Charter schools are public schools that are meant to provide more choices for students and their families–at least, that’s what federal law says. Yet, sometimes charter schools reject students based on academic performance. Does that make them less public? Other times, charter schools forbid teachers from unionizing and the National Labor Relations Board gets involved. Such competing and confusing legal definitions of “public” only complicate the debate over charter schools’ legitimacy. Do these cases make charter schools any less public if the U.S. Department of Education insists otherwise? Certainly the NLRB thinks so, having recently argued that teachers in two separate charter schools do not have the right to unionize because, “charter schools are not public schools but private corporations.”

One way scholars of education parse out the difference is by comparing charter schools’ behavior and organization with more traditional, unquestionably public schools. Scholars find that as long as these practices exist in a legal gray area and the school follows some institutional norms for public schools–such as not charging tuition and grading homework–charter schools are public.

• Jennifer L. Jennings. 2010. “School Choice or Schools’ Choice? Managing in an Era of Accountability.” Sociology of Education 83(3): 227-247.
• Scott Davies and Linda Quirke. 2007. “The Impact of Sector on School Organizations: Institutional and Market Logics.” Sociology of Education 80(1): 66-89

Advocates for charter schools claim that this flexibility fosters innovation and helps close the achievement gap–everybody wins. That is, until regulatory agencies respond to the more abnormal facets of charter schools. This prompts a serious conversation about what “real” public schools should be. In the social world, the boundary shifts with popular perception, and the charter schools of yesterday can no longer be as public as they once were.

• Linda A. Renzulli. 2005. “Organizational Environments and the Emergence of Charter Schools in the United States.” Sociology of Education 78(1): 1-26.
• Janice Aurini. 2006. “Crafting Legitimation Projects: An Institutional Analysis of Private Education Businesses.” Sociological Forum 21(2): 83-112

If you didn’t notice the rampant interruptions during this week’s first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, don’t worry – several sources ranging from Vox to The New York Times and even U.S. Weekly took note. While estimates vary as to the exact number of times each candidate interrupted the other, some estimate that Clinton interrupted Trump about a dozen times while Trump interrupted both Clinton and debate moderator Lester Holt over 50 times. As this is likely a moment we will teach in Sociology of Gender courses for years to come, we can look to prior studies of speech patterns and gender to contextualize the demeanor of the debate.

Both men and women engage in all types and styles of interruption; however, men are more likely to engage in intrusive interruption — that is, when someone interrupts “the speaker’s turn at talk with the intent of demonstrating dominance.” Additionally, men interrupt women more often than they do other men, using sex as a status characteristic in group discussion.

• Kristin J. Anderson and Campbell Leaper. 1998. “Meta-Analyses of Gender Effects on Controversial Interruption: Who, What, When, Where, and How.” Sex Roles 39(314): 225-252.
• Lynn Smith-Lovin and Charles Brody. 1989. “Interruptions in Group Discussions: The Effects of Gender and Group Composition.” American Sociological Review 54(3): 424-435.

Gender also plays a role in interruptions among deliberating bodies, particularly when women are the minority within the group. When outnumbered, women experience higher rates of dismissive interruption and lower rates of approval when speaking.

• Tali Mendelberg, Christopher F. Karpowitz, and J. Baxter Oliphant. 2014.  “Gender Inequality in Deliberation: Unpacking the Black Box of Interaction.” Perspectives on Politics 12(1):18–44.

Interruption, regardless of gender, has social consequences. Someone who interrupts is often seen as more successful, though less socially acceptable and reliable.

• Mary Glenn Wiley and Dale E. Woolley. 1988. “Interruptions Among Equals: Power Plays that Fail.” Gender & Society 2(1): 90-102.

