Contexts

sociology for the public

Archive: May 2010

Voting rights and naming the 00’s

Every issue we provide a roundup of sociologists, and sociology, in the news. This issue we look at sociologists helping to overturn felon voting ban in Washington, Kathleen Tierney on Katrina and Haiti, why Yahoo! how discovered Sociology!, and more! Read More

Literacy Through Photography

Artists, activists, and teachers around the world have put cameras into the hands of children, asking and allowing them to share their visions and stories. Read More

The Top Model Life

Top Model doesn't necessarily catapult its winners to modeling stardom, but it does advertise many of the realities of the modeling life: judgment, insecurity and product placement, to name a few. Read More

Public Opinion and Health Care

Health care debates preoccupied the American political scene during the first year of Obama's presidency. Data from November 2008 anticipates what proved to be many fault lines on the road to reform. Read More

Abortion Attitudes and Availability

Forty years after Roe v. Wade, abortion remains one of the most contentious issues in American life. This article uses the murder of Dr. George Tiller to reflect on attitudes about abortion and declining access to abortion services. Read More

Flesh-Toned

Sociological Images explores how whiteness defines how our sense of normal skin tone through images and language. Read More

Pills and the Pursuit of Normalcy

Whether happiness or height, what constitutes normal has been increasingly defined in medical terms. Two books, Happy Pills in America and Normal At Any Cost, trace how pills such as Prozac and human growth hormone have reshaped our health and cultural definitions of pathology. Read More