Sociology

This Land Is My Land

Many landowners view themselves as environmental stewards. But can the environment ever be protected within the frame of private property?

Think like a Virus

Rather than accepting that a virus will come, we can learn how viruses live and thrive—and work to suppress them before they take off.

America Comes Out

Once, “coming out” was something done within gay social worlds. Today, new groups do so to refute stigma, and to reclaim that stigma as pride.

What’s in a Name?

Stanley Lieberson wrestled with the problem of causation throughout his prodigious research career, but nowhere more ingeniously than in A Matter of Taste.

Does Chernobyl Still Matter?

Since it first announced electricity “too cheap to meter,” in the 1950s, the nuclear industry has promised bountiful futures powered by a peaceful—and safe—atom ...

Why Do Police Drive Cars?

Why did American police end up in cars? And how did policing the nation’s roads become so racially unjust? In Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom, legal historian Sarah Seo uses motor vehicle search and ...

Terminal Whiteness

While doing fieldwork in Tennessee for his eye-opening and often harrowing new book, Dying of Whiteness, Vanderbilt University Professor Jonathan M. Metzl met Trevor. A 40-something-year-old former ...