In lieu of the recent fatal police shootings in cities such as Tulsa, Charlotte, and most recently, El Cajon, California, communities are coming together to demand changes in law enforcement interactions. Of particular concern is police surveillance and the subsequent criminalization of minor offenses. “Problem-oriented policing” – which focuses on a community’s “hot spots” and requires police to be more proactive in identifying where crime might happen, as opposed to just reacting after a crime takes place – has been offered as a possible solution. But does problem-oriented policing actually reduce crime? Social science research helps us sort out the potential benefits and pitfalls to problem-oriented policing.

The research record is mixed. Studies evaluating problem-oriented policing programs in Jersey City and Los Angeles showed reductions in serious crimes, such as property crime, robbery, and drug selling, as well nuisance crimes associated with homelessness. Others, however, show no signs of decrease in the number of reported crime rates. Scholars suggest that problem-oriented policing may only have an impact in areas of severe crime and distrust of law enforcement.  

• Anthony A. Braga, David L. Weisburd, Elin J. Waring, Lorraine Green Mazerolle, William Spelman, and Francis Gajewski. 1999. “Problem‐oriented Policing in Violent Crime Places: A Randomized Controlled Experiment.” Criminology 37(3): 541-580.
• Richard Berk and John McDonald. 2010. “Policing the Homeless: An Evaluation of Efforts to Reduce Homeless-related Crime.” Criminology and Public Policy, 9 (4): 813-840.
• David Weisburd, Nancy A. Morris, and Justin Ready. 2008. “Risk-Focused Policing at Places: An Experimental Evaluation.” Justice Quarterly 25(1): 163-200.

Additional concerns with problem-oriented policing is its effect on marginalized communities. Both observed environmental cues and implicit racial and ethnic biases affect people’s perception of neighborhood disorder. As such, neighborhoods with high concentrations of racial/ethnic minorities are perceived as having more disorder, and consequently viewed as more dangerous and violent. Residents living in neighborhoods marked by perceived disorder are themselves labeled as threats by law enforcement, perpetuating and reproducing urban inequality and cultural stereotypes.

• Robert Sampson and Stephen W. Raudenbush. 2004. “Seeing Disorder: Neighborhood Stigma and the Social Construction of ‘Broken Windows.’” Social Psychology Quarterly 67(4): 319-342.
• George Kelling and Catherine Coles. 1996. Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities. New York: Free Press.

Last month marked the centennial of the National Park Service, which is tasked with preserving natural and cultural resources and protecting outdoor spaces for recreation, like Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and Yosemite. The most recently designated park is an ocean park where 4,900 square miles of deep sea volcanoes and canyons in the Atlantic ocean are now prohibited from commercial fishing and other types of resource extraction. While the idea behind the national park system is that everyone should be able to enjoy nature, the reality is that the working class and people of color are less likely to use national parks and the history of the parks has involved the displacement and exclusion of Native American, African American and immigrant communities.

Unequal access to resources – including money for entrance fees and transportation, equipment for exploring the parks, and leisure time – have resulted in race and class differences in who can actually enjoy the national parks.

• Jason Byrne and Jennifer Wolch. 2009. “Nature, Race, and Parks: Past Research and Future Directions for Geographic Research.” Progress in Human Geography 33(6): 743–65.
• Paul H. Gobster. 2002. “Managing Urban Parks for a Racially and Ethnically Diverse Clientele.” Leisure Sciences 24(2): 143–59.
• Myron Floyd. 1999. “Race, Ethnicity and Use of the National Park System.” NPS Social Science Research Review 1(2): 1–24.

Beyond access, there are a variety of cultural definitions of “the wilderness,” “the outdoors,” and recreation that are shaped by race. Racial norms and ideologies impact how people perceive leisure time and values of natural beauty, and activities like hiking and camping are often seen as “white hobbies.” Yet, these differences are largely due to a history of exclusion, discrimination, and segregation that kept people of color from using public outdoor space, particularly in the Jim Crow South.

