In The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration” details the historical development of the carceral state, its consequences on current and formerly imprisoned black Americans, and the unique challenges families face during their absences and returns. Coates cites and interviews several prominent sociologists for their insight into the carceral state’s repercussions for black Americans specifically. We rounded up some of their best work on the topic.

The 1970s saw increasing unemployment and concentrated poverty. Legislators developed “tough on crime” policies that resulted in the start of a massive increase in the number of incarcerated individuals in jails and prisons. Increases in incarceration, however, do not appear to have had a significant effect on decreasing crime rates.

• Robert J. Sampson and William Julius Wilson. 1995. “Toward a Theory of Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality.” In Shaun L. Gabbidon and Helen Taylor Greene (eds.), Race, Crime, and Justice: A Reader. London: Routledge. pp. 177-190.
• Bruce Western and Christopher Muller. 2013. “Mass Incarceration, Macrosociology, and the Poor,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 647(1):166-189.
• Bruce Western. 2006. Punishment and Inequality in America. New York: Russell Sage.

Mass imprisonment has a wide range of collateral consequences. Those who serve time face health risks, familial struggles, and barriers to employment before and after they are released.

• Christopher Wildeman and Christopher Muller. 2012. “Mass Imprisonment and Inequality in Health and Family Life,” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 8:11-30.
• Sara Wakefield and Christopher Wildeman. 2013. Children of the Prison Boom: Mass Incarceration and the Future of American Inequality. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Devah Pager. 2003. “The Mark of a Criminal Record,” American Journal of Sociology 108(5):937-975.
• Devah Pager. 2007. Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Volkswagen’s CEO, Martin Winterkorn, recently stepped down amid a scandal over manipulated emissions tests. Researchers at West Virginia University found that VW diesel models used “defeat devices” that activated emission control systems only when being tested—that’s how they dodged emissions standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. To what extent is Winterkorn responsible for this corporate skullduggery? And does the use of these devices constitute a “crime”?

Classic theories about corporate scandal stress “amoral calculus,” where individual decision makers of an organization weigh the costs and benefits of their actions. One example is the Ford Pinto debacle, when the company failed to recall Pintos with defective gas tanks because its “internal ‘cost-benefit analysis’” indicated the financial costs of a recall outweighed the potential cost of human lives (Dowie 1977). The media often responds to these corporate scandals by labeling white-collar criminals “bad apples,” shifting the public’s attention to the guilt of individual decision makers while hiding the social context that shapes norms within organizations

• Robert A. Kagan, and John T. Scholz. 1984. “The ‘criminology of the corporation’ and regulatory enforcement strategies,” In Enforcing Regulation, eds. Keith Hawkins and John M. Thomas, 67-95. Boston, MA: Kluwer-Nijhoff.
• Francis T. Cullen, Jennifer L. Hartman, and Cheryl Lero Jonson. 2009. “Bad guys: why the public supports punishing white-collar offenders,” Crime, Law and Social Change 51: 31–44.

Sociologists show risky decision making stems from the “normalization of deviance” within an organization. Conforming to the culture, work group members can redefine deviant actions as normal or commonplace. In the Ford Pinto case, fuel tank ruptures were categorized as acceptable risk due to prevailing safety priorities and long-standing industry norms. In the Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster, escalating levels of technical failure were redefined as normal and acceptable due to increased bureaucratic pressures, NASA’s cultural understandings of risk acceptance, and high levels of organizational secrecy.

• Diane Vaughan. 1998. “Rational choice, situated action, and the social control of organizations,” Law and Society Review 32(1): 23-61.
• Matthew T. Lee and M. David Ermann. 1999. “Pinto “madness” as a flawed landmark narrative: An organizational and network analysis,” Social Problems 46: 30-47.
• Diane Vaughan. 1997. The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Other scholarship suggests that the Volkswagen emission fraud will not be labeled as criminal. Our definitions of what is criminal reflect societal beliefs rather than the “objective” dangers and risks posed to us. As such, we tend to emphasize poor or petty “street crime” while downplaying the acts of elites and corporations, or “white collar crime.” These corporate acts, however, result in serious harm and often parallel (or exceed) the harm caused by “street crime”. Fudging emission performance, however, might be defined as “corporate non-compliance,” rather than a criminal act. Subsequently, some of the costs, both physical and social, of corporate crime can go unnoticed.

