~the-society-pages | Bookmarks (112)

Dr. Christine Goding-Doty, Assistant Professor in Digital Media in the department of Culture and Media at the New School, introduces us to Aimé Césaire and reads from his foundational essay “Discourse on Colonialism” (1950). Follow along HERE. -Kyle-

Imagine waking up one day to another you. Instead of a physical clone, though, the new you is a digital doppelganger who has taken control of your credit card and locked you out of all of your accounts. While the experience of identity theft may feel stranger than fiction, for the millions of Americans who […]

In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Amanda McMillan Lequieu, Associate Professor of Sociology at Drexel University and author of Who We Are Is Where We Are: Making home in the American Rust Belt (2024). Amanda returns to the podcast to discuss foundational humanistic geographer  Yi-Fu Tuan and his influence on her own research and […]

In Matthew P. Fox and Steven E. Clayman’s summer 2024 Contexts feature, they explore the process of voir dire, or jury questioning, and efforts to identify potential jurors’ racial bias. The problem? Racial prejudice itself is taboo: jurors are reluctant to admit it, and judges and attorneys are reluctant to ask about it. Learn more […]

Let’s face it: sex work is a highly stigmatized occupation. Although we might expect the shared experience of stigmatization to foster solidarity among sex workers, a recent study by Madeline Toubiana and Trish Ruebottom reveals that the reality is more complex: in addition to experiencing stigma from those outside the occupation, sex workers stigmatize one […]

In this episode, Dr. Daniel Silver, Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto Scarborough and author of Scenescapes: how qualities of place shape social life (2020), joins us to discuss Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776).

Body-focused repetitive behaviors are DSM-classified as obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders, but sufferers are frequently treated as being to blame for making themselves “ugly.” The case of Trichotillomania reveals the stigma involved in “violating” beauty norms and the work people do to conceal both the effects and the cause of their deviance. Learn more in the interview […]

At annual, citywide festivals like Fiestas in the U.S. Southwest and Mardis Gras or Carnival in the South, LGBTQ events are often the hottest tickets in town. This recognition and celebration, in turn, is a key part of securing full citizenship—the sense of being an important, unattenuated member of society—for LGBTQ community members. Learn more […]

Intro textbooks typically devote little attention to environmental sociology. Check out this The Society Pages post from 2019 on helping students think sociologically about climate change. Link to a module you can use in your Intro class included!

In this episode, we are joined by Mary Peterson, PhD student in philosophy at the University of Hamburg.   Mary joins us for a guided reading of Iris Marion Young’s 1980 essay “Throwing like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality.” Mary helps us understand Young’s contribution to understanding the embodied experience […]

Elias Nader is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at Kent State University. He is a criminologist who studies the maturation of young adults and their desistance from crime, as well as evaluating justice system policy and practice. His most recent work has been published in Criminal Justice and Behavior and […]

Climate change and COVID-19 are two key problems that have highlighted humanity’s race against time. In each case, life-saving scientific breakthroughs have hinged on imagining new solutions to seemingly unsolvable social problems. Could AI be the key to speeding up the process? A new paper, published in Nature Human Behavior, investigates. Authors Jamshid Sourati and […]

Finalizing your syllabi and thinking about equitable assignments? See Estefan and colleagues’ (2023) Teaching Sociology piece, and further recommended text compiled by Becky Supiano (2023) on equitable classrooms.

Vincent M. Carter, “From chart-topper to gold record: The effects of Billboard chart popularity on RIAA gold or platinum certification of #1 R&B/Hip-Hop singles in the Pre-SoundScan and SoundScan eras, 1977–2008,” Poetics, 2024 A vinyl record store. Image by Darya Sannikova under Pexels license. How can you tell if a song is popular? Two important […]

In her forthcoming book, Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right, Arlie Russell Hochschild (Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley) interviews residents of Pikeville, KY, a small city located in the whitest and second-poorest U.S. congressional district where 80% of 201...

In the realm of global politics, immigration stands as a polarizing issue, often framed in terms of openness versus restriction. Traditional assumptions tie political parties to clear-cut stances, portraying liberals as proponents and conservatives as opponents of immigration. But how has this played out in Canada, a country that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has claimed […]