• Cassandra Y. Johnson, Patrick M. Horan, and William Pepper. 1997. “Race, Rural Residence, and Wildland Visitation: Examining the Influence of Sociocultural Meaning.” Rural Sociology 62(1): 80–110.
• Cassandra Y. Johnson. 1998. “A Consideration of Collective Memory in African American Attachment to Wildland Recreation Places.” Human Ecology Review 5(1): 5–15.
• Dorecetta Taylor. 1989. “Blacks and the Environment:  Towards an Explanation of the Concern and Action Gaps Between Blacks and Whites.” Environment and Behavior 21(2): 175- 205.

The parks themselves were created through colonialism, as much of the land that is now “protected” was of course taken from Native Americans. The idea of a pristine wilderness is historically linked to white racial purity and the need for Europeans to save the land, which justified U.S. expansion into the West. The conservation movement was also led by white men, such as John Muir, who often overlooked the struggles of racial minorities and issues of equity.

• Mark David Spence. 1999. Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
• Mark Daniel Barringer. 2002. Selling Yellowstone: Capitalism and the Construction of Nature. Lawrence, Kan: University Press of Kansas.
• Dorcetta Taylor. 2016. The Rise of the American Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

On the recent 45th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising, prisoners in at least 24 states protested inhumane living and working conditions, in what some observers are calling the largest national prison strike in American history. Led by inmate movements in Alabama and Texas that critique prison slavery, protests are still ensuing in many states, with demonstrations ranging from work stoppage to hunger strikes. As historian Heather Ann Thompson reveals in a recent article in the Atlantic, the parallels between these modern prison protests and the Attica prison uprising are clear:

“The root causes of the Attica rebellion were, as they are with the rebellions today, abysmal conditions in our nation’s correctional facilities.”

Thompson argues in her book that the political consequences of the misinformation surrounding Attica helped to legitimate the punitive turn in American imprisonment. Although Attica may have helped to perpetuate some of the problems in American prisons, Thompson believes that it also provides an example to those who are incarcerated that they have ways to take action.

• Heather Ann Thompson. 2016. Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy. New York City, NY: Pantheon.

The current uprising highlights not only unpaid labor but also issues of dismal healthcare and high rates of suicide in prisons, as well as the overuse of solitary confinement. Prison suicide rates are extremely high compared to the general population, and imprisonment may contribute to racial disparities in midlife physical health functioning.  Moreover, solitary confinement significantly damages the mental health of prisoners, especially if used for extended periods of time.

• Lindsay M. Hayes. 1995. “Prison Suicide: An Overview and a Guide to Prevention.“ The Prison Journal 75(4), 431-456.
• Alison Liebling. 1999. “Prison Suicide and Prisoner Coping.” Crime and Justice 26: 283–359.
• Michael Massoglia. 2008. “Incarceration, Health, and Racial Disparities in Health.” Law & Society Review 42(2): 275–306.

Not only are these protests in response to conditions within prisons, but also for related causes such as the school-to-prison pipeline. Recent evidence suggests a strong relationship between school sanctioning and future involvement with the criminal justice system.  Thus, many of the concerns of this prisoner movement are empirically supported but have yet to capture attention outside of the prison system.   

• David M. Ramey. 2016. “The Influence of Early School Punishment and Therapy/Medication on Social Control Experiences During Young Adulthood.“ Criminology 54(1): 113-141.
• Peter S. Smith. 2006. “The Effects of Solitary Confinement on Prison Inmates: A Brief History and Review of the Literature.“ Crime and Justice 34(1): 441-528.

Want to know more? See here for live updates on the national prison strike.  

More and more athletes are joining the San Francisco 49ers’ Colin Kaepernick in kneeling during the “Star Spangled Banner” at the beginning of sporting events. Though this phenomenon has spurred controversy and heated exchanges, sports stars using their celebrity for civic action is not entirely new. After the police shootings of Eric Gardner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and other unarmed black people, numerous members of the NBA and NFL wore hoodies that read “I Can’t Breathe,” (Eric Gardner’s last words); others entered the game while making the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!” gesture championed by #BlackLivesMatter. Indeed, today we are witnessing a resurgence of athlete advocacy.

