culture

A recent study by the Pew Research Center suggests that “Nones”—people who are unaffiliated with any organized religious institution or belief system—now make up the single largest religious group in the Democratic party. Organizations like the American Atheists launched the #AtheistVoter campaign, and members of this growing voting bloc assembled at the recent Republican presidential debate in Iowa, questioning the candidates’ ability to represent non-religious Americans and demanding they “Keep Your Theocracy out of Our Democracy.” Sociologists of non-religion detail how the Nones are increasingly diverse, and their social and political agendas sometimes conflict.

The history of non-religious and atheist politics in the U.S. is one of constant tension. The non-religious take varying stances on the role of religion in social and political life, and the movement has had to balance “accommodationist” approaches to religion in the public sphere that support religion as a social good and “confrontational” approaches that position religion as a danger to democracy and progress.

• Steven Kettell. 2014. “Divided We Stand: The Politics of the Atheist Movement in the United States,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 29(3): 377-391.
• Stephen LeDrew. 2016. The Evolution of Atheism: The Politics of a Modern Movement. New York: Oxford University Press.

Tensions among the Nones can be a barrier to success as a cohesive political group, but their diversity can also be an advantage. Secular groups often define “the secular” differently depending on the context, which allows for a wider net to be cast over the variety of individual, non-religious identities. This enables more inclusive political agendas.

• Joseph Blankholm. 2014. “The Political Advantages of a Polysemous Secular,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 53(4): 775-790.
• Lois Lee. 2015. “Ambivalent Atheist Identities: Power and Non-religious Culture in Contemporary Britain,” Social Analysis 59(2): 20-39.

Netflix made a big splash in “true crime” with its series Making a Murderer, chronicling the investigations and trials of Wisconsin man Steven Avery. Exonerated after 18 years in prison for sexual assault in 2003, Avery was arrested for a new crime—murder—in 2007. Public debate about the documentary revolves around whether Avery’s innocent, potential misconduct in the justice system, and the ethics and consequences of documentary “vigilante justice,” but there is little doubt Avery was wrongfully convicted the first time around, in 1985. Social science helps us understand the more systematic consequences of incarceration and exoneration that cultural phenomena like Making a Murderer, the Serial podcast, and even the upcoming miniseries “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” bring to our attention.

Pop culture tends to focus on errors, like witness misidentification and shoddy forensics, but those are not the only things that lead to wrongful convictions. Sociological research shows blacks and Hispanics are at a higher risk, and these groups are, in fact, overrepresented in samples of exonerees. Black exonerees suffer longer periods of incarceration between their conviction and exoneration than other groups. And exonerations often raise questions about the criminal justice system’s authority and legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

• Brandon Garrett. 2011. Convicting the Innocent. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Marvin Zalman, Matthew J. Larson, and Brad Smith. 2012. “Citizens’ Attitudes Toward Wrongful Convictions,” Criminal Justice Review 37(1): 51-69.
• Maeve Olney, and Scott Bonn. 2015. “An Exploratory Study of the Legal and Non-Legal Factors Associated With Exoneration for Wrongful Conviction: The Power of DNA Evidence,” Criminal Justice Policy Review 26(4): 400-420.

Exonerees, even those who aren’t in a media spotlight, face practical problems after they are released from prison. The stigma of having served time diminishes chances in the employment and housing markets, even for those who are exonerated. Like others experiencing reentry after incarceration, exonerees also face unmet needs with regard to physical, dental, and mental healthcare, as well as the myriad challenges of rebuilding social networks and reintegrating to everyday life.

• Devah Pager. 2003. “The Mark of a Criminal Record,” American Journal of Sociology 108(5): 937-975.
• Adina M. Thompson, Oscar R. Molina, and Lora M. Levett. 2011. “After Exoneration: An Investigation of Stigma and Wrongfully Convicted Persons,” Albany Law Review 75(3): 1373-1413.
• Kimberley A. Clow, and Amy-May Leach. 2015. “Stigma and Wrongful Conviction: All Exonerees are Not Perceived Equal,” Psychology, Crime & Law 21(2): 172-185.
• Saundra D. Westervelt and Kimberly J. Cook. 2012. Life after Death Row: Exonerees’ Search for Community and Identity. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

A recent working paper from Harvard found that hosts of the room/house renting service Airbnb discriminate against renters with Black-sounding names. The study revealed that “requests from guests with distinctly African-American names are roughly 16% less likely to be accepted than identical guests with distinctively White names.”

