Winter 2013
Volume: 12 | Number: 1
Is Marriage for Anyone?
Two recent books on marriage—Is Marriage for White People? by Ralph Richard Banks and Unhitched by Judith Stacey—are considered in this review essay by sociologist Micki McGee. Banks argues that the decline of marriage among African American women constitutes a social problem that could be remedied if more women from this group opted for interracial marriages. Stacey's cross-cultural study contends that marriage is an institution that attempts the near impossible task of reconciling the goals of domesticity with those of erotic life, and that in the process an extraordinary range of marital arrangements have emerged. Taken together these arguments ask us to consider who marriage serves. Read More
Body Lessons
Sociologist Janet Enke explores the challenges of teaching a course on the body. She discusses how to synthesize the subjective experience of the body with academic theory, and convey knowledge about the politics of the body. Read More
Ye of Little Faith
Despite the proclamations of Republican senators, there are more secular Americans now then ever before; sociologist Phil Zuckerman argues that their growth warrants greater attention to secularity on the part of social science. Read More
The Hearts of Boys
Five experts, Niobe Way, C.J. Pascoe, Mark McCormack, Amy Schalet, and Freeden Ouer shed light on the everyday lives of teenage boys and their relationships. Read More
Truth-Telling and Intellectual Activism
Patricia Hill Collins, a feminist public intellectual, discusses the importance of speaking across multiple audiences. Read More
Mourning Becomes Democratic
Public mourning is not a spontaneous expression of grief but a symbolic and political practice. Sociologist Bin Xu examines a new trend in recent decades, the “democratization of public mourning,” that celebrates our symbolic equality and individuality instead of affirming status hierarchies. Read More
Missing Romance
Sociologist Minjeong Kim asks why Asian American characters in the U.S. television shows and films are always in interracial relationships, and explores the implications of the absence of Asian American couplings on screen. Read More
Beyond “Post 9/11”
Sociologist Erik Love reviews the books Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire and Terrifying Muslims. Each move beyond “post 9/11” explanations for anti-Muslim sentiment, showing how Islamophobia is best understood not as a temporary backlash, but rather as stemming from longstanding and durable forms of racial bigotry and colonialism. Read More
Speciesism
Speciesism, coined in the 1970s, means the implicit superiority of one species, usually humans, over all others. Sociologist Lisa Jean Moore discusses this term and how sociologists are primed to use the concept in teaching and research. Read More
Born Amid Bullets
Different forms of violence are enveloping territories of urban relegation in Latin America. Sociologist Javier Auyero examines how children and adolescents have become familiarized with diverse types of interpersonal brutality. Read More
