Sociology for Dark Times

By now you’re probably saturated with news of, and views on, the war between Israel and Hamas. A few weeks ago, Hamas murdered hundreds of unarmed people in Israel, including many children and elderly. The sadism and depravity of this killing spree was remarkable even by the standards of the long history of violence against Jews. Israel has responded with characteristic savagery, killing more than 10,000 Palestinians, including thousands of children. This orgy of collective punishment has also reduced much of Gaza to rubble and dust.

My conversation with Stellan Vinthagen offers one sociological perspective on the wa...

Our conversation previews a few themes from Prudence’s presidential address at the ASA annual meeting in Philadelphia this weekend. Prudence identifies key deficiencies of liberal democracies like the U.S. that have allowed the social and political regression we’re witnessing now. She has some pointed suggestions for what we sociologists should be doing in this regressive moment. Specifically, we discuss the case of affirmative action in the U.S. 

Prudence Carter is the Sarah and Joseph Jr. Dowling Professor of Sociology at Brown University. Before that, she was Dean of the Graduate School of Education at Be...

Is organized labor in the U.S. making a comeback? Over the last few years, unionization efforts have proliferated across the service sector, in Amazon, Trader Joe’s, Starbucks, just to name a few. The movie and TV industry is facing rare, simultaneous strikes by writers and actors. By early August, more than 300,000 UPS workers may be on strike, which would be the largest private sector strike in the US in several decades.

My guest this month is Eric Blanc, assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. Eric studies strikes, new workplace organizing, digital labor activism, an...

Within the next week or so, the US Supreme Court may end affirmative action as we know it. The path to this began in 1997, when the University of Michigan was sued for its affirmative action programs. My guest this month is Nadia Kim, who like me was a sociology graduate student in Michigan at the time of those lawsuits. We were both organizers for Academics for Affirmative Action and Social Justice, a group doing activism and education in our community in support of affirmative action. Even as affirmative action may end, however, movements like Black Lives Matter have dramatically...

This month I spoke with Anna Branch, sociologist and senior Vice President of equity at Rutgers University. Of all the sociologists I’ve talked with so far, Anna was the first to question my starting point that these are especially dark times. She asked, dark compared to when, and for whom? We discussed this in the context of Anna and Catherine Hanley’s new book Work in Black and White: Striving for the American Dream, and also the looming rollback of affirmative action by the US Supreme Court later this summer. We also talked about the possibilities for solidarity betw...

For this episode I talked with Leslie McCall of the City University of New York. Leslie wonders if we should be asking different kinds of research questions, focusing on the possibilities for solidarity among the majority of people in the U.S. She’s particularly critical of how we, as social scientists, frame our research about political polarization. Instead of focusing so intensely on divisions among people, she argues, we should be studying how the ultra wealthy and powerful are able to thwart the will of the majority in reducing economic inequality, for example.

Leslie McCall is As...

Everything all at once: Wars. Pandemics. Climate change. Neoliberalism. Authoritarianism. White supremacy...I ask my fellow sociologists the following questions: How can we, as sociologists, intervene in this moment, individually or collectively? How has their work changed over the last few years in response to the times? What are their sources of hope for change?

Cedric de Leon tells us, among other things, about Du Bois as an exemplary public sociologist and the under recognized role of Black activists in the U.S. labor movement. Cedric calls for a “new eclectic mass movement” for economic democracy with labo...

My inaugural guest is Joya Misra, President-Elect of the American Sociological Association. We discuss the history of sociology, of ASA, possibilities for public sociology, and the prospects for child care policy in the U.S.

Joya is Provost Professor and the Roy J. Zuckerberg Endowed Leadership Chair at UMass-Amherst, and a Professor in both Sociology and the School of Public Policy.  Joya’s work focuses on multiple dimensions of social inequality, including by gender and parenthood status. She considers how policies can reinforce or reduce inequality in societies and workplaces.

https://blogs.umass.edu/misra/

Everything all at once: Wars. Pandemics. Climate change. Neoliberalism. Authoritarianism. White supremacy...I ask my fellow sociologists the following questions: How can we, as sociologists, intervene in this moment, individually or collectively? How has their work changed over the last few years in response to the times? What are their sources of hope for change?

My inaugural guest is Joya Misra, President-Elect of the American Sociological Association. We discuss what sociologists can or should do now, the history of the discipline, of ASA, possibilities for public sociology, and for child care policy in the U.S.
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