Contexts

Contexts editors Rashawn Ray and Fabio Rojas introduce a special issue on some of the experiences of a diverse range of workers.

Sociology and empathy, why women aren’t running the world (yet), divorce in decline, and should you or shouldn’t you read the comment section? New research from the journals.

Josh McCabe interviews Scott Winship, sociologist and the Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee in the United States Congress.

Jody Agius Vallejo sits down with immigrant rights activist and attorney, Lizbeth Mateo.

Those in the top 1% of the U.S. income distribution control the majority of financial resources and political power. This means that a small group of homogenous men likely exercise the majority of corporate and political power associated with economic elites.

In 2017, more than 22 percent of all U.S. households used an alternative financial service at least once. While fringe-banking enterprises mainly serve people with low or moderate incomes who lack access to more conventional banking services, pawnshops in particular also provide an important and distinct last resort for many customers.

Since February 2018, the Disney Company has been exposed in the media for its mistreatment of its workers at the Disneyland park in Anaheim, California. A year and a half later, Disney’s labor practices and the compensation of its CEO continue to highlight larger issues of wealth and income inequality in America.

Why are we seeing so many teacher walkouts when traditional collective bargaining for teachers has weakened considerably in recent decades? A key part of the answer involves the social psychology through which teachers develop their professional culture, and how the evolution of accountability has been toxic to that culture.

Using data from interviews with self-identified climate change skeptics, it becomes clear that there is a public misperception about climate change skepticism. Skeptics are concerned about pollution, support environmentally friendly policies, and oppose continued reliance on oil. Current climate change communication is problematic; here, we explore the policies that garner skeptics’ support.

The photographs in this series were taken between 2017 and 2019 during photowalks in Miami and New York City. They are the extraction of an object from a decaying and dissembling urban environment. Readymade sculptures.

Domestic employment requires unique physical proximity of bodies from different social classes, and often from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Despite the physical closeness, different strategies are used to reproduce class hierarchies among people, resulting in embodied inequality.

Through a peek at one family’s life, Roma offers a glimpse at the burgeoning middle class, privileged not only by race and family inheritances but also by new possibilities of supposedly merit-based higher education.

Roma catalyzed public discussions about deep-rooted racism against indigenous people, government repression of student movements, and above all, household workers’ lack of rights.

By speaking through Cleo, Cuarón offers the working elite a narrative to ease their own anxieties around class instability.

Students major in sociology because they want to understand social life and social change, but does wanting a meaningful career equal a large salary? As it turns out, while sociology graduates do not earn top dollars in their first year out of undergraduate school, their salaries do increase and usually double by ten years out.

In Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy, Richard Ocejo offers an in-depth analysis of the resurgence of once working class and low status occupations.

Sharon Sassler and Amanda Jayne Miller set out to expand our understanding of how cohabitating relationships evolve in their compelling new book, Cohabitation Nation: Gender, Class, and the Remaking of Relationships.

California recently passed the Fair Pay to Play Act, allowing college athletes to be paid for endorsements, making income off of their likeness. While many people are heralding this bill, we propose that sports revenue could be used to decrease the racial education gap in the local communities that are often preyed upon by elite sports programs.

In the current edition of the book, The Culture of Fear, many of the new chapters to the Fearmonger-in-Chief, Donald Trump.