• Jeffery Reiman. 2008. The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, 6^th Edition. New York: Allyn & Bacon.
• Elizabeth Moore and Michael Mills. “The neglected victims and unexamined costs of white-collar crime,” Crime & Delinquency 36(3): 408-418.

Since his election in March 2013, Pope Francis has gained attention for his efforts to refocus the Catholic Church on issues of social justice. His recent visit to the U.S. was met with acclaim from religious leaders and political liberals, but also sparked consternation among cultural and political conservatives. U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), a Catholic himself, boycotted Francis’s address to Congress and accused him of adopting “socialist talking points presented to guilt people into leftist politics.”

The cultural divisions within American Catholicism exposed by Pope Francis’s visit are not new. While Gosar may be more vocal than most conservative Catholics, his protest reveals a split between interpretations of the Catholic faith that have been simmering for generations.

• Andrew Greeley. 1979. “The Sociology of American Catholics.” Annual Review of Sociology 5:91–111.

Mary Ellen Konieczny shows that the narratives American Catholics use to construct their religious identities have profound political consequences. Some congregations use the language of community to structure their worship, while others structure their activities around the concept of family. In parishes where community talk is dominant, social justice is usually the focus of ministry, but in congregations where family is the main narrative, concerns about personal and sexual morality get more attention. Neither model is more Catholic than the other: both types of congregations draw upon doctrines and use ritual practices central to the Catholic tradition. Hence, the variation Konieczny observes has less to do with texts or doctrines than with the ways people interact in group settings.

• Mary Ellen Konieczny. 2013. The Spirit’s Tether: Family, Work, and Religion among American Catholics. Oxford University Press.

The ideological divide in Catholicism also has historical roots in the relationships between the papacy and states. Gene Burns argues that as European states liberalized in the 19^th century, Popes struggled to retain political influence for the church. Attempts to engage questions of poverty were seen as intrusions into government affairs, but through discussions of personal morality, the Church could carve out a space where its authority still dominated. As a result, the Church’s ideological emphases turned toward sexual morality and family issues, while sociopolitical concerns grew peripheral.

• Gene Burns. 1990. “The Politics of Ideology: The Papal Struggle with Liberalism.” American Journal of Sociology 95(5):1123–52.

The postwar period saw a revitalization of Catholic religious activity in the politics of economic justice. Jose Casanova shows how the Solidarity movement in Poland and letter-writing campaigns among American nuns after Vatican II helped to steer church activity back toward social justice work, and John O’Brien charts the influence of labor activist-priest George G. Higgins on Catholic social thought in the 20^th century.

• Jose Casanova. 1994. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago, IL: University Of Chicago Press.
• John O’Brien. 2004. George G. Higgins and the Quest for Worker Justice: The Evolution of Catholic Social Thought in America. Lanham, MD: Sheed & Ward.

Pope Francis’s return to social justice issues does not necessarily make him a “liberal” pope. We might better view him as interested in returning the Catholic church to a language of social justice, firmly rooted in Church history, despite being obscured by previous Popes’ focus on other issues.

In 2019, after this post was published, Ryan Adams was accused of engaging in a pattern of manipulative behavior including verbal, emotional, and sexual harassment. You can read more of this coverage here.  (Updated, October 26, 2022)

The release of Ryan Adams’ cover of Taylor Swift’s 1989 resulted in a media frenzy about which album is “better” and who deserves credit for the “depth and complexity” that many say Adams brought to Swift’s poppier original. Some reviews argue Adams “vindicated” Taylor Swift as an artist; others argue that emotional depth was already present in Swift’s songwriting and reviews of Adams’ cover operate under gendered understandings of emotions and legitimacy in pop music. Many publications that reviewed Adams’ version did not review Swift’s original. Ironically, the albums will be competing for a Grammy this year, and many think Adams will take it over Swift. Sociological studies of popular music show how gender affects who gets credit for creativity in the industry.