A common criticism of these athletes is that “they should just stick to sports!” or that “they aren’t supposed to talk about politics!” In reality, however, athletes have been at the forefront of protests and civic action for some time now, particularly in the 1960s. TSP Editor Doug Hartmann’s popular book describes how the Civil Rights Movement provided the context for athletes to begin using their celebrity for greater causes. Similarly, Ben Carrington describes how racism has shaped the international black-athlete-experience. Colonialism and contemporary globalization have made sports a site where racism is enacted and solidified, meaning athletes have had to think about these concepts–and fight against them–for a long time.

• Douglas Hartmann. 2003. Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete: The 1968 Olympic Protests and their Aftermath. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
• Ben Carrington. 2010. Race, Sport and Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora. Sage Publications.

After the Civil Rights movement, athlete protests became less common, especially as athletes expanded into areas like merchandising and marketing, which meant that they were more likely to avoid “rocking the boat” and jeopardizing their business. But because of #BlackLivesMatter and a greater national focus on police killings of unarmed black people, athletes are once again getting into the fray. As Herbert Ruffin describes, politicizing college sports has led student athletes to protest for their own rights and demands — remember the events at Ole Miss last year? Similarly, Emmett Gill describes actions (and reactions) surrounding the “Ferguson Five” — the St. Louis Rams football players who showed solidarity with protesters in Ferguson, Missouri. 

• Herbert G. Ruffin II. 2014. “Doing the Right Thing for the Sake of Doing the Right Thing”: The Revolt of the Black Athlete and the Modern Student-Athletic Movement, 1956-2014. Western Journal of Black Studies, 38(4).
• Emmett E Gill Jr. 2016. “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” or Shut Up and Play Ball? Fan-generated Media Views of the Ferguson Five. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment 26(3-4): 400-412.

This research shows that while athlete activism is often met with criticism, it does not mean that their tactics will prove unsuccessful. If history or recent events have shown us anything, the opposite may be truer. One thing is for sure — athlete protest in the contemporary era is just warming up.

For even more readings on race, sports, and athlete activism, check out the  #ColinKaepernickSyllabus created by NewBlackMan (in Exile).

Thousands led by Native Americans from across the country have converged on rural North Dakota over the past month to stop construction of the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. Opponents say the pipeline is a threat to culturally and spiritually sacred sites as well as vital drinking water sources. Protesters have erected an encampment and are leading daily marches to the construction site demanding that the company and federal government halt construction in order to protect water and adhere to treaties with Native American tribes.

The protest over the Dakota Access pipeline reflects the social and political tensions that often emerge around resource extraction projects and potentially hazardous infrastructure, and sociologists have been at the forefront of research and analysis. Mining development led by large multinational companies often brings social dislocation, environmental problems, and a loss of livelihoods for native communities. Yet, indigenous communities have had some success in preventing development and maintaining control over land and natural resources partially through direct action, transnational coalitions, and public campaigns against corporations.

• Alex Golub. 2014. Leviathans at the Gold Mine: Creating Indigenous and Corporate Actors in Papua New Guinea. Raleigh, NC: Duke University Press.
• Gavin Hilson. 2014. Natural Resource Extraction and Indigenous Livelihoods: Development Challenges in an Era of Globalization. Farnham, GB: Routledge.
• Fabiana Li. 2015. Unearthing Conflict: Corporate Mining, Activism, and Expertise in Peru. Raleigh, NC: Duke University Press.

In the U.S., Native American reservations have often been used as sites for hazardous mining and disposal of toxic waste – what scholars call “national sacrifice zones” and environmental racism. Hooks and Smith find that Native Americans struggle with environmental injustices and are more likely to live near toxic waste sites, largely because the U.S. military has used reservations and nearby land for testing and disposing of weapons.

