Feature

Nature’s Looking Glass

How we see nature is to a large extent a reflection of ourselves. Sociologists Hillary Angelo and Colin Jerolmack use the example of New Yorkers’ fascination with two red-tailed hawks to reveal deep insights about how we represent and understand nature. Read More

Home Cooking: Marketing Meth

Making and selling methamphetamine is a business of personal ties. Henry H. Brownstein, Timothy M. Mulcahy, Bruce G. Taylor, Johannes Fernandes-Huessy, and Carol Hafford provide a nuanced understanding of meth markets, from mom-and-pop to import markets. Read More

Banking on the Poor

Sociologist Dwight Haase explores how one man’s efforts to help his village neighbors evolved into a global corporate market--with unintended consequences. Haase provides insight into how the microfinance movement turned into an industry. Read More

Playing but Losing: Women’s Sports After Title IX

Girls and women have more opportunities since Title IX, but the playing field is still far from level. Cheryl Cooky and Nicole M. Lavoi explore how major inequities remain, especially in terms of media attention, distribution of institutional resources and opportunities to coach and lead in the world of sport. Read More

Stealing a Bag of Potato Chips and Other Crimes of Resistance

Sociologist Victor M. Rios shows in his study how some young men make trouble as means of gaining respect. This is an adaptation from his book Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys. Read More

Learning from Las Vegas

The social analysts, Barbara G. Brents, Michael Ian Borer, Annelise Orleck, Sharon Zukin, and Matt Wray, offer contrasting views of the plastic fantastic city of Las Vegas. Read More

New Ways of Bowling Together

In his 2000 book Bowling Alone, sociologist Robert Putnam argued that American civic engagement was dying. Now, Peter Hart-Brinson uses research on the convergence of the fitness boom and the creative fundraising efforts of nonprofits to show how civic engagement is being revived as civic recreation. Its social roots are examined, along with its implications for community and democracy. Read More

Up Close and Communal

Photographer Wing Young Huie’s images of the everyday establish and emphasize the connections between the personal and the communal. This article uses a set of Huie’s landmark images to explore the photographer, subject, and viewer’s shared fascination with the reflected quotidian. Read More

Chasing “Closure”

“Closure” has become a buzzword for a commodity to be bought and sold. Sociologist Nancy Berns explores the creation and sale of the “feeling rules” of closure: what it is, why it is both important and problematic. Read More

There’s No “I” in Innovation

While most think of innovation’s insights coming in a flash of inspiration, Eric Dahlin uses multidisciplinary research to show that advances, big and small, more often result from collaborative, incremental efforts. To understand and spur innovation, then, scholars and practitioners must abandon the romantic notion of the lonely genius in favor of the wisdom of the collective. Read More