Research finds that male musicians, regardless of genre, are more likely to receive critical recognition and be “consecrated” into the popular music canon. Women are less likely to be seen as “legitimate” artists and are more often judged on their emotional authenticity and connections with “more” legitimate, male artists. Further, newspapers and music critics are more likely to cover music written and produced by male artists.

• Vaughn Schmutz and Alison Faupel. 2010. “Gender and Cultural Consecration in Popular Music.” Social Forces 89(2): 685-707
• Vaughn Schmutz. 2009. “Social and Symbolic Boundaries in Newspaper Coverage of Music, 1955–2005: Gender and Genre in the US, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.” Poetics 37(4): 298-314

Style doesn’t stem from the artist’s creative mind alone. Musical genres are gendered, as well as raced and classed. Industry norms require women and men to adopt different styles depending on the music genre in which they work. For example, women are more often expected to be sexual and/or emotional in their presentation of self and their music.

• Patti Lynne Donze. 2011. “Popular Music, Identity, and Sexualization: A Latent Class Analysis of Artist Types.” Poetics 39: 44-63.
• Diana Miller. 2014. “Symbolic Capital and Gender: Evidence from Two Cultural Fields.” Cultural Sociology 8(4): 462–482.

For more on gender in culture industries, check out this Discovery on fashion design.

Europe is facing a major refugee crisis. Some nations welcome refugees, some do not. Much of the media attention is focused on how these countries are dealing with large populations fleeing from Syria. There is ongoing debate as to whether the Syrians fleeing war are “migrants” or “refugees”. We usually think “migrants” move for economic reasons, while “refugees” move during temporary political crises. Social science on the motives and meaning of migration shows a clear difference in why these two groups travel, but also how the places where they move can blur the lines between them.

Syria has faced civil unrest since 2011, when civilians took to the streets to protest against Bashar Al Assad’s regime. The unrest escalated quickly to a civil war with a total of 220,000 deaths as of January 2015. Approximately 4,000,000 Syrians have been displaced. This has ignited international conversation on the future of Syria and its refugees.Four million Syrians have been displaced.

• Philippe Droz-Vincent. 2014. “‘State of Barbary’ (Take Two): From the Arab Spring to the Return of Violence in Syria.” The Middle East Journal. 68(1): 33-58

Refugees have a distinct set of reasons for leaving their home countries. In many cases, they are highly skilled workers forced out by extreme violence and social instability. They are more likely to request asylum from countries that have passed domestic refugee laws or ratified more human rights treaties than countries that are economically affluent.

• Susanne Schmeidl. 1997. “Exploring the causes of forced migration: A pooled time-series analysis, 1971-1990” Social Science Quarterly. 78(2): 284-308
• Hans Lucht. 2011. Darkness before Daybreak: African Migrants Living on the Margins in Southern Italy Today. Oakland, CA: University of California Press
• Eunhye Yoo and Jeong-Woo Koo. 2014. “Love thy neighbor: Explaining asylum seeking and hosting, 1982-2008” International Journal of Comparative Sociology. 55(1): 45-72

Refugees are looking for a society in which to build a new life, but public policy in destination nations shapes those cultural opportunities. Receiving countries often have their own foreign policy interests at heart when they decide to accept some people as refugees and deny others as migrants. These labels affect future outcomes. Studies of second-generation migrants show that they do better in countries that have many different ways to integrate new-comers, including cultural, economic, and social supports.Receiving countries accept some people as refugees and deny others as migrants. These labels affect outcomes.

