Feature

The BP Disaster as an Exxon Valdez Rerun

Whiles scenes from the 2010 BP oil spill may no longer linger on TV, past experience teaches that its environmental and human traumas have only just begun. This article explores the social dimensions of disaster and recovery. Read More

Uncertain Knowledge

Rumors are shaped and spread within communities, affected by who we find credible and what we find plausible. This article explores the power and value of shared knowledge. Read More

Voices of the Darfur Genocide

Social scientific research is uniquely poised to document the patterned and probabilistic evidence helpful in achieving legal accountability for mass atrocities—and offers a voice to those who would not otherwise be heard. Read More

The Waning of American Apartheid?

Racial residential segregation has a long and persistent history in the United States. Data from the most recent decade give hope that housing patterns and racial attitudes are moving—albeit slowly—toward integration. Read More

Enduring Dilemmas of Female Celebrity

Today’s tabloids, and their messages, are remarkably similar to the first glossies that appeared in Hollywood’s “Golden Age.” Even the first female film stars were caught between celebration and condemnation as they navigated traditional notions of femininity. Read More

Inside the Wisconsin Occupation

Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker’s “Budget Repair Bill” prompted shock—and a large, coordinated response. The authors offer an insider’s perspective of a social movement for democratic rights, “Wisconsin-style.” Read More

What Gender Is Science?

Looking at science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields across countries challenges the assumption that women in more economically and culturally modern societies enjoy greater equality. Rather, freedom to choose a career may paradoxically cause women in affluent Western democracies to construct and replicate stereotypically gendered self-identities. Read More

Embedded Sociologists

Armed with methodological skills and a healthy sociological imagination, a quarter of advanced-degree holding sociologists find work outside of the ivory tower. Sociology, as a whole, can benefit from increasing support and dialog across the academic/applied divide. Read More

Rethinking American Poverty

Attributing poverty to individual failures cannot explain the mountainous gap between the rich and poor in this country. Instead, the author argues, Americans must realize that structural constraints cause there to be “winners” and “losers.” In the end, we all pay the price for poverty in the U.S. Read More

Sacco and Vanzetti and The Immigrant Threat

The anti-immigrant sentiment in America in the 1920s, exemplified by the case against Sacco and Vanzetti, provides a pertinent reminder of the power of nativism as an establishment faces threatening social changes. Read More