Contexts

sociology for the public

Guest posts

What is the Sexual Life Cycle of Those Who Ever Have a Same-Sex Partner?

by Emma Mishel and Paula England
A growing proportion of Americans have had a same-sex sex partner at some point during their life, especially among women (as we show here … Read More

Three Facts about Immigration Control from Social Science

by Genesis Torres and Kim Ebert
Spend a day in the South Texas Family Residential Center (STFRC), and you’ll realize the extent of the criminalization of immigration. Its name may conjure … Read More

Is Unauthorized Immigration an Economic Drain on American Communities? Research Says No.

by Helen B. Marrow, Will Tyson, Susan C. Pearce, Martha Crowley, and Kim Ebert
In October 2017, the Tar River Times, a newspaper with a small print circulation in Tarboro, North Carolina—the hometown of both immigration sociologist Helen … Read More

A New Black Holiday, or Why W.E.B. Du Bois’s 150th Birthday Matters

by Marcus Anthony Hunter
In the weeks and years following the conclusion of World War II, Du Bois had traveled the globe advocating for nuclear disarmament and sending peacegrams … Read More

Segregation in Social Networks on Facebook

by Bas Hofstra
On the morning of November 9th 2016, many democratic-oriented Americans updated their Facebook timelines, unhappy and frustrated about a rather unexpected outcome in the U.S. presidential election. People were … Read More

Staking Post-Racialism in Charlottesville

by Milton Vickerman
It must be said that Charlottesville is a self-consciously liberal bubble—a blue dot in a red state (barring Northern Virginia) in which students routinely volunteer … Read More

The importance of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy

by Hyein Lee and Margaret Chin
The Trump administration’s decision to (sort of) rescind DACA, despite formally announcing in June that the policy will temporarily remain intact epitomizes the contentious nature … Read More

“13 Reasons Why” and the Pressing Need for a Sociology of Suicide

by Seth Abrutyn and Anna S. Mueller
Note: this article contains spoilers and detailed discussions of suicide and sexual assault. Recently, Netflix released a series based on the young adult novel 13 … Read More

Fearless Girl: Seriously, The Guy Has a Point

by Greg Fallis
Reprinted with permission. I got metaphorically spanked a couple of days ago. Folks have been talking about the Fearless Girl statue ever since it … Read More

moonlight, trayvon, the oscars, and america’s fear of black boys

by Steven Thrasher
Two beautiful Black boys’ faces kept looking out at me from my social feeds last night: Trayvon Martin’s, whose vicious killing by George Zimmerman five … Read More

About Contexts

Contexts is a quarterly magazine that makes cutting-edge social research accessible to general readers. We're the public face of sociology.

It is a publication of the American Sociological Association, edited by Amin Ghaziani and Seth Abrutyn (University of British Columbia), with Letta Page.