• Jeremy Hein. 1993. “Refugees, Immigrants, and the State.” Annual Review of Sociology 19:43-59
• Stephanie J. Nawyn. 2006. “Faith, ethnicity, and culture in refugee resettlement” American Behavioral Scientist 49(11):1509-1527
• Frank D. Bean, Susan K. Brown, James D. Bachmeier, Tineke Fokkema, and Laurence Lessard-Philips. 2012. “The dimensions and degree of second-generation incorporation in US and European cities: A comparative study of inclusion and exclusion.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology. 53(3):181-209
• Cawo M. Abdi. 2015. Elusive Jannah: The Somali Diaspora and a Borderless Muslim Identity. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press

Autism and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are the umbrella terms for a broad range of complex disorders of brain development. They have been the center of national concern and even political debate as diagnoses become more frequent. Since the symptoms of autism and ASD are based on a range of behavioral indicators, diagnosis is not straightforward. Instead, ASD is a clear example of how social factors shape the way we understand disease and medicine. The cause of autism remains unknown, but diagnosis has risen with changes in diagnostic criteria, increased awareness, and more reliance on families for treatment.

Gil Eyal argues that autism was a rare disorder in the era of mental institutions, where children were simply deemed “mentally retarded” and separated from families. Changes since the ‘70s have meant mental healthcare is no longer mostly addressed in large, hospital-like institutions, but through a network of local therapeutic services that have created new opportunities for parents to interact with therapists and take part in diagnosis and treatment. This new social arrangement has increased practitioners’ trust in parents’ experiences and helped create a new category of mental illness.

• Gil Eyal. 2014. “For a Sociology of Expertise: The Social Origins of the Autism Epidemic.” American Journal of Sociology. 118(4): 863-907.

Increased visibility and information about autism comes with more and more diagnosed cases. Parents have become “experts” at identifying symptoms of autism in their own children when they see other kids with a diagnosis. Thus children living in wealthy communities or very close to a child diagnosed with autism are more likely to be diagnosed with autism or ASD. Children can’t “catch” autism, but the diffusion of information about symptoms through social networks increases the chances of diagnosis.

• Marissa King and Peter S. Bearman. 2011. “Socioeconomic Status and the Increased Prevalence of Autism in California.” American Sociological Review. 76(2): 320-346.
• Ka-Yuet Liu, Marissa King, Peter S. Bearman. 2010. “Social Influence and the Autism Epidemic.” American Journal of Sociology. 115(5): 1387-1434.

The ambiguity of identifying, diagnosing, and treating autism often takes a toll on parents. As if on a perpetual rollercoaster, they feel stressed not knowing what to expect from a child’s day-to-day behavior. Mothers sometimes blame themselves for their child’s disorder.

…mothers were experiencing feelings associated with ambiguous loss [which] revealed frequent expressions of conflicting or contradictory emotions and ideas about the child and about ASDs, confusion about the child’s and their own future, and alterations between hope and hopelessness, feeling in control and feeling helpless. (O’Brien 140)

• Marion O’Brien. 2007. “Loss in Families of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.” Family Relations. 56(2): 135-146.

Although genetic studies of autism are inconclusive, genetic testing for autism in embryos is often framed as essential for responsible parenting. As a result, mothers carry great responsibility for birthing children with autism and risk considering their children “disabled” before they even enter the world. Much of the autism and ASD advocacy revolves around curing autism, rather than promoting the well-being of affected families and children, and this marginalizes autistic individuals by presuming that genetic material measures a person’s potential value to society by indicating whether they are “normal” or “disabled.” Not all people with autism appreciate the framing of autism as a disease that needs a cure, and instead these people advocate for respect of neurodiversity.

• Kristin Bumiller. 2009. “Geneticization of Autism: From New Reproductive Technologies to the Conception of Genetic Normalcy.” Signs. 34(4): 875-899.

For more, see “Learning to See the Spectrum,” about Eyal’s AJS article and Girl w/ Pen’s “Autism and Neurodiversity.”

Chicago Public Media’s This American Life recently aired “The Problem We All Live With”—an extended episode with New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones on how racial segregation lives on into 21st century classrooms.

School segregation has been on the rise since the 1980s, leading, in part, to a wide achievement gap between Black and White students. Policymakers often focus on the moral achievement of Brown v. Board of Education, but racial separation persists.

• Gary Orfield, Susan E. Eaton, and The Harvard Project on School Desegregation. 1996. Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education. New York: New Press.

Minority students are much more likely to drop out of school, to be tracked into “low-ability” groups or vocational programs, and to face other barriers to achieving higher education. Ability matters for achievement, but so does the social structure of schools.

