Sociology Lens

Latest articles from sociology lens

Geography and Sociology / Opinion

The fluid nature of rural ethnic identity: encounters between non-Roma and Roma people in a Central-Eastern European context

In the early 2010s, France repatriated a large number of Roma back to Romania, following a series of highly controversial reforms by Nicholas Sarkozy’s government (BBC, 2010). Campaigners for human rights, free movement, and workers’ rights hotly contested those harsh actions of forced repatriation, which were widely discussed in international media. A Romanian article called ‘Back to the life of Gypsy in Romania’ (Micu, 2010) suggested that most of the transnational worker Roma went back to their homelands in the...

Opinion / Social Welfare

Transitions from care to adulthood: exploring historical narratives

Outcomes for care leavers The evidence has been well publicised: young people who have spent their formative years in public care are less likely than their peers to be in gainful employment, and more likely to become homeless, to become involved in crime or prostitution or to become long-term dependent on the state.  A closer inspection of the data tends to reveal a much more nuanced picture: a small group of care leavers are ‘movers on’ who achieve educational, employment...

Class & Stratification / Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology

Is America Coming Apart?

Income and wealth inequalities in the United States are ever widening, and it is having a knock-on effect on segregation. Consider your own life. When you think about the people with whom you interact most, both socially and professionally, it is likely that your neighbors, classmates, and coworkers come to mind. This makes sense, as we come to spend a great deal of our time in our own schools, our own neighborhoods, and our own workplaces. Now consider the socioeconomic...

Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Religion

Why declining church attendance sharpens cultural backlash

Religion occupies an odd place in British public and social life. On the one hand, there is an established church in England, while the Church of Scotland is recognised as the national church in Scotland, guaranteed under the Act of Union of Scotland and England of 1707. But compared with other countries Britain is at a relatively late stage of secularisation. A decreasing proportion of the public attend a place of worship regularly, even taking into account the relatively greater...

Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Identity / Sociology of Organizations & Work

To Do What You Love, Or Not? Employment and the Dominant Ideology of Work Passion

“Do what you love” is something we often hear in response to questions about what career path to choose. Whether from guidance counselors, college professors, or parents, the message is always the same: the best job is the one you are passionate about. A job, in other words, should be more than a job – it should be a part of who you are. While often well-intentioned, this idea is built on several problematic assumptions. First, it presupposes that everyone...

Opinion

Making it easier for authors to publish their research in a Wiley sociology or social welfare journal

It is easy to understand why some authors dislike submitting manuscripts. If you have ever published your research in an academic journal, you may have submitted your paper to three or four journals before you finally found it a home. Searching for the right journal, reformatting your manuscript, and completing each submission process can take a lot of time and effort. Not to mention how long it might take for journal editors to find expert peer reviewers in the field....

Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology

The economic and distributional impacts of affordable housing

A new report on limited-profit housing associations in Austria quantifies the economic impacts of affordable housing in terms of household budgets, economic output, and state expenditure. This article summarises the key findings from this report and draws conclusions on the links between housing and economic inequality. Profit-limitation and affordability – almost 2k Euros savings to households Limited-Profit Housing Associations (LPHA) in Austria occupy a distinctive Third Sector role in Austria’s housing market, being neither profit-driven nor state-dependent. LPHA provide homes...

Opinion / Sociology of Children / Sociology of Health & Illness

Researchers should do more to bring their findings to society: the case of ADHD-medication

In 2020, I co-authored a paper with one of my PhD students, entitled A prescription trend analysis of methylphenidate: relation to study reports on efficacy. In this study by Maruschka Sluiter and colleagues, the prescription-rate of ADHD pills in the Netherlands was analyzed in relation to newly published evidence regarding the lack of their efficacy. We showed that several negative study reports from 2007 onwards did not lead to significant reduction in the rate of methylphenidate (MPH) prescriptions. The data...

Class & Stratification / Opinion / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Does cultural consumption increase future earnings?

In contemporary Britain (as in almost every other nation), there is a clear link between cultural tastes and social position. People who are highly educated, have higher incomes, and work in prestigious occupations are generally more avid cultural consumers than people in less advantaged positions. As you might expect, they are more likely to enjoy high-brow activities like classical music concerts and art galleries. However, they also participate more often in a diverse range of activities; from going to the...

Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Identity / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Is College Worth the Student Loans?

Getting a college education is, in many ways, revered in U.S. society. It is often said that the four years spent in college are “the best four years of your life,” based in the notion that college is a social and fun experience that will shape one’s life. However, the pervasive societal encouragement of college education is also based on some more dire assumptions. Many young adults in the U.S. grow up hearing that they need to go to college...

Opinion / Special Issue

Interactionism and Sensory Sociology

Covid-19 has a profound impact on people’s experience and participation in the social world. For example, one of the symptoms of the illness is the loss of the sense of smell, which has increased people’s awareness of its importance in social life. The removal of the sense of smell radically reduces people’s quality of life and leads some people to become anxious, particularly when the anosmia persists over a long period of time. Scholars in the cognitive sciences and philosophy...

Opinion

Engaging diversities in a changing world: welcome to the new editors of Children & Society

Children & Society welcomes a new dynamic and diverse editorial team in 2021, bringing together international, interdisciplinary and cross‐generational perspectives on children and childhood studies. The team comprises Sarah Crafter and Martin Robb from The Open University, Deevia Bhana from the University of KwaZulu‐Natal, Yuwei Xu from the UCL Institute of Education and Liam Berriman from the University of Sussex. Their interdisciplinary backgrounds cover a range of fields of study, including: cultural studies and digital childhoods (Berriman); gender and sexuality...

Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Science & Technology / Sociology of Religion

The Contested Ground of Science, Politics, and Religion

It is no secret that we live in an era of “fake news” and widespread distrust in basic facts. As I have discussed previously on Sociology Lens, this is a distinguishing feature of Trumpism and much of the rhetoric currently surrounding American politics. Just recently, we saw the idea that the election of Joe Biden as the next President was “fake” playing out in deadly ways when Trump-supporting rioters and White supremacists stormed the Capitol on January 6th. Unfortunately, this...

Opinion / Social Identity / Sociology of Culture

“This Year I Will…”: Personal Resolutions and the Near Future

Each January, as the calendar turns to a new year, thoughts turn to personal resolutions. Media outlets promise a “New Year! New You!”—achieved through prescriptive, step-by-step programs or more elusive strategies, such as strengthening one’s willpower. In the popular imagination, resolutions are a means to an end, and that end is an improved version of the self.  Despite their clear connection to temporality and identity projects, sociologists have had surprisingly little to say about resolutions. In my article, “A Year...

Opinion / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Health & Illness / Urban Sociology

The Cost of Pollutants: Environmental Hazards, Racial Residential Segregation, and Health

Racial disparities in health are undoubtedly one of the most significant public health issues of our time. According to the National Institute of Health, racial and ethnic minorities suffer from a higher incidence of a wide range of negative health outcomes than Whites, such as preterm births, obesity, heart disease, and cancer. COVID-19 has been no exception, with people of color being disproportionally affected by the pandemic both in terms of infection rates and deaths. Studies have shown that these...

Opinion / Research Methodologies

A Covid Cry: adjusting, adapting & extending

Last night (11th November) the UKRI announced their latest position on funding extensions for PGRs, and I burst into tears. As I tried to grasp the fine print detail of the UKRI statement, my eyes kept leaking out fear and hopelessness. Will I be one of the lucky ones? Does my end date fit? Have my circumstances been challenging enough? How can I finish this project before the money runs out? What else is going to happen to the people...