Category: Social Identity
Opinion / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Identity / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Organizations & Work
by Maisha Islam, University of Winchester, UK · Published 22nd September 2022
So, what's it like being Muslim in Academia? A case of oppressive institutions and Islamophobic landscapes.
In this blog, Maisha Islam tells us about her recent Sociology Compass publication where she and her co-author Arif Mahmud take readers on a journey to better understand the lived experiences of Muslim academics navigating through the terrains of UK academia. There is much to learn and get accustomed to as an early career researcher within academia. From the competitive world of publishing, to securing funding or research grants, teaching on numerous courses at a time, and supporting students sometimes...
Opinion / Research Brief / Social Identity / Social Welfare / Sociology of Children / Sociology of Culture
by Aikaterini Triantafyllou, Department of Education, Turku University, Finland · Published 7th September 2022
School teachers' perceptions of the bystanders' role in school bullying
This particular piece of research was conducted with teachers employed in Finnish primary/lower and upper secondary schools. Ten in number were asked to unfold their perceptions of what role the bystanders play in school bullying. This text draws from their expertise to address a problem with several facets as, for example, it fuels other school problems as absenteeism. Many children choose absenteeism to avoid school because they are bullied there. Considering the long-lasting effects of bullying on victims, it is...
Opinion / Social Identity / Social Movements / Social Change
by Anna Fiedler and Frank Reichert, University of Hong Kong · Published 1st July 2022 · Last modified 11th July 2022
Youth on the sidelines – What keeps protest sympathizers from joining social movements?
Youth activism seen around the globe shows that young people are interested in politics and push for social and political change. Recent studies contradict speculations about apolitical, disengaged, and politically uninterested youth. Instead, young people are interested in particular political issues and prefer participation in less hierarchically organized activism than previous generations (Miranda et al., 2020). At the same time, social media and online platforms have made the mobilization and documentation of protests much easier. Protest contents are streamed in...
Social Identity / Sociology of Children / Sociology of Culture
by Jenny Enos, Rutgers University · Published 30th March 2022
What Is Socialization, Really?
One of the very first concepts I teach my students in Introduction to Sociology is "socialization". Referring to how individuals come to learn and reproduce the social order of a given society, the concept of socialization is fundamental to sociologists' understanding of how society works. As we grow up and are exposed to the social influence of family members, teachers, and peers, we come to internalize the societal norms and beliefs that they adhere to so that we can...
Feminist Theory / Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Social Identity / Social Movements / Social Change
by Jenny Enos, Rutgers University · Published 22nd June 2021
Emotional Labor, Social Movements, and Being a Bad Feminist
Since Arlie Hochschild's groundbreaking book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (1983), the concept of "emotional labor" has become increasingly popularized. Writing about jobs in the service industry, Hochschild defines emotional labor as the work that "requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others" (20). In other words, many (if not most) jobs require us to manage and negotiate our own feelings and the...
Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Identity / Sociology of Organizations & Work
by Jenny Enos, Rutgers University · Published 7th May 2021
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...
by Jenny Enos, Rutgers University · Published 19th March 2021 · Last modified 23rd March 2021
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 / Social Identity / Sociology of Culture
by Jamie L. Mullaney · Published 11th January 2021
"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...
Applied Sociology / Class & Stratification / Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Identity
by Rituparna Patgiri · Published 24th August 2020 · Last modified 17th August 2020
WHAT DOES BAKING TELL US ABOUT CLASS DURING COVID-19 IN INDIA?
In an unequal and diverse society like India, food has had deep associations with questions of identity, whether that of religion, caste, class, gender, ethnicity, or tribe. The recent COVID-19 crisis has highlighted some of these associations in a newer light, including the relationship between food and class. For most of the Indian middle-classes, the period of lockdown has been spent in experimenting with food as dishes like Dalgona coffee and banana bread became popular 'quarantine recipes'. Food also became...
Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Social Identity / Social Movements / Social Change
by Jenny Enos, Doctoral Student - Sociology, Rutgers University · Published 15th May 2020
Identity Theory, Emotions, and the "Victim"—"Survivor" Binary
Sociological identity theory concerns itself with the concept of the self: what it is, how societal structures influence it, and how we navigate it. According to the symbolic interactionist tradition, heavily influenced by the work of George Herbert Mead, one's sense of self or identity is built in and through social interactions with others. As such, there is a reciprocal relationship between the self and the external social world; society impacts the self, and in turn, the self impacts our...
Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Social Identity / Sociology of Health & Illness
by Julie Dare, Mette Grønkjær, Celia Wilkinson & Kathrine Hoffmann Kusk · Published 4th March 2020 · Last modified 6th March 2020
'Women of my age tend to drink': Understanding how older Australian and Danish women negotiate the pleasures and risks of their alcohol use
When we think of risky drinking, typically we think of young people 'binge drinking', passing out on the footpath and generally looking a bit 'messy'. The media reinforces the notion that drinking is primarily a problem among young people by regularly circulating stories and images of young people being drunk in public and causing problems either to themselves or bystanders. This emphasis on young people's drinking is not surprising, particularly since they are more likely to drink in public places,...
Opinion / Peace, War & Social Conflict / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Identity / Social Movements / Social Change
by Jessica Poling, Rutgers University · Published 16th October 2019 · Last modified 21st October 2019
Rethinking Old Authoritarianisms
Following World War II, sociologists became particularly interested in collective behavior, or what was sometimes referred to as the "psychology of the crowd". Fueled by their disbelief of the spread of Nazism and authoritarianism, these scholars sought to understand how collectives could come to widely uphold authoritarian tendencies-even if they had never previously engaged in similar political activity. These early studies largely focused on individual psychology, comparing crowd behavior to a contagion that spreads and possesses otherwise harmless people. This...
Opinion / Science & Technology / Social Identity / Sociology of Children / Sociology of Health & Illness
by Rikke Tokle · Published 3rd September 2019
'Cloud chasers' and 'substitutes': e-cigarettes, vaping subcultures and vaper identities
The social meaning of e-cigarettes and vaping involves a vaping subculture, ideas about health through harm reduction, pleasure and community, as well as addiction and stigma. Some use e-cigarettes to quit smoking; others thrive in the flavoured clouds. In addition, there is a 'split vision' of health and stigma in the perceptions of vaping where the vaper identities are constantly negotiated. The use of e-cigarettes has increased and moved beyond a cessation-only practice, were vaping has started to serve social,...
by Jessica Poling, Rutgers University, New Jersey · Published 4th July 2019
The "Meat Paradox", Culture, and Beyond
Cultural sociologists have repeatedly sought a model to explain how culture motivates action. Ann Swidler famously introduced the "cultural toolkit": an individual's collection of cultural scripts from which they can draw upon in various contexts. More recently, cultural sociologists have used theories from cognitive science to explain how actions are driven by the interaction between cognition and the individual's environment. These models emphasize that individuals' choices are never purely made out of free will; rather, they are a product of...
Opinion / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Identity / Sociology of Health & Illness
by Saffron Karslen · Published 22nd May 2019
Agency and structure: the impact of ethnic identity and racism on the health of ethnic minority people
Powerful people have a significant impact on our lives. Not only can their decisions affect our access to wealth, and consequent well-being, but their influence affects our very self-definition and expression. Understandings about who we are and what that means develop in light of the ways in which certain categories are understood in and responded to by wider society: what we're told about what 'being one of those sorts of people' means. But while academic studies acknowledge the societal or...
by Jessica Randall, University of Liverpool, UK · Published 17th May 2019
'Two in five trans [1] people (41 per cent) and three in ten non-binary people (31 per cent) have experienced a hate crime or incident because of their gender identity in the last 12 months.' (Stonewall Trans Report 2018). If you add to this the levels of criticism and "debate" present on social media ranging from Piers Morgan [2] to Paula Radcliff [3] about the trans community it makes for a pretty dire situation. I contend that a way to improve this...
International Journal of Japanese Sociology
International Migration Review
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy
Antipode Foundation