Unfortunately, racial discrimination based on names is nothing new.

• Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan. 2004. “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination,” The American Economic Review 94(4): 991-1013.

Racialized housing discrimination also has a long history. Once overt, such as in the outright denial of mortgages, housing discrimination has shifted toward micro-aggressions that are harder to spot, such as the private decision not to offer an Airbnb to people of color.

• Devah Pager and Hana Shepherd. 2008. “The Sociology of Discrimination: Racial Discrimination in Employment, Housing, Credit, and Consumer Markets,” Annual Review of Sociology 34: 181–209.
• Vincent J. Roscigno, Diana L. Karafin, and Griff Tester. 2009.“The Complexities and Processes of Racial Housing Discrimination,” Social Problems 56(1): 49-69.
• Douglas S. Massey. 2015. “ The Legacy of the 1968 Fair Housing Act,” Sociological Forum 30(1): 571-588.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is a contested space for queer folks. Persecution is common in Egypt, where gay men are continuously subjected to mass arrests, and queer Palestinians are often blackmailed. In contrast, Lebanon has led the LGBT*Q movement with a recent court ruling that homosexuality is not “unnatural or a crime. Celebrities like Hamed Sinno, the gay lead singer of Mashrou’ Leila, can even use music to address gender expression and gay love there. Research on the origins of queerness and homophobia in the region and why governments repress queer communities can help us understand such conflicting trends.

Contrary to beliefs that queerness is un-MENA, un-Islamic, or un-African, Abu Nawas (756-814) wrote uninhibited erotic poetry about men and, in the 18^th and 19^th centuries in Egypt, homosexual and homosocial relations were quite common. Lesbianism is documented in the 9^th century throughout the region.

• Samar Habib. 2007. Female Homosexuality in the Middle East: History and Representations. New York: Routledge.
• Mervat Hatem. 1986. “The Politics of Sexuality and Gender in Segregated Patriarchal Systems: The Case of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth- Century Egypt,” Feminist Studies. 12(2):250-274

Contemporary state repression often involves torture, surveillance, and harassment of gays and lesbians by state actors. After the Arab Spring revolutions, social science sheds light on how such politically unstable governments attempt to maintain and enforce social stability and societal moral. This larger sense of a need for control could fuel queer community repression.

• Jennifer Earl. 2011. “Political Repression: Iron Fists, Velvet Gloves, and Diffuse Control,” Annual Review of Sociology 37:261-284.
• Mark Ungar. 2000. “State Violence and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (lgbt) Rights,” New Political Science 22(1):61-75.
• Christian Davenport. 1995. “Multi-Dimensional Threat Perception and State Repression: An Inquiry, into Why States Apply Negative Sanctions.” American Journal of Political Science 39(3):683-713.

For more on sexuality in the MENA, see lectures from the ““Sexualities and Queer Imaginaries in the Middle East/North Africa’ conference at Brown University.

Let’s do this, Twitterers! RT if you want to see me fight @MechofJusticeWZ per his request #MasculinitySoFragile pic.twitter.com/uBihFlcA3P

— Pia Glenn (@PiaGlenn) September 23, 2015

In September 2015, the hashtag #masculinitysofragile first swept across the greater twitter community—even gaining its own twitter account. Tweeters use the hashtag to point out how masculinity and expectations for men to be “manly” are not only unattainable, but also harmful to both men and women. Some posts called out the gendered marketing of men’s products like man-sized soap bars, and others the need to qualify affection between two men with “no homo” and the way boys are taught to reserve, rather than express, emotions.

So, is #masculinitysofragile? Luckily for all of us, there’s research on that!

