“There is a deadly earnestness with which children take up whatever rules have been established for a particular context.”
Sociology
Editor: Michèle Lamont
The Art We Do Together: “Art Worlds” 40th Anniversary
Howard Becker pointed out that critics, curators, suppliers, and administrators are as important to the creation of art as artists themselves.
Are There “Good-Enough” Feminists?
The way women practice feminism differs between Quebec and France, especially in how they welcome—or don’t—Muslim women.
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?
Getting Upsold by Real Estate
When prospective home buyers hire a real estate agent, they may end up getting more than they had pictured themselves bargaining for.
We Can’t Look Away from the Courts: An Interview with Matthew Clair
"I see disadvantaged defendants’ cultivated expertise as accurate, even though it is often invalidated and punished."
What Does a “Click” Count For?
In the digital world, metrics mean everything. But who interprets just what they mean changes across organizations, countries, and cultures.
Storytelling Is Big Business
When creating and selling culture, you’re also selling a story about that culture—for good and for ill.
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.
Beyond the Objectivity Myth
It is no exaggeration to say that Evelyn Fox Keller and her compatriots made possible not only my work but entire generations of scholarship on science.
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.
Self-Control Won’t Save You
Neoliberalism offers individuals an illusion of control over their lives. But what happens when uncertainty intrudes?
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.
Is Retirement Retired?
Instead of a recognition of a life devoted to a single firm, pensions are now the source of strife between management and workers.
Emily Dickinson, “The Greatest Freak of Them All”?
Does viewing Emily Dickinson as unusual actually help us understand the poet or her work better?
Economics: Theories vs. Stories
In the rubble of the Richard Nixon years, a University of Chicago economist named Arthur Laffer drew a diagram on a napkin to illustrate the hidden blessings of ...
Public Thinker: Frances Negrón-Muntaner on Puerto Rico, Art, and Decolonial Joy
Frances Negrón-Muntaner is an innovative and multimodal thinker and artist, and a professor ...
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 ...