This season’s deluge of religious films—Noah, Son of God, and Heaven is Real—has us all on the lookout for the next Bible blockbuster and wondering if well-known productions like The Ten Commandments and The Passion of the Christ were just flashes in the pan. While the market doesn’t always sink religious films, they often face controversy while navigating complex social and religious identities.

Consumption of religious movies, television, and books isn’t just consumerism. It is a complex blend of religious identification and economic practice, which can both encourage and discourage consumption.

• Jerry Z. Park and Joseph Baker. 2007. “What Would Jesus Buy: American Consumption of Religious and Spiritual Material Goods.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 46(4): 501-517.

These films also have to nail down other identities to do well in the market. The portrayal of masculine figures like Jesus and Noah represents a key way society works through gender roles.

• Joey Eschrich. 2011. “Behold the Man!: Constructing the Masculinity of Jesus of Nazareth in Mainstream American Film, 1961-2004.” Men and Masculinities, 14(5): 520-541.

As e-cigarettes are fairly new to the market, there is little research on their long-term effects, but their recent popularity has sparked debates about their use and regulation—are they healthier than combustible tobacco, should they have the same restrictions in terms of age and public use, and are they a “gateway” to real tobacco for teen smokers? While a majority of the e-cigarette conversation focuses on whether they are better for you, the desire for healthy lungs is not the only factor contributing to these debates. The e-cigarette debates are the newest chapter in a long history of substance use regulation that is as much about social stigma as public health.

These debates are also influenced by social factors such as unemployment, youth populations, political battles for and against government regulation, and a much broader, but more subtle, process of stigmatization when cigarette smoking— which was once perfectly acceptable in society—slowly slides out of favor.

• Randall Collins. 2004. “Tobacco Ritual and Anti-Ritual” in Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton: Princeton University Press
• Mike Vuolo. 2012. “Placing Deviance in a Legal and Local Context: A Multilevel Analysis of Cigarette Use in the European Union.” Social Forces Vol.90(4), p.1377-1402

As smoking loses favor in public opinion, so do smokers. While these debates are about health on the surface, the underlying message to smokers is that they are deviant. Research has found that smoking, and substance use in general, occurs in higher numbers among lower income and minority groups, revealing much deeper power dynamics influencing smoking policy and the public image of smokers.

• Justin Tuggle and Malcolm Holmes. 1997. “Blowing Smoke: Status Politics and the Shasta County Smoking Ban.” Deviant Behavior Vol.18(1), p.77-93
• Kellie Barr et al. 1993. “Race, Class, and Gender Differences in Substance Abuse: Evidence of Middle-class/Underclass Polarization among Black Males.” Social Problems Vol.40(3), pp.314-327

The recent collapse of Mt. Gox—a prominent exchange site for the internet currency Bitcoin—has sparked wide discussion about the future of “virtual” money and the social groups that create it. Some remain cautiously optimistic (though pointing out that Bitcoin may take itself a little too seriously), while others have said the currency amounts to a “Ponzi scheme” with “no store of value.” As a post from our friends at Cyborgology noted last year,

Calling Bitcoins “virtual currency” is nonsensical because all currencies are virtual in that they are “collective hallucinations” about measurement of worth.

Classic sociological theory investigated how society creates value, and came to similar conclusions. Gold and paper money needed a lot of collective social support to become valuable.

• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. 1867. Capital. A Critique of Political Economy Volume One London: Penguin, 1990.
• Georg Simmel. 1900. The Philosophy of Money. New York: Routledge, 2011.

What makes one currency more “valuable” than another is institutional support, but this wasn’t always guaranteed for the U.S. dollar, either.

• Bruce G. Carruthers and Sarah Babb. 1996. “The Color of Money and the Nature of Value: Greenbacks and Gold in Postbellum America.” American Journal of Sociology 101(6): 1556–91.

