Fall 2010
Volume: 9 | Number: 4
Not So Separate Spheres
Women’s attitudes and decisions about work-family balance belie the popular “separate spheres” notion. In reality, the majority of women work and parent simultaneously, even as workplaces continue to idealize workers who are fully (and solely) devoted to their jobs. Read More
There Goes The Gayborhood?
The cultural assimilation of American gays has many seeking residence outside of traditional gay neighborhoods. In a “post-gay” era, some feel gay enclaves have become indistinguishable or nonexistent. Read More
Cache Me If You Can
In the last decade, geocaching has come to provide a way that technology can enhance our interaction with the physical and social worlds. Participants are sharing knowledge and creating community in the digital age. Read More
Losing Las Vegas
Promises of exuberance and excess no longer appeal to a sobered American public. This has left Las Vegas struggling to reinvent its image. Read More
Empire of the Games
Two books offer balanced ideas of how video games deliver messages about empire and militarism, but also allow space for resistance. Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games, by Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter. Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games, edited by Nina B. Huntemann and Matthew Thomas Payne. Read More
Carceral Nation
The dramatic expansion of prisons in the United States receives serious sociological investigation in two books that reflect on the decivilizing force of mass incarceration: Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration, edited by Tara Herivel and Paul Wright, and The Prisoners’ World: Portraits of Convicts Caught in the Incarceration Binge, by William Tregea and Marjorie Larmour. Read More
Skull Face and the Self-Fulfilling Stereotype
The authors use the tale of a tattooed man to explore how self-fulfilling stereotypes shape individuals and societies in patterned ways. Read More
Compared to What?
Too often discussions lack historical context; Claude S. Fischer argues that honest debate depends on our ability to construct relative comparisons rooted in reality. Read More
The Dialectic of the Tuxedo and the Blue Jeans
A great friend of Contexts, Rubén Rumbaut, pointed out at our annual board meeting that our editorship is animated by “the dialectic of the tuxedo … Read More
