Contexts

sociology for the public

Guest posts

Are google searches different in states with more Trump supporters? A look at searches about gender, race, and sexuality

by Elizabeth Balzac, Paula England, and and Andrew Levine
Image by chayka1270 (Source: Pixabay) You can tell something about a person—or a state—by their Google searches. This is … Read More

Vaccines, Masks, and Routine Disruptions during COVID-19

by Rashawn Ray and Fabio Rojas
COVID-19 has forever changed the world and our lives. As of the beginning of July, the total COVID-19 cases around the world is approaching … Read More

Who gets to define what’s ‘racist?’

by Musa al-Gharbi
One key insight of the “discursive turn” in social research is how concepts are defined, and by whom, reveals a lot about power relations within … Read More

Will a NFL Player Take a Knee at the Super Bowl?

by Simón E. Weffer, Rodrigo Dominguez-Martinez, and Raymond Jenkins
Where is the “Take a Knee” movement today as the National Football League’s (NFL) 100th season comes to a close, four seasons after Colin Kaepernick first … Read More

Twenty Years in a Culture of Fear

by Daniel Harrison
    It has been 20 years since Barry Glassner first published The Culture of Fear: Why Americans … Read More

Does Masturbation Teach Women to Orgasm in Partnered Sex? (Maybe, but It’s Not Clear)

by Paula England, Sophie Saydah, and Andrew Levine
In 1994, while attending a United Nations conference on AIDS, U.S. Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders was asked her opinion on promoting masturbation to discourage youth … Read More

CALL FOR PAPERS: Ethnographies of the Global South

by Victoria Reyes and Marco Garrido
Contexts is a quarterly magazine that makes cutting-edge social research accessible to general readers. The magazine is issuing a call for papers for its Winter 2021 … Read More

Are Social Scientists Next to be Imprisoned and Tortured? A call to unite and oppose the criminalization of social science

by David Lempert
Over the past several weeks, there have been a number of troubling events striking fear among many of us in the social sciences who study … Read More

There is No Green Book for Walking

by Jennifer D. Roberts
Why do African-Americans still need to cautiously navigate as pedestrians? Late last year, the movie “Green Book,” starring Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen was released. Read More

Rwanda, Genocide, and Gender-based Violence

by Nicole Fox
This month marks 25 years since the 1994 genocide that unfolded before the international community’s watchful eyes in the small East African country of Rwanda. 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.