• Grace Kao and Jennifer S. Thompson. 2003. “Racial and Ethnic Stratification in Education Achievement and Attainment.” Annual Review of Sociology. 29:417-442

We usually think school segregation really happens at the neighborhood level, but neighborhood segregation has declined since 1990. Instead, we see increasing macro-segregation—patterns where minority groups are concentrated in certain urban and suburban areas. Therefore, entire schools or districts are more likely to see homogenous groups of students.

• Daniel T. Lichter, Domenico Parisi, and Michael C. Taquino. 2015. “Toward a New Macro-Segregation? Decomposing Segregation within and between Metropolitan Cities and Suburbs.” American Sociological Review 80(4):843–73.

For more on inequality in schools, check out the TSP White Paper “Students Squeezed by an Hourglass Economy” by Robert Crosnoe.

The Emmanuel AME shootings in Charleston, South Carolina have reignited public discussion of both terrorism and hate crimes. While the media often focuses on foreign religious extremism as a motivation for domestic attacks, data show more radicalization has taken place on the political far-right (independent of religion or race) than among Muslims in the United States. Since 9/11, only 25 recorded attacks have been committed by Muslim extremists, while 65 attacks were driven by right-wing extremists at home. So what’s the difference between terror and a hate crime? Is there a difference? Sociological research shows how public discourse and community differences can change the story.

Words like “terrorism” and “hate crime” change across social contexts. In the U.S., acts of violence perpetrated by minority populations are more likely to be defined as acts of terrorism, whereas “home-grown” offenders are likely to be dismissed as crazy, deranged, or evil—“bad apples” rather than people motivated by hate or politics. For hate-crimes, the pattern is reversed. Hate crimes that involve majority perpetrators, particularly in interracial incidents, are linked to higher seriousness ratings. In both cases, the social position of both perpetrator and victim changes how we interpret the violence.

• Austin T. Turk. 2004. “The Sociology of Terrorism.” Annual Review of Sociology 30:271-286.
• Phillip Jenkins. 2003. “Images of Terror: What We Can and Can’t Know about Terrorism.” Transaction Publishers.
• Christopher J. Lyons. 2008. “Individual Perceptions and the Social Construction of Hate Crimes: A Factorial Survey.” The Social Science Journal 45(1):107-131

American anti-black hate crimes are most prevalent in communities with a high concentration of white residents that are undergoing black in-migration. This suggests that majority members may try to “defend turf” from the perceived threat of “outsiders”. Compliance with hate crime law is less likely in high-percentage black communities, particularly in the southern U.S. Within these black communities, past lynchings (between 1882-1930) are associated with lower compliance with hate crime law in the present and a lower likelihood of prosecution of hate crime cases.

• Christopher J. Lyons. 2008. “Defending Turf: Racial Demographics and Hate Crime against Blacks and Whites.” Social Forces 87(1):357-385.
• Ryan D. King. 2007. “The Context of Minority Group Threat: Race, Institutions, and Complying with Hate Crime Law.” Law and Society Review 41(1): 189-224.
• Ryan D. King, Steven F. Messner, and Robert D. Baller. 2009. Contemporary Hate Crimes, Law Enforcement, and the Legacy of Racial Violence. American Sociological Review 74: 291-315.

For more on this issue, check out our other TROT! post, “How Hate Crimes Count.”

With Apple Music’s launch and services like Spotify and Pandora going strong, music streaming is here to stay. Spotify recently released data on music preferences, giving us a new look into listeners’ lives. Metal rules over pop worldwide with the highest listener loyalty, especially with a tight-knit fan community. On the other hand, rigid genre boundaries may fade away as streaming listeners feel more comfortable trying just about anything. Demographics also matter; listeners “age out” of following popular music, and they do so much faster if they have children. Genres are more than labels on the shelf, though, and have more staying power when they represent social groups. Research shows these changes aren’t just about personal taste—social structure as a stronger effect.