Scholars define masculinity as more than just an individual trait. It involves social practices that privilege men over women and some men over other men. Traits associated with the “ideal” man—what scholars refer to as “hegemonic masculinity”—include sexual aggression, violent behavior, and lack of outward emotion, as well as whiteness, middle-class status, and heterosexual desire for women. Men actively work to maintain a spot in the dominant gender group. Sometimes this involves demonstrating masculinity through behaviors like fighting discrediting women at work.

• Douglas Schrock and Michael Schwalbe. 2009. “Men, Masculinity, and Manhood Acts,” Annual Review of Sociology 35(1):277–95
• R.W. Connell and James Messerschmidt. 2005. “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept,” Gender & Society 19(6):829–59.
• Kyle Green. 2015. “Tales from the Mat Narrating Men and Meaning Making in the Mixed Martial Arts Gym,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography.

Masculinity faces crises when the dominant status of manhood is threatened. For instance, during periods when women’s rights and freedoms expand—like during the three waves of American feminism—men felt their advantages as the more powerful group were threatened. Men also police other men by calling out their lack of toughness using homophobic language. In this case, one man is deemed feminine or weak, while the other’s straightness and dominance is affirmed. Finally, parents may participate in constructing their sons’ masculinity by limiting access to feminine toys and clothing. Men with privilege—those who are white, straight, and/or middle- or upper-class—can afford to be more flexible with their masculinity.

• Michael Kimmel. 1996. Manhood in America: A Cultural History. New York: The Free Press
• C.J. Pascoe. 2005. “‘Dude, You’re a Fag’: Adolescent Masculinity and the Fag Discourse,” Sexualities 8(3):329–46.
• Tristan Bridges. 2014. “A Very ‘Gay’ Straight? Hybrid Masculinities, Sexual Aesthetics, and the Changing Relationship between Masculinity and Homophobia,” Gender & Society 28(1):58–82.

New York’s State Attorney has opened an investigation into whether ExxonMobil lied to the public and investors about the risks of climate change and funded outside groups to question climate science, even as the company’s own expert researchers found that fossil fuel emissions do, indeed, contribute to rising temperatures.

The Exxon investigation reflects the broader politicization of climate change and the role of corporations in shaping public perceptions. Surveys have found that the U.S. public is poorly informed about the science of climate change. A climate change countermovement flush with funds from business and conservative organizations works to create skepticism and distort public understanding. These efforts mirror other controversies over science and risk, and past corporate campaigns to create doubt about the harmful impacts of chemicals such as tobacco, DDT, or holes in the ozone layer.

• Robert J. Brulle. 2014. “Institutionalizing Delay: Foundation Funding and the Creation of U.S. Climate Change Counter-Movement Organizations.” Climatic Change 122(4):681–94.
• Thomas Dietz, Paul C. Stern, and Robert W. Rycroft. 1989. “Definitions of Conflict and the Legitimation of Resources: The Case of Environmental Risk.” Sociological Forum 4(1):47–70.
• Riley E. Dunlap and Peter J. Jacques. 2013. “Climate Change Denial Books and Conservative Think Tanks: Exploring the Connection.” American Behavioral Scientist 57(6):699–731.
• Valerie J. Gunter. 2005. “News Media and Technological Risks: The Case of Pesticides after ‘Silent Spring.’” The Sociological Quarterly 46(4):671–98.
• Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. 2010. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. New York: Bloomsbury Press.

Climate change denial is not simply the result of well funded public relations campaigns, however. It also reflects collective and individual anxieties and the difficulties of coming to terms with abstract and long-term risks. Everyday experiences, cultural norms, political beliefs, and religion shape how people come to terms with problems like climate change.

• John H. Evans and Justin Feng. 2013. “Conservative Protestantism and Skepticism of Scientists Studying Climate Change.” Climatic Change 121(4):595–608.
• Kari Marie Norgaard. 2011. Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life. MIT Press.
• Min Zhou. 2015. “Public Environmental Skepticism: A Cross-National and Multilevel Analysis.” International Sociology 30(1):61–85.

For more on echo chambers and how climate change denial narratives gain credibility, check out this new piece over at Contexts!

