.” Journal of Drug Issues 33(1): 193–221.
• Matthew Kwan, Sarah Bobko, Guy Faulkner, Peter Donnelly, and John Cairney. 2014. “Sport Participation and Alcohol and Illicit Drug Use in Adolescents and Young Adults: A Systematic Review of Longitudinal Studies.” Addictive Behaviors 39(3): 497-506.
• Kyle Green, Toben Nelson, and Douglas Hartmann. 2014. “Binge Drinking and Sports Participation in College: Patterns among Athletes and Former Athletes.” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 49(3–4): 417-34.
• Philip Veliz, Carol Boyd, and Sean Esteban McCabe. 2017. “Nonmedical Use of Prescription Opioids and Heroin Use Among Adolescents Involved in Competitive Sports.” Journal of Adolescent Health 60(3): 346-49.

Classics in the field of sport sociology discuss the “Triad of Violence” that is taught through sports: 1) violence against women, 2) violence against others, and 3) violence against the self. For example, male athletes learn to play through pain and to talk about (heterosexual) sex as a conquest. More recent research continues to find links between sports and violent behavior, especially for contact sports. Since risk-taking is central to both the meaning of sport and the meaning of masculinity, it is not surprising that male athletes are more likely to engage in a variety of “risk-taking” behaviors, from drunk driving to unprotected sex.

• Michael Messner. 2002. Taking the Field: Women, Men, and Sports. University of Minnesota Press.
• Kevin Beaver, J.C. Barnes, and Brian Boutwell. 2016. “Exploring the Relationship between Violent Behavior and Participation in Football during Adolescence: Findings From a Sample of Sibling Pairs.” Youth & Society 48(6): 786–809.
• Jeffrey Kidder. 2017. Parkour and the City: Risk, Masculinity, and Meaning in a Postmodern Sport. Rutgers University Press.

For other work on how masculinity norms in sport link to sexuality and race, see here!

Green areas are widely recognized as an indicator of development and social wellbeing, but the relationship between nature and crimes is only beginning to come into view.  How might natural spaces reduce crime rates?

Economic Development

Green space interventions enhance the visual appearance of an area and motivate movement and participation, which can increase economic development. Also, by raising property values, green spaces foster economic stability and access to credit. Both economic development and real wealth transfer bring work opportunities and financial power to residents, which in turn could reduce criminal activities. One caution about green criminology, however, is that, genuine improvements in built environments may not favor current residents. Instead, existing residents may be displaced by new neighbors arriving in response to attractive urban conditions.

• Marco Gonzalez-Navarro and Climent Quintana-Domeque. 2016. “Paving Streets for the Poor: Experimental Analysis of Infrastructure Effects.” Review of Economics and Statistics 98(2): 254-267.
• John MacDonald. 2015. “Community Design and Crime: The Impact of Housing and the Built Environment.” Crime and Justice 44(1): 333-383.

Social Gathering

Green areas can also provide physical or symbolic cues of care and attention that discourage criminal behavior. By promoting the use of outdoor spaces, built environments become places of social gathering. Green areas thus become organized places of surveillance, which discourages incivilities and criminal behavior.  They also replace vacant lots and abandoned sites, which constitute attractive places for illegal activities such as prostitution, drug sales and use, or weapons offenses.

• Ingrid Gould Ellen, Johanna Lacoe, and Claudia Ayanna Sharygin. 2013. “Do Foreclosures Cause Crime?” Journal of Urban Economics 74: 59-70.
• Frances E. Kuo and William C. Sullivan. 2001. “Environment and Crime in the Inner City: Does Vegetation Reduce Crime?” Environment and Behavior 33(3): 343-367.

Well-Being

Better amenities can also improve residents’ well-being and thus decrease precursors of violence. Built environments may favor conditions that enhance the pleasantness of pedestrian environments, the convenience of walking for travel or recreation, and environmental safety. Some argue that vegetation promotes better cognitive performance, produces positive emotions and fosters environmental consciousness.

• Shobha Srinivasan, Liam R. O’Fallon, and Allen Dearry. 2003. “Creating Healthy Communities, Healthy Homes, Healthy People: Initiating a Research Agenda on the Built Environment and Public Health.” American Journal of Public Health 93(9): 1446-1450.
• Robert J. Sampson .2003. “The Neighborhood Context of Well-Being.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 46(3): S53-S64.