• Robert D. Bullard. 1994. Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
• Gregory Hooks and Chad L. Smith. 2004. “The Treadmill of Destruction: National Sacrifice Areas and Native Americans.” American Sociological Review 69(4):558–75.
• Traci Brynne Voyles. 2015. Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Protest is also driven by group identities and culture. Mobilization against industrial development is shaped by historical and social differences in how people relate to the land. Indigenous philosophy, spirituality, and land claims can provide legitimacy to environmental opposition and are a source of inspiration and motivation for movement participants. This highlights the role of culture, place-based identity, and values in motivating people to participate in protest.

• William Freudenburg and Robert Gramling. 1993. “Socioenvironmental Factors and Development Policy: Understanding Opposition and Support for Offshore Oil.” Sociological Forum 8(3):341–64.
• Francesca Polletta. 1998. “‘It Was like a Fever …’ Narrative and Identity in Social Protest.” Social Problems 45(2):137–59.
• Rachel A. Wright and Hilary Schaffer Boudet. 2012. “To Act or Not to Act: Context, Capability, and Community Response to Environmental Risk.” American Journal of Sociology 118(3):728–77.

Environmentalists have joined the effort to stop the pipeline as part of a wider movement against fossil fuel extraction and climate change mobilization. Coalitions of environmentalists and indigenous peoples often develop in response to environmentally harmful projects, such as dams or pipelines, which have been important for generating public attention to issues of Native American rights while also building environmental movements. Protests over particular local industrial development can be used strategically by social movements to attract new participants and link people’s immediate concerns about health and safety to broader environmental issues.

• Mik Moore. 1998. “Coalition Building between Native American and Environmental Organizations in Opposition to Development: The Case of the New Los Padres Dam Project.” Organization & Environment 11(3):287–313.
• Joanna L. Robinson. 2013. Contested Water: The Struggle Against Water Privatization in the United States and Canada. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Kate J. Neville and Erika Weinthal. 2016. “Scaling up Site Disputes: Strategies to Redefine ‘local’ in the Fight against Fracking.” Environmental Politics 25(4):569–92.

From Brooklyn to Brazil, Pokémon Go has taken the world by storm. And with its popularity has come a media frenzy — Thieves are luring defenseless children! Those troublesome millennials are playing while driving! The game is even banned in Iran.

Popular games have long sparked moral panics and public anxiety about the well-being of our youth and their distinctive cultural tastes and subcultural practices. But we shouldn’t be so quick to panic. In an overview of the game over at Cyborgology, Marley-Vincent Lindsey argues that casting the game as “good” or “bad” ignores important social context. He explains,

“Èmile Durkheim would have called it the collective effervescence of the 1990s: an activity as much about the affect and socialization produced as it was about the game. Nintendo may have designed it, but people made it real.”

And in fact, social science research gives us a more measured perspective on the good, the bad, and the Poké. Games create powerful social spaces where people can share a common emotional focus. This draws us in, and it is a foundation for all kinds of human social behavior. Rituals lived out through interactions create powerful shared social experiences that bring people together; we see this in everything from smoking to social media.

• Gary Alan Fine. 2002. Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social Worlds. University of Chicago Press.
• Randall Collins. 2005. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton University Press.

And if previous sociological research suggests concerns about games like Pokémon Go, they have more to do with inequality and social control than moral chaos. Too often, we assume everyone can approach public space in the same way, which can blind us to the ways in which patterns of play mirror and reproduce residential segregation. Research also shows how legal systems work to “banish” certain people from public spaces. On this front, it is useful to think critically about who the police allow at the Pokéstop next to that park fountain just after dusk.  

• Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert. 2009. Banished: The New Social Control in Urban America. Oxford University Press.

As a woman, summer means more than just bike rides and swimming at the lake. It also means deciding whether or not to shave my body hair. In 2014, some declared that “the bush was back,” and in 2015 armpit hair had its moment in the spotlight as women sported photos of their hair on Twitter and Instagram. While the stigma of being a hairy lady does not seem to be waxing, it is certainly far from over.