In September, blogger Erin Jones posted a photo on Facebook that would spark a fight against the stigma of mental health and medication for it. Her hashtag #medicatedandmighty has inspired others who take prescription medication for depression, anxiety, and a host of other mental health needs to share their own photos and “come out.”

What makes it possible for the #MedicatedAndMighty to fight back against stigma in mental illness? Since doctors and researchers do not have complete monopoly over medical knowledge, the lay person (non-medical person) plays a role in constructing the meaning of mental illness. Patients’ lived experiences with an illness confirm or challenge expert knowledge, contributing to the continual shaping of the biomedical and cultural understandings of the condition.

• Hilary Arksey. 1994. “Expert and lay participation in the construction of medical knowledge.” Sociology of Health and Illness 16(4): 448-468.
• Lindsay Prior. 2003. “Belief, Knowledge, and Expertise: The Emergence of the Lay Expert in Medical Sociology.” Sociology of Health & Illness 25: 41-57.

Cultural meanings of illness shapes responses to them, making all mental illnesses socially constructed experiences . Claims-makers and interested parties, not just doctors and scientists, create medical knowledge—what makes an illness “real,” and what constitutes its symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment. Often, negative understandings of specific illnesses come from elite moral entrepreneurs whose elite socioeconomic status and moral legitimacy give them framing power.

• Elizabeth M. Armstrong. 1998. “Diagnosing moral disorder: The discovery and evolution of fetal alcohol syndrome.” Social Sciences and Medicine 47(12): 2025-2042
• Phil Brown. 1995. “Naming and Framing: The Social Construction of Diagnosis and Illness.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior. 35: 34-52.
• Peter Conrad and Kristen Barker. 2010. “The Social Construction of Illness: Key Insights and Policy Implications.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 51 (Suppl): S67-S79.

Hazing has been in the news a lot recently. It exists across a variety of settings, including sports and the military.

Why does hazing occur? Some research discusses the function of hazing as rites of passage or as an expression of group solidarity. Hazing can bring members together, validate one another in the group’s eyes, symbolize transition into group membership, bolster group cohesion, and create group conformity within particular hierarchies.

• Hank Nuwer. 2004. The Hazing Reader. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• Caroline F. Keating, Jason Pomerantz, Stacy D. Pommer, Samantha J.H. Ritt, Lauren M Miller, and Julie McCormick. 2005. “Going to College and Unpacking Hazing: A Functional Approach to Decrypting Initiation Practices Among Undergraduates.” Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice 9(2): 104-126
• Stephen Sweet. 1999. “Understanding fraternity hazing: Insights from symbolic interactionist theory.” Journal of College Student Development 40(4):355-364.

Research on insider’s attitudes towards hazing highlights interesting dynamics within organizations. Individual members often have negative thoughts about hazing, but individuals are unlikely to protest the practice in-group settings. Power dynamics within those groups normalize hazing and silence opposition to it.

• Judy L. Van Raalte, Allen E. Cornelius, Darwyn E Linder, and Britton W Brewer. 2007. “The relationship between hazing and team cohesion.” Journal of Sport Behavior 30(4): 491-507.
• Donna Winslow. 1999. “Rites of Passage and Group Bonding in the Canadian Airborne.” Armed Forces & Society 25(3): 429-457.

The research suggests that hazing takes on a particular character within Greek Letter Organizations (GLOs). In fraternities, for example, where membership and group identity are constructed around ideas of the “all-male” group, hazing can serve as a validation of masculinity and a suppression of femininity. In addition, in GLOs that have been historically raced, hazing can express racial identities, in-group unity, and belonging.

• Elizabeth J. Allan. 2009. Hazing in View: College students at Risk. Collingdale, PA: DIANE Publishing.
• Ricky L. Jones. 2004. Black haze: Violence, sacrifice, and manhood in Black Greek-letter fraternities. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

The recent physical altercation between a police officer and a young black female student at Spring Valley High School in South Carolina raised questions about the role of disciplinary sanctions and law enforcement in schools. Since the 1990s, schools, particularly inner-city schools, have become increasingly criminalized, as school officials view students as suspects.

