Culture Reviews
Smoking Clean
Since the 1960s, federal, state, and local government agencies have restricted where Americans can smoke. These rules emphasize the health hazards of smoking. In contrast, campaigns to restrict public smoking in Japan, where the government has a direct financial interest in the tobacco industry, have nothing to do with health—rather they are justified by the risks that people, especially children, might be burned by cigarettes or embers.
Purchase this article from UC Press
Investigating the Aspen Elite
The author spent a year in a mountain hideaway in the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado observing and interviewing the locals. He found Aspen to be a microcosm of the elite’s social world—a telling, compact social environment where society’s powerbrokers wear their lifestyles, customs, habits, behaviors, and attitudes on their sleeves.
Purchase this article from UC Press
A (Sheltered) Island of Acceptance
Shelter Island is a resort town on the east end of Long Island, New York, adjacent to The Hamptons and part of a county (Suffolk) known for antagonism toward recent Latino arrivals. However, the mostly white seasonal vacation spot proves to be a unique oasis from anti-immigrant sentiment because Latino workers commute and this don’t live on the island, there’s no day-labor site, and Latinos do the jobs the locals won’t.
Purchase this article from UC Press
Bring Out Your Dead
George Carlin should be the perfect comedian for sociologists. He was left- leaning, political, and not especially funny. In fact, his earnest concern for social justice and animus against hypocrisy are probably what kept him from being funny.
