Will a Robot Take Your God?

by Evan Stewart
Societies grow and change all the time, but it can be tough to think about big-picture shifts when you’re living through the practical details of the day to day. Take the recent popularity of large language models (LLMs). In the short term, we face important sociological questions about how they fit into the norms of […]

The Border is a Budget

by Ghazah Abbasi
How are borders made? State borders are the product of political conflict, nationalist discourse, unequal economic systems, and, as this essay shows, significant public financial investment. Public policy and political narratives naturalize state borders, often hiding how their origins are arbitrary and violent. State borders often mark space following war and conflict, but they also […]

Grin and Wear It?

by Rachel Bickleman
A recent photo from Dina Litovsky showing a model’s inflamed feet in slingback heels went viral, with reposts from National Geographic and a whole host of Instagram influencers. The photo garnered just over 500k likes and comments criticizing the prioritization of beauty over pain. This is not the first time these images have gone viral. […]

Editor and Principal Writer

Evan Stewart is an assistant professor of sociology at University of Massachusetts Boston. His research on political culture and institutional distrust and disaffiliation has appeared in journals such as Social Forces, Sociological Theory, Social Currents, and The Sociological Quarterly. Evan holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Minnesota and a BA in political theory and social policy from Michigan State University.

Founder

Lisa Wade, PhD, is the founder of Sociological Images. Born and raised in California, she earned a BA in philosophy from UC Santa Barbara, an MA in human sexuality from NYU, and a PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is an Associate Professor at Tulane University in New Orleans, with appointments in Sociology, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the Newcomb Institute. Her recent book, American Hookup, is an open-minded, compassionate, and unflinching account of the new culture of sex on campus. She is also the author of the bestselling textbook Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions, with Myra Marx Ferree, and the co-editor of Assigned, a book about life with gender. Forthcoming is a rousing, tide-turning take on the introduction to sociology textbook: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can join Lisa on Twitter and Instagram. Or, you can visit her website for her curriculum vitae, syllabi, information on public speaking, and more.