The criminalization of students includes the formalization of punishment through “zero tolerance” policies, the transfer of disciplinary discretion among teachers and school officials to disciplinary codes, and the integration of criminal justice technologies and personnel. Schools often replace traditional modes of school punishment with arrests and court referrals, and control students through security measures like metal detectors and on-campus police officers.

• Paul J. Hirschfield. 2008. “Preparing for Prison: The Criminalization of School Discipline in the USA,” Theoretical Criminology 12(1):79-101.
• Aaron Kupchik. 2010. Homeroom Security: School Discipline in an Age of Fear. New York: New York University Press.

School Resource Officers (SROs), law enforcement officers stationed in a particular school or school district, are a central part of this trend. The number of SROs has increased over the past 12 years, but systematic studies offer no evidence that schools with SROs have better safety records. On the contrary, long-term studies show that more crimes involving drugs and weapons are recorded after schools add SROs. SROs are also associated with higher levels of student arrests for lower-level delinquent acts (e.g., disorderly conduct), suggesting that SROs may bring behavior that was once dealt with by the school (“in house”) into the criminal justice system. This “SRO effect” is exacerbated in schools characterized by higher levels of economic disadvantage.

• Matthew Theriot. 2009. “School Resource Officers and the Criminalization of Student Behavior,” Journal of Criminal Justice 37:280-287.
• Chongmin Na and Denise C. Gottfredson. 2013. “Police Officers in Schools: Effects on School Crime and the Processing of Offending Behaviors,” Justice Quarterly 30(4):619-650.

African Americans and other minority students are affected disproportionately, both because SROs and other criminal justice tools are concentrated in urban schools and because minority students, even when controlling for differential behavior, are punished at higher rates than their white peers. Current research suggests that schools’ rising criminal justice apparatus does little to quell violence, but may unintentionally result in more black students experiencing the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

• Michael Rocque and Raymond Paternoster. 2011. “Understanding the Antecedents of the ‘School-to-Jail’ Link: The Relationship between Race and School Discipline,” The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 101(2):633-665.
• Kelly Welch and Allison Payne. 2010. “Racial Threat and Punitive School Discipline,” Social Problems 57(1):25-48.

A study published earlier this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reports that over half of adults in the United States use prescription drugs, and as many as 15% of adults report using more than five prescription drugs each month. Recent coverage of these findings at NPR explores how increases in obesity and obesity-related illnesses may contribute to the increase in prescription drug use. Several sociological studies provide other potential explanations, including the increasing influence that pharmaceutical companies have over the doctor-patient relationship.

Though physicians are the ultimate gatekeepers for prescription drugs, the pharmaceutical industry drastically shapes prescription drug use. Through internal research studies and trials, pharmaceutical companies produce new knowledge about illnesses and treatment options. Pharmaceutical companies can even play an increasing role in medicalization—the process of constructing issues as specifically medical problems. By promoting the idea that something is a medical problem, pharmaceutical companies then offer a solution. Pharmaceutical salespeople aggressively promote their wares to clinicians, even promoting the off-label use of drugs to increase distribution.

• Peter Conrad. 2005. “The Shifting Engines of Medicalization.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 40:5-14.
• Jeremy A. Greene. 2007. Prescribing by Numbers: Drugs and the Definition of Disease. Baltimore: MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Michael J. Oldani. 2004. “Thick Prescriptions: Toward an Interpretation of Pharmaceutical Sales Practices.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 18(3): 325-56.

Direct-to-consumer advertising may also lead to increase prescription drug use. Patients who see such ads may be more likely to self-diagnose and directly request drugs, and patients who request medication (whether a specific drug or just drug treatment in general) are more likely to be prescribed medication. Despite the potential for over-prescribing, direct-to-consumer advertising also encourages positive interactions between patients and physicians by providing patients with more information about current and undiagnosed conditions.

• Peter Conrad and Valerie Leiter. 2008. “From Lydia Pinkham to Queen Levitra: Direct-to-Consumer Advertising and Medicalisation.” Sociology of Health and Illness 30: 1245-46.
• Stefan Timmermans and Hyeyoung Oh. 2010. “The Continued Social Transformation of the Medical profession.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 51(S): S94-S106.