Contexts

sociology for the public

Summer 2012

Volume: 11 | Number: 3

Michael Schudson on what we know about Rosa Parks, Michael Kimmel on the role of chance, accident, and luck in research, and Jean Beaman on the North African middle class in France. This issue also features Viewpoints on Obama’s first term and features on sex entrepreneurs in China, marriage promotion advocates, and opera fanatics.

Rosa Parks, Strategic Activist

Accompanying Michael Schudson's feature on Rosa Parks, Aldon Morris provides commentary to enhance our understanding of Rosa Parks and her activism. Read More

Opera Thugs and Passionate Fandom

Using life stories and observing opera fans in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Claudio E. Benzecry shows how passion for a cultural object develops, gets refined and sustained over time and the consequences this has for personal identity. In addition, Benzecry argues that his observations at the opera house serves as a template to understand other forms of fandom, cultural consumption and passionate behavior more generally. Read More

But Madame, We Are French Also

Based on participant observation and interviews in the Parisian metropolitan region, sociologist Jean Beaman discusses middle-class and upwardly-mobile children of North African immigrants in France, who despite their upward mobility feel just as marginalized as other children of immigrants. Read More

Small Town, Big Totem

States build colossal and quirky sculptures celebrating local culture and place identity. Colby King and Matthew Cazessus provide a deeper look into these shrinking communities and explain how these sculptures work to maintain a sense of community and reaffirm local place identity in the face of dramatic demographic changes and economic uncertainty. Read More

Park(ing) Day

Park(ing) Day has become an international phenomenom since its inception in 2005. Gretchen Coombs explains how this urban intervention questions the use of public space and reimagines how urban public spaces can be repurposed to benefit local communities. Read More

Immigrant Dreams

Sociologist Smitha Radhakrishnan reviews the books The Managed Hand and The New Entrepreneurs. Each illustrates the opportunity and systematic discrimination faced by immigrant entrepreneurs in the United States. These works push us to reconsider the importance of minority business owners in continuing to make the American dream real for all of us. Read More

Breakthrough Books: Race and Racism

A "list" of what five sociologists consider breakthrough books about race and racism. Read More

Neurodiversity

The neurodiversity movement emerged as an extension of the disability rights movement to include the those individuals with neurological differences. Micki McGee posits that neurodiversity is also a response to the neoliberalism of the past three decades that has (1) shifted responsibility for individuals with neurological and cognitive challenges back to the family, and (2) fostered a crippling speed-up in our workplaces while simultaneously requiring new levels of sociability and flexibility that render more people debilitated or disabled. The article concludes that demands for the rights of neurologically diverse populations may challenge the very framework of liberal personhood. Read More

Judging Obama

The presidency of Barack Obama, the first African American president of the United States, is not going to be judged by its symbolic significance and healthcare reform alone. Sociologists, Ho-fung Hung, Fred Block, Alejandro Portes, Beverly J. Silver, and Richard Lachmann assess Obama's first term from the perspectives of green economy, immigration reform, foreign policy, and social movements. Read More

Marriage Goes To School

In recent years, policy efforts to alleviate poverty have focused on marriage and relationship education. Orit Avishai's, Melanie Heath's,and Jennifer Randles's research finds that efforts to address poverty via relationship skills training are misguided because this approach does not address the structural causes of poverty. Read More