Guardianship

Habitable spaces and better amenities also shape and enhance the relationships and social initiatives from community members. Green areas provide sites for social gatherings, and facilitate social interaction. Cohesive communities mobilize resources to tackle the underlying social causes of crime, or to encourage commerce and employment opportunities. Connected with surveillance, social cohesion makes residents more willing to step in and directly address criminal behavior, thus improving surveillance and oversight. Cohesive communities also foster well-being among residents and generate better health outcomes by social processes like promoting outdoor activities, participating in organizations, and creating networks of support.

• Patrick Sharkey, Gerard Torrats-Espinosa, and Delaram Takyar. 2017. “Community and the Crime Decline: The Causal Effect of Local Nonprofits on Violent Crime.” American Sociological Review 82(6): 1214-1240.
• Jeffrey D. Morenoff, Robert J. Sampson, and Stephen W. Raudenbush. 2001.”Neighborhood Inequality, Collective Efficacy, and the Spatial Dynamics of Urban Violence.” Criminology 39(3): 517-558.

Situational Crime Prevention

Green areas can also influence behavioral outcomes by eliminating, blocking or restraining access to crime targets and by removing the target itself.  They can be designed to minimize the number of entry and exit points and control pedestrian or vehicular access. Therefore, their physical design and layout features can alter criminal routines and targets. Green areas offer physical barriers that effectively obstruct opportunities for crime and modify both the attractiveness of targets and the motivation of potential-offenders.

• Paul Cozens and Terence Love. 2015. “A Review and Current Status of Crime Prevention through Environmental Design.” Journal of Planning Literature 30(4): 393-412.
• Ronald V. Clarke .2005. “Seven Misconceptions of Situational Crime Prevention.” Pp. 34-70 in Handbook of Crime Prevention and Community Safety.  Routledge.

Since investment in green areas can impact more people for longer periods of time than individual or lifestyle interventions, creating green places may provide a greater pay-off than traditional individual approaches to reducing crime. This is especially important for lower income communities, where residents may lack individual economic or social resources to encounter crime individually.  

The confirmation hearing for the recently appointed Supreme Court Justice, Brett Kavanaugh called public attention to what goes on inside elite, private boarding schools. Sociologists have long been interested in the role played by elite private prep schools in the intergenerational transmission of advantage. In 1956, C. Wright Mills contended, “if one had to choose one clue to the national unity of the upper social classes in America today, it would be the really exclusive boarding school for girls and the prep school for boys.” By selecting and training the newer members of the upper class, and by upholding the distinctive standards among the children of families who have long been at the top, the prep schools serving America’s “power elite” have long been the ticket to acceptance into elite colleges and corporations.

Today’s elite boarding schools provide many students with opportunities to cultivate a sense of ease and familiarity with authorities and gatekeepers. They also cultivate students’ beliefs in their own exceptionality by providing opportunities to specialize in unique activities and to hold leadership positions. Yet, because prep schools also escalate the process of separating the winners from the losers, they trap students in a “triangle of tension”: families pressure students to succeed, while the school (at least publicly) encourages them to adhere to a strict moral code, and their friends adopt a culture of “eat, drink, and be merry.” To escape this stress, youth often partake in the student underlife.

• Shamus R. Khan. 2010.  Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School. Princeton University Press.
• Peter W. Cookson Jr and Caroline Hodges Persell. 2008. Preparing for Power: America’s Elite Boarding Schools. Basic Books.

Many view surviving boarding schools as a rite of passage, though one more difficult for some than others. Designed to spread the values of affluent white families, students of color often experience prep school culture as extremely unwelcoming.

• Richard L. Zweigenhaft and G. William Domhoff. 2003. Blacks in the White Elite: Will the Progress Continue?. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Moreover, not everyone agrees which private prep schools warrant the label “elite.” Schools may be considered elite on account of characteristics such as their independence from state funding and control, prestigious curricular offerings or teaching methods, the wealth and power of the families whose children they admit, and their geographic locations.

Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández. 2009. “What is an Elite Boarding School?” Review of Educational Research 79(3): 1090-1128.

Elite boarding schools enable privileged families to pass on wealth and advantages to their offspring, and they do so by enculturating students to a lifestyle that is tied to wealthy whiteness. This raises serious questions about how we currently think about the qualities and skills inculcated by elite socializing institutions, and about the legitimacy of the many privileges enjoyed by their graduates.

The murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi sparked criticism of Saudi Arabia across the globe. But a recent New York Times article brings forward a striking paradox – this single incident has drawn far more outrage than Saudi Arabia’s large-scale intervention in Yemen. Over the past three years, thousands of civilians have been killed, half of Yemen’s population is at risk of famine, and over 20 million people need humanitarian aid. This conflict is largely caused by Saudi Arabia’s intervention, like attacks on civilian infrastructure and continual deadly air strikes. These factors caused the United Nations to label the violence in Yemen as 2018’s worst humanitarian crisis. Yet in the United States, this conflict has received only limited attention. Research can help to explain the lack of coverage of this crisis and why distant conflict may result in selective empathy.

Depictions of violence play an important role in understanding distant conflict. Places with a history of violence, like Afghanistan or Syria, become linked with this conflict – violence may become understood as timeless or inevitable. Individuals in conflict zones are then minimized into stereotypes, like tribal savages or helpless, incapable victims.

• Victoria M. Esses, Scott Veenvliet, Gordon Hodson and Ljiljana Mihic. 2008. “Justice, Morality, and the Dehumanization of Refugees.” Social Justice Research 21(1): 4-25.
• Dag Tuastad. 2003. “Neo-Orientalism and the New Barbarism Thesis: Aspects of Symbolic Violence in the Middle East Conflict(s).” Third World Quarterly 24(4): 591-599.
• Makau W. Mutua. 2001. “Savages, Victims, and Saviors: The Metaphor of Human Rights.” Harvard International Law Journal 42(1): 201-45.

Aid campaigns can unintentionally reinforce these depictions. While campaigns that feature starving children or crying mothers are often well-intentioned, they can reinforce dehumanizing depictions by characterizing groups only through their suffering. In such campaigns, civilians caught up in conflict are  displayed as objects of pity, rather than people with rich lives that were devastated by violence. And more concerning, real suffering can be reduced to a tool to remind viewers of their own luck or deserving.

• Andrea Lobb. 2017. “Critical Empathy.” Constellations 24(4): 594-607.
• Carolyn Pedwell. 2012. “Affective (Self-) Transformations: Empathy, Neoliberalism, and International Development.” Feminist Theory 13(2): 163-179.

While we understand our own lives as complex, our conceptualizations of others are often less vivid – such comparisons tone how we understand ourselves and those around us. This contrast can result in stereotypical depictions of groups we see as distant from ourselves. For example, Edward Said argued that influential Western texts about Africa and Asia exoticized these places and the people that lived there. These simplifications become particularly problematic during times of violence because those experiencing conflict in far-away spaces may be understood as less complex and, therefore, less deserving of empathy.

• George H. Mead. 1934. Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. The University of Chicago Press.
• Edward Said. 1978. Orientalism. Pantheon Books.

The cultural and physical distance of international conflict can affect empathy, one reason that front-page coverage of Yemen has been limited. However, those seeking a deeper understanding of conflict can challenge these depictions by informing themselves about the history and day-to-day reality of violence and those who experience it. Doing so has the potential to counter these simplified tropes about conflict across the globe.

According to a recent memo, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is seeking to establish a legal definition of sex and gender based on “a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” However, social and biological scientists agree that — based on their scientific understanding — gender and sex are not solely biological, and sex and gender are not the same thing. Sex is a category used to describe a culmination of biological and genetic components, including chromosomes, hormones, and physical anatomy. Gender, on the other hand, may or may not be linked to biological traits. Gender refers to a cultural identity, one that has social weight in the world, with particular meanings attached to it. Gender involves social norms, attitudes, and expressions.

• Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman. 1987. “Doing Gender.” Gender & Society 1(2): 125-151.
• Karin Martin. 1998. “Becoming a Gendered Body: Practices of Preschools.” American Sociological Review 63(4): 494–511.
• Judith Lorber. 1993. “Believing is Seeing: Biology as Ideology.” Gender & Society 7(4): 568-581.

Neither sex nor gender are binaries, meaning there are not just two categories — female or male, women or men — and they are not fixed or static. They can and do change over individuals’ lifetimes. U.S. society is increasingly more likely to accept that gender is more of a spectrum than a binary. We’re hearing more about transgender individuals in the media, but transgender is only one gender identity that challenges a binary view of gender. Others include, but are not limited to, gender nonconforming, gender fluid, and gender queer.