In the U.S., mass armpit hair removal began only after the introduction of the first women’s body razor in 1915, and shaving pubic hair took off after the bikini was popularized in the late 1940s. Since the 1960s, women’s body hair has come in and out of fashion. For many women in countries like the US and the UK, removal of leg, underarm, and pubic hair is an everyday practice. A recent US survey shows that 84% of women surveyed engaged in some form of pubic hair removal. Women who choose not to shave these areas often face policing from family and friends that reinforces heterosexuality and homophobia. For instance, family and friends promote heteronormativity when they voice concerns over whether potential male partners would find unshaved women attractive.

• Breanne Fahs. 2011. “Dreaded ‘Otherness’: Heteronormative Patrolling of Women’s Body Hair Rebellions,” Gender & Society 25(4):451-472.
• Merran Toerien, Sue Wilkinson, and Precilla Y.L. Choi. 2005. “Body Hair Removal: The “Mundane” Production of Normative Femininity,” Sex Roles 52(5-6): 399-406.

While people often view men’s body hair as more natural than body hair for women, they also express disgust for “gorilla like” male body hair. Many men–both gay and straight–report removing body hair, citing appearance and attractiveness as primary motivations. Media outlets like men’s lifestyle magazines promote body hair removal as a way to increase sexual appeal, appear healthy, and control nature by controlling the body. Thus, for both men and women, constructions of acceptable and unacceptable body hair are closely linked to cultural norms surrounding sexuality.

• Gareth Terry and Virginia Braun. 2016. “‘I Think Gorilla-Like Back Effusions of Hair are Rather a Turn-Off’: ‘Excessive Hair’ and Male Body Hair (Removal) Discourse,” Body Image 17:14-24.
• Elena Frank. 2014. “Groomers and Consumers: The Meaning of Male Body Depilation to a Modern Masculinity Body Project,” Men and Masculinities 17(3):278-298.
• Yolanda Martins, Marika Tiggemann, and Libby Churchett. 2008. “Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: A Comparison of Body Hair Removal Practices in Gay and Heterosexual Men,” Body Image 5(3):312-316.   

At this week’s Republican National Convention, Donald Trump will accept the party’s nomination for president. Social scientists explain Trump’s primary success by looking at his supporters, especially at their racial biases and class grievances. The nomination is still surprising, though, because Trump has managed to win reluctant support from party leaders, influence the GOP platform, and gain traction among Evangelical Christians (despite not seeming all that pious himself). Sociological research on political parties and organizing show how an unlikely leader can win institutional favor even when they seem to clash with the individuals who run the show.

How is Trump winning over party elites? We often think about political parties as groups of savvy leaders who design the system to keep themselves in office (and challengers out). A longstanding sociological take, however, shows how parties represent deep divisions in the public along race, class, and ideology. This means that emerging public interest groups can and do swing party politics, such as the Democrats’ shift toward a civil rights agenda or the rise of the Tea Party coalition among Republicans.

• Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan. 1967. Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives. New York/London: Free Press/Collier-MacMillan
• Jeff Manza and Clem Brooks. 1999. Social Cleavages and Political Change: Voter Alignments and US Party Coalitions. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Stephanie L. Mudge and Anthony S. Chen. 2014. “Political Parties and the Sociological Imagination: Past, Present, and Future Directions,” Annual Review of Sociology 40(1):305–30

And how did a man quoting “Two Corinthians” win over leaders in the Religious Right? This group’s political influence doesn’t just come from the pulpit. Instead, shared beliefs allow lay leaders to build networks among influential people in government, business, and entertainment. Much of their success comes from “unobtrusive organizing”—the way the networks, in turn, work within existing power structures to acquire political influence. Thus, the Religious Right can fall in line with a candidate who does not seem to fit their public agenda if it means even more power and access behind the scenes.

• Michael Lindsay. 2008. Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Jaime Kucinskas. 2014. “,The Unobtrusive Tactics of Religious Movements,” Sociology of Religion 75(4):537–50.
• Lydia Bean. 2014. The Politics of Evangelical Identity: Local Churches and Partisan Divides in the United States and Canada. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.