We still use genre preferences to mark out a range of social boundaries. Education and political tolerance relate to “musical tolerance,” but people with these broad tastes are also more likely to say they don’t like music associated with uneducated fans (gospel, country, rap and metal).

• Bethany Bryson. 1996. “‘Anything But Heavy Metal’: Symbolic Exclusion and Musical Dislikes.” American Sociological Review. 61(5): 884-899

Streaming allows more listeners to quietly cross these boundaries, but fan subcultures remain powerful social groups that encourage devotion—and sometimes deviance. Genre preferences associate with different kinds of substance use, and loyalty to a community of fans can create a strong culture of sharing and collection that sustains music file-sharing.

• Mike Vuolo, Christopher Uggen, and Sarah Lageson. 2014. “Taste clusters of music and drugs: evidence from three analytic levels.” The British Journal of Sociology 65(3): 529-554.
• Kevin F. Steinmetz and Kenneth D. Tunnell. 2013. “Under the Pixelated Jolly Roger: A Study of On-Line Pirates.” Deviant Behavior 34(1):53–67.

Most importantly, genre hopping is not new. The way music marks class and status has changed since the 1980s. While high status listeners used to prefer particular genres, younger generations mark status by “omnivorous” music habits—consuming a wide range of popular and obscure tunes.

• Richard A. Peterson and Roger M. Kern. 1996. “Changing Highbrow Taste: From Snob to Omnivore.” American Sociological Review 61: 900-907.

You may have heard that Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover broke the Internet. The feature publicly introduced Caitlyn’s name and correct gender pronouns, as well as gender presentation. Within hours of the cover photo’s debut, Jenner’s new Twitter account amassed over one million followers, setting the record for the fastest growing Twitter account (knocking previous record-holder President Obama down to second).

The general public has varying attitudes about trans*, lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, both as the LGBT group and as distinct identities. Sexual orientation, beliefs about sexuality, adherence to a binary conception of gender, religiosity, and personal contact with sexual and gender minorities best predict attitudes towards lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and trans* individuals, but also vary based on the distinct group(s) being considered. For example, heterosexual females are more likely to hold positive opinions about gay men and trans* individuals, but are also more likely to hold negative opinions about lesbians.

• Meredith G.F. Worthen. 2012. “Understanding College Student Attitudes Toward LGBT Individuals.” Sociological Focus 45(4):285-305.
• Aaron T. Norton and Gregory M. Herek. 2013. “Heterosexuals’ Attitudes Toward Transgender People: Findings from a National Probability Sample of U.S. Adults.” Sex Roles 68(11-12):738-753.

Though increasing visibility is promising, researchers argue that media representations and discourses of trans* people often still conform to a rigid gender binary that reinforces cultural norms of masculinity and femininity. Jenner’s style choices are already under the microscope, and media outlets are labeling her a “diva” for her Diane von Furstenburg-clad appearances in New York City.

• Kay Siebler. 2012. “Transgender Transitions: Sex/Gender Binaries in the Digital Age.” Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health 16(1): 74-99.
• Linda Kalof. 1993. “Dilemmas of Femininity: Gender and the Social Construction of Sexual Imagery.” The Sociological Quarterly 34(4):639-651.
• Catherine Connell. 2010. “Doing, Undoing, or Redoing Gender? Learning from the Workplace Experiences of Trans People.” Gender and Society 24(1):31-55.

Limiting the hype about Caitlyn’s cover to her newly revealed gender identity overlooks other reasons why her photo shows up on so many Facebook and Twitter feeds. People already know Jenner as a celebrity, and celebrities arguably fall into a special category when it comes to class, status, and power. Fame can heavily influence individual opinions, but those effects depend on the celebrity in question and a person’s context within the larger population.

• Arnout Van de Rijt, Eran Shor, Charles Ward, and Steven Skiena. 2013. ”Only 15 minutes? The social stratification of fame in printed media,” American Sociological Review78(2):266-289.
• Charles Kurzman, Chelise Anderson, Clinton Key, Yuon Ok Lee, Mairead Moloney, Alexis Silver, and Maria W. Van Ryn. 2007. “Celebrity Status,” Sociological Theory 25(4):347-367.