• Judith Lorber. 1996. “Beyond the Binaries: Depolarizing the Categories of Sex, Sexuality, and Gender.” Sociological Inquiry 66(2): 143-160.
• Laurel Westbrook and Aliya Saperstein. 2015. “New Categories Are Not Enough: Rethinking the Measurement of Sex and Gender in Social Surveys.” Gender & Society 29(4): 534-560.

Just as gender is not a binary, neither is sex. The biological components of sex do not always align solely with “male” or “female.”  An individual may have XY chromosomes and an outward female appearance, including breasts and a vagina. Another might have XX chromosomes and high levels of testosterone. Yet another might have genitalia that appear to be neither male or female (too long to be a clitoris, too short to be a penis). These individuals fall into a category called “intersex.” While it’s hard to know how many individuals are intersex (some don’t even know themselves), a commonly reported statistic is 1 in 1500 to 2000 American births.

• Georgiann Davis. 2015. Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis. New York University Press.
• Sharon Preeves. 2003. Intersex and Identity: The Contested Self. Rutgers University Press.

Nevertheless, U.S. society remains deeply invested in two categories of sex and gender. In fact, most of society is organized around these ideas. In other words, gender is an institutionalized system. And during our everyday lives we constantly categorize people based on their appearance and behavioral cues — gender is a system of categorization we use to understand our social world. People who challenge gender or sex binaries thus can face serious consequences, including discrimination and violence.

• Cecilia L. Ridgeway and Shelley J. Correll. 2004. “Unpacking the Gender System: A Theoretical Perspective on Gender Beliefs and Social Relations.” Gender & Society 18(4): 510–31.
• R.W. Connell. 1987. Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics. Stanford University Press.
• Kristen Schilt and Laurel Westbrook. 2009. “Doing Gender, Doing Heteronormativity: ‘Gender Normals,’ Transgender People, and the Social Maintenance of Heterosexuality.” Gender & Society 23(4): 440–64.
• Lisa R. Miller and Eric Anthony Grollman. 2015. “The Social Costs of Gender Nonconformity for Transgender Adults: Implications for Discrimination and Health.” Sociological Forum 30(3): 809-831.

No doubt, the recent controversy in the Department of Health and Human Services isn’t the first time we’ve grappled with contested definitions of gender and sex in our political history — and it certainly won’t be the last.

Historically, Brazil had presented itself as a “racial democracy” where interaction between racial groups formed a utopian, raceless society. In the last few decades, Brazil has come to acknowledge its underlying racism and resulting disparities, leading to the 2001 enactment of race-based affirmative action projects. Social scientific research can help us better understand the functions and necessity of these programs, which are likely to be under threat following the election of right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro who has been openly critical of Blacks and the LGBT community and the policies that serve them.

In Brazil, skin color has been the defining mechanism for racial categorization and identity in between a black and white binary. Some official methods, however, including the Brazilian Census, recognize multiracial identity and a number of racial categories. Multiple methods of classification can be tricky, and this can obscure deeper and more basic racial inequalities. Though pardos (a mixed-race category used in the census) can face similar social situations as dark-skinned Blacks (sometimes referred to as pretos), recent research finds that pardos actually do experience less disadvantage than pretos, complicating decisions about who receives help from affirmative action programs.

• Stanley R. Bailey. 2009. “Unmixing for Race Making in Brazil.” American Journal of Sociology 114(3): 577-614.
• Mara Loveman, Jeronimo O. Muniz, and Stanley R. Bailey. 2012. “Brazil in Black and White? Race Categories, the Census, and the Study of Inequality.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 35(8): 1466-1483.

Given this complexity, determining who is Black and a possible beneficiary of the racial quota program has differed. Some universities have required applicants to be of African descent to qualify for racial quotas, which has caused complications since many Brazilians could claim African ancestry even though they may have light skin or are not seen as “Black.” In other cases, verification committees at different universities confirm whether an applicant should be considered Black and a beneficiary of the racial quota system. The quota program has now significantly broadened to include applicants from low-income families as well as Indigenous peoples. Independent of skin color or racial group, support for affirmative action programs and race-targeted public policies is strong. Research suggests, however, that the more education someone has, the less likely they are to support racial quotas. It is important to consider what factors affect support and execution of these policies as opponents such as President-elect Bolsonaro attempt to dismantle it.

• Stanley R. Bailey, Fabrício Fialho, and Michelle Peria. 2015. “Support for Race-Targeted Affirmative Action in Brazil.” Ethnicities 1-34.
• Edward Telles. 2014. Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race, and Color in Latin America. The University of North Carolina Press.