Everyday Sociology Blog

Taking Sociology to the Circus

By Colby King

Did you know that before any U.S. city had a system of electric street lighting, Americans could see electric lighting at the circus? In 1878, James Bailey lit his circus with electricity, and as a result a large proportion of American saw electricity for the first time at the circus. Bailey even sold tickets for tours of the generator.

I learned this and a lot more from the recently aired documentary The Circus, from American Experience and PBS. The documentary illustrates the vibrant and problematic history of the circus, and underscored how the traveling circuses of the late 1800s and early 1900s were a quintessential part of U.S. society.

As someone who studies urban sociology, I was struck by the ways in which the circus functioned as a sort of traveling city. The film quotes one attendee describing the circus as:

a city that folds itself up like an umbrella. Quietly and swiftly every night it… [picks] up in its magician’s arms theatre, hotel, schoolroom, barracks, home, whisking them all miles away, and setting them down before sunrise in a new place.

Just as cities of the industrial era brought new patterns of social life, the circus brought culture and diversity, opportunities, and exploitation to the places it visited.

Social Networks and Diversity in College

By Colby King

With the beginning of another fall semester, I have been thinking about the opportunities college presents to students. If you are a student who is working to make the most of your opportunities on campus, you may very reasonably be focused on earning good grades, or on avoiding accumulating much loan debt. But, I want to underscore a particular opportunity that college presents to students that I hope you do not overlook: the opportunity build a diverse social network.

I have been thinking about these issues because last spring, I was chosen as the recipient of Bridgewater State University’s Honors Outstanding Faculty Award. This was a really nice honor, and as part of the award I was interviewed for the Honors Program student blog, The Paw. In that interview I was asked about what advice I might have for students. I drew on my responses in that interview, and the speech I gave for that award in writing this essay. You can see the whole interview on the blog here.

Managing Malls and Regional Spatial Change in the Era of Amazon Prime

By Colby King

If you’re looking for an entertaining way to spend a few minutes, I recommend the American Mall Game on Bloomberg’s website. The game appeared on February 7, 2018, and was created by James Pants and Steph Davidson, along with a team of others at Bloomberg.

As a player in the American Mall Game, you take the position of a character who owns and manages a mall that has fallen on difficult times. An opening message at the start of the game explains that these are “dire times for U.S. Mall owners. Decades of overbuilding and the invention of online shopping combined to leave the country with an extreme excess” [of retail space].

The Big Rig and the Sociology of Work

By Colby King

I teach a Sociology of Work course at Bridgewater State University that meets in the evening each fall. At BSU, about half of our students come from working class backgrounds and/or are among the first generation in their family to go to college. One of the reasons I have really enjoyed teaching evening sections of this class is that many of the students typically work off campus and the class is often infused with their work experiences. These students also express a practical interest in the dynamics of labor markets, the shape of organizations, and the quality of jobs in addition to their interest in sociological concepts related to work.

This fall, I added Steve Viscelli’s book The Big Rig to the material we used in this class. I was motivated in part because it is a large and dynamic industry that illustrates many of the concepts and concerns we cover in this class. About 3 million people work as truck drivers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. NPR’s Planet Money has created this interactive map showing how truck driver has been the most common job in many states since at least the 1970s. The American Trucking Associations found that in 2014 more than 7 million people were employed in jobs related to the trucking industry, even after excluding those who were self-employed. They also report that registered trucks drove 279.1 billion miles in 2014.

New Semester Rulin’s

By Colby King

What are your resolutions for the New Year? How about for the new semester?

I was thinking about these questions myself after a friend shared with me Woody Guthrie’s “New Years Rulin’s,” which he wrote in his journal in 1943.

If you’re not sure who Woody Guthrie is, you’d likely recognize his most famous song “This Land is Your Land.” Known as the “People’s Bard,” Guthrie is something of a hero among working people and labor activists. He has had a substantial musical legacy, influencing artists from The Byrds and Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, and Tom Morello. If you’re not familiar with his music, you may want to listen to his song about the dust bowl, “Pastures of Plenty,” or his punchy song about union solidarity “Union Maid,” which is covered here by Old Crow Medicine Show live at the Kennedy Center.

#followfirstgenerationacademics

By Colby King

Scrolling through my Twitter feed one day this past summer, I read a tweet from Karra Shimabukuro, a PhD candidate in British and Irish Literary Studies at the University of New Mexico, with the hashtag #followfirstgenerationacademics. The tweet was signal boosting the hashtag, which was originated by Roberta Magnani, a Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing at Swansea University.

The idea behind #followfirstgenerationacademics was to create connections between academics and students between academics and students, who are from the first generation in their family to work as an academic. As a first generation academic myself, I was happy to see the hashtag. I replied to a few tweets and followed many of the people participating in the discussion. If you are a student or an academic interested in connecting, you may also be interested in following that hashtag and contributing to the conversation.

Place Character, DIY Place Branding, and the Yinzernet

By Colby King

How do you describe the place that you live? Is your neighborhood friendly? Is your campus cool? Is your city hip?

The way we talk about the places we live both reflects and contributes to their place character. This concept is often a little tricky to understand at first, but my students come to appreciate how it helps them make sense of how we socially construct meaning about the places in our lives.

Place, the Sociological Imagination, and Western Pennsylvania

By Colby King

When I first read C. Wright Mills’ “The Promise” as an undergraduate, I remember being struck by his argument that the “first fruit” of the sociological imagination “is the idea that the individual can understand his own experience and gauge his own fate only be locating himself within his period, that he can know his own chances in life only by becoming aware of those of all individuals in his circumstances.” For Mills, understanding a person’s social context, or what he calls the structure of society, is essential for understanding their life chances.

This quote from Mills struck me because, while I was just beginning to understand the concept of the sociological imagination, I already possessed an interest in how social context shapes people’s lives.

I had grown up in rural western Pennsylvania, in between the small university town of Slippery Rock and the county seat of Butler. I was a student in the Slippery Rock school district, while my dad worked at Armco Steel (now AK Steel) in Butler, and I already understood that in many ways this place was a particular social context shaping my perspective and opportunities.

Social (Re)Construction of Place in Columbia, South Carolina

By Colby King

Assistant Professor of Sociology, Bridgewater State University

The ongoing debate about the confederate flag on the grounds of the South Carolina State House reminds us of the power of the symbols we put in our places, and the way we talk about those symbols and those places.

Sports and Socio-Economic Status: More than Talent Required

By Colby King and Jakari Griffith, Bridgewater State University

Colby King is an Assistant Professor of Sociology; Jakari Griffith is an Assistant Professor of Management

Recently, Pittsburgh Pirates star center fielder Andrew McCutchen shared a great essay  on The Players’ Tribune in which he reflects on his path to the pros. In the essay, he responds to the drama surrounding the Jackie Robