Everyday Sociology Blog

The Social Construction of Stuff

By Karen Sternheimer I am in the process of moving to a new home. The move has been planned for over a year, so I have been preparing to pack and get rid of things for a while. Coincidentally, our department recently moved to a new bui

Are Social Scientists Anti-Social? How to Test Hypotheses

By Karen Sternheimer A colleague recently posed this question about social scientists' behavior while we chatted after a social event. She thought it was particularly interesting that sociologists, of all people, might not be the most soci

The Never-Ending Beauty Shift

By Peter Rydzewski Sociology Ph.D. student, University of Maryland The idea that physical characteristics can be socially developed may be difficult to consider at first. According to Raewyn Connell, however, “bodies are both objects of s

What You See Isn’t Always What May Be: Confirmation Bias

By Sally Raskoff Confirmation bias is a fascinating dynamic. What we see may not be what we judge it to be. What we think we are seeing may just be what we expect it to be. A new study by sociologists Aliya Saperstein and Andrew M.

College Degrees and Social Mobility

By Karen Sternheimer Are you currently or about to be a college student? A recent college grad? If so, you probably hope that your college degree will help you in the job market. According to the Cooperative Institutional Research Program

The Social Construction of Race, Ethnicity, Sex, and Gender

By Sally Raskoff Is it easier to conceive of race/ethnicity or sex/gender as socially constructed categories? A recent assessment of students’ learning on our campus suggest that it’s easier to consider race and ethnicity as socially c

Race, Class, and “Hybrid” Masculinities

By Jessica Poling In 1995, gender theorist R.W. Connell wrote her seminal book, Masculinities. In this book, Connell expands our understanding of gender by focusing on gender relations (rather than roles) with a specific focus on masculini

Can Teachers Speak the Truth about Donald Trump?

By Peter Kaufman Consider this statement: Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States of America, is a racist, sexist, xenophobic bigot who constantly tells lies and makes wildly misleading claims. I offer this statement not as

(Another) Sociological Celebration of Baseball

By Karen Sternheimer Three years ago, Todd Schoepflin wrote about his love of baseball and its sociological significance. As a father of young players, he noted its absence during the pandemic-related shutdown of 2020. Because of its inter

Constructing Deviance: A-Rod, Drugs, and Cheating

By Peter Kaufman “Is Calling Cheating Cheating, Cheating?” This was the title of a paper I wrote back in graduate school for a class on the sociology of deviance. This playful (or confusing) use of words was my attempt at getting at the