Last month Comcast announced its plans to merge with Time Warner Cable, and internet subscribers may have to choose Comcast as their broadband provider even if they don’t want cable in the near future. With rising cable rates, the merger is stoking fears and outrage among the public, and politicians like Senator Al Franken. The deal has yet to be finalized and the FCC may instruct Comcast and Time-Warner to pump their brakes before merging.  If the deal succeeds, however, the nation’s two largest cable and broadband providers are sure to become a behemoth on the information superhighway.

While profit is a big motive for acquisitions and takeovers, companies also try to take over close members of their social networks to reduce competition. Monopolies and oligopolies are especially likely in industries with only a few major players and close ties.

• Donald Palmer, Xueguang Zhou, Brad M. Barber, and Yasemin Soysal. 1995. “The Friendly and Predatory Acquisition of Large U.S. Corporations in the 1960s: The Other Contested Terrain,” American Sociological Review 60(4): 469-499.
• Marshall Barron Clinard, Peter C. Yeager, and Ruth Blackburn Clinard. 1980. Corporate Crime. New York: Free Press

What does this mean for women, people of color, and low income communities? Rising prices for internet access would expand an already-large “digital divide” in who can use the web and who gets represented on it.

• Eszter Hargittai. 2004. “Internet Access and Use in Context.”  New Media Society 6(1): 137-143.

Also, check out Eszter Hargittai’s “Office Hours” interview where she discusses the expanding gaps and inequalities in the level of internet skills possessed by so-called “digital natives.”

Arthur Chu, an Asian American insurance analyst from Cleveland, recently became an overnight celebrity after amassing a small fortune with consecutive victories on the popular and long-running game show, Jeopardy! Unfortunately, the publicity Chu received was not all positive. Instead, Chu’s winning ways incited many angry Jeopardy! fans to tweet negatively about his unorthodox style of play, supposedly smug demeanor, and his penchant to interrupt the show’s longtime host, Alex Trebek.

Fan backlash toward Jeopardy! contestants is not completely unheard of. In an op-ed on Slate, 74 time-winner Ken Jennings, for example, noted that he was all too familiar with the public ire that Chu was receiving for his success on the show. More provocatively (and sociologically), Jennings went on to suggest a “racial angle” to the hostility leveled at Chu stemming from the fact he was a “bespectacled man with rumpled shirts and a bowl cut” who played into “every terrible Asian-nerd stereotype.” Is there truth to Jennings’ critique?

Asian American men have long been portrayed in the US media as sinister and conniving threats. This in turn has has affected the racialization of Asian American men in contemporary times:

• Robert G. Lee. 1999. Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Even successful Asian American men such as professional basketball star, Jeremy Lin, have had to deal with unflattering stereotypes and racist caricatures from the media and general public:

• Stephen Suh, Kyle Green, Ben Carrington, Rosalind S. Chou, and C.N. Le. 2012. “Linsanity and the Model Minority Myth”, The Society Pages

All this connects back to what sociologists claim is the tendency for Asian Americans to be perceived as both racially inferior and culturally unassimilable:

• Jennifer Lee. 2013. “From Unassimilable to Exceptional.” The Society Pages
• Claire J. Kim. 1999. “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans.” Politics & Society 27(1): 105-138

Ukraine has faced turbulent times over the past few weeks. The current crisis began in November when President Yanukovych rejected financial stabilization talks with the European Union and instead took a bailout from Moscow. Weeks of protests have culminated in the deaths of many protesters and parliament ousting President Viktor Yanukovych, who has fled the capital in Kiev. Elections will likely occur in May, and Yulia Tymoshenko, leader of the 2004 Orange Revolution which toppled Yanukovych a decade ago, is a strong candidate.

While the media spins the protests as a pro-democracy and pro-EU push against a corrupt government, only 43% of Ukranians actually wanted the EU deal, and Yanukovych was actually acting in the favor of the majority. Ukraine has been deeply divided since its independence in 1991. In the country’s east, the majority speak Russian as their first language, where they also have historical and cultural links to Russia. In the west, the Ukrainian-speaking majority would rather see their country identify with Europe and the EU than with Russia.

The conflict in Ukraine is not just an isolated protest against the president or his decision, it may signal a much larger divide in national identity.

• Ararat Osipian and Alexandr Osipian. 2012. “Regional Diversity and Divided Memories in Ukraine: Contested Past as Electoral Resource, 2004-2010.” East European Politics & Societies. 26(3): 616-642.
• Volodymyr Kulyk. 2011. “Language identity, linguistic diversity and political cleavages: evidence from Ukraine” Nations and Nationalism. 17(3): 627-648.
• Rogers Brubaker. 2011. “Nationalizing states revisited: projects and processes of nationalization in post-Soviet states.” Ethnic and Racial Studies. 34(11): 1785-1814.

Protest events don’t come out of nowhere. They serve as “switchmen” in the development of social movements, existing within a broader context shaped by culture and history.

• Doug McAdam and William Sewell, Jr. 2001. “It’s About Time: Temporality in the Study of Social Movements and Revolutions.” in Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics. Ronald Aminzade, Jack Goldstone, Doug McAdam, Elizabeth Perry, William Sewell, Jr., Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly (eds). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

For more on how sociologists study these kinds of social movements, check out this TSP roundtable.

After going years without an adequate form of gender recognition, Facebook users whose identities do not fit neatly into female-male binaries now have the option of selecting one of 50 options, including “androgynous,” “transgender,” “intersex” and “fluid.”  With an estimated 700,000 individuals in the US who identify as transgender, Facebook hopes that the expanded categories will help validate the gender identities of at least some of its users.

However, there is disagreement about the use of this kind of self-identification. Some seek broader public recognition while others view gender identification as futile.

• Katrina Roen. 2002. ““Either/Or” and “Both/Neither”: Discursive Tensions in Transgender Politics.” Signs 27(2):501-22.

Labeling categories of gender and sexual orientation may promote a “politics of containment” where society starts to decide who is and is not an “acceptable queer.”

• Ana Cristina Santos. 2013.  “Are we there yet? Queer sexual encounters, legal recognition and homonormativity.” Journal of Gender Studies. 22(1): 54-64.

On the other hand, by providing alternative options for gender identification state agencies and community-based service providers can expand access to services for people in poverty.

• Dean Spade. 2006. “Compliance Is Gendered: Struggling for Gender Self-Determination in a Hostile Economy” in Transgender Rights edited by Paisley Currah, Richard M. Juang, and Shannon Price Minter. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

For more on the recognition of gender categories on Facebook and beyond, check out these recent pieces from Cyborgology and Contexts.

Despite being struck down in Kansas and vetoed in Arizona, proposed legislation granting businesses the right to refuse service to customers on the basis of their sexual orientation has been spreading across a number of states this week. As victories for gay rights leave conservative citizens looking for novel ways to fight back, the meaning of religious freedom is called into question. While the line between religious freedom and civil rights often seems like a matter of public opinion, both the enforcement of these laws—if any pass—and the fight against them face a number of institutional hurdles.

Religious and political factors have historically influenced attitudes towards gay marriage. Here’s how:

• Darren E. Sherkat, Melissa Powell-Williams, Gregory Maddox, & Kylan Mattias de Vries. 2011. “Religion, politics, and support for same-sex marriage in the United States 1988–2008.” Social Science Research, 40(1):167-180.

Public opinion may not be enough to change this kind of legislation, but controversy helps. State governments rely more on public conflict and issue salience as motives to act, and may be bad at protecting the LGBT population from job and housing discrimination “even when the public supports the pro-minority position.”

• Jeffrey Lax and Justin H. Phillips. 2009. “Gay rights in the states: Public opinion and policy responsiveness.” American Political Science Review 103(3):367-386.

Moreover, how good is the “gaydar” at these religiously inclined businesses? Sexuality is learned and performed in a wide variety of social situations, and identifying patrons’ sexual orientation might pose more of a challenge than lawmakers think.

• John H. Gagnon and William Simon. 2005. Sexual conduct: The social sources of human sexuality. Transaction Publishers.

Controversy continues to rage over the alleged “job-killing” effects of the Affordable Care Act and potential increases in the federal minimum wage. Kathleen Sebelius recently weighed in on the Congressional Budget Office’s report about the ACA, reminding us that the CBO’s “2 million jobs lost by 2017” figure comes from Americans cutting their work hours, not employers cutting their jobs to cover healthcare costs. With a new poll showing Americans think the job market is the number-one problem today, however, why would we see these trends? The ACA and a higher minimum wage may not be a job-killers—instead they remind us that employees can demand better working conditions.

We shouldn’t necessarily think of coverage programs in terms of “jobs lost.” Instead, giving employees affordable health coverage may actually free them from “job lock.” Economic research shows that benefit programs can give low-income workers the security and potential mobility to seek out better jobs.

• Cynthia Bansak and Steven Raphael. 2008. “The state children’s health insurance program and job mobility: Identifying job lock among working parents in near-poor households.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 61(4): 564-579

While benefits can give employees the opportunity to quit, organizational characteristics like group job satisfaction and flexibility in the workplace also affect the likelihood that employees will want to quit.

• Phyllis Moen, Erin Kelly, and Rachelle Hill. 2011. “Does enhancing work-time control and flexibility reduce turnover? A naturally occurring experiment.” Social problems 58(1): 69-98.
• Kimberly Jinnett and Jeffrey Alan Alexander. 1999. “The influence of organizational context on quitting intention an examination of treatment staff in long-term mental health care settings.” Research on Aging 21(2): 176-204.

The recent death of Philip Seymour Hoffman has highlighted the resurgence of heroin use and overdoses in the US. Heroin use doubled between 2007 and 2012. Between 2006 and 2010, there was also a 45% increase in lethal overdoses, up to more than 3,000 deaths per year. The death toll continues to grow, and includes more than 80 deaths over the past few weeks as a result of heroin laced with fentanyl.

The rise in heroin use may be linked with the prevalent use of oxycontin and other opiate-based prescription drugs. The crackdown on illicit use of prescription opiates makes them more expensive, and more users have turned to heroin.

• Pradip K. Muhuri, Joseph C. Gfroerer, and M. Christine Davies. 2013. “Associations of Nonmedical Pain Reliever Use and Initiation of Heroin Use in the United States.” Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality. Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
• April Young and Jennifer Havens. 2012. “Transition from first illicit drug use to first injection drug use among rural Appalachian drug users: a cross-sectional comparison and retrospective survival analysis.” Addiction 107(3): 587-596.

Anti-drug campaigns and moral panics in the media may actually have the unintended effect of promoting, not reducing, substance abuse. In fact, a minority of interviewed users reported seeking out the stronger batches of heroin reported in the media.

• Craig Reinarman and Harry Levine. 1997. “The Crack Attack: Politics and Media in the Crack Scare.” In Crack in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
• Thomas Kerr, Will Small, Elaine Hyshka, Lisa Maher, and Kate Shannon. 2013. “’It’s more about the heroin’: injection drug users’ response to an overdose warning campaign in a Canadian setting.” Addiction 108(7): 1270-1276.
• Peter Miller. 2007. “Media reports of heroin overdose spates: Public health messages, moral panics or risk advertisements?” Critical Public Health 17(2): 113-121.

Solutions to these problems often focus more on treatment and harm-reduction than tough enforcement of drug laws.

• Teresa Gowan, Sarah Whetstone, and Tanja Andic. 2012. “Addiction, agency, and the politics of self-control: Doing harm reduction in a heroin users’ group.” Social Science & Medicine. 74(8): 1251-1260.

For more on harm-reduction approaches, see this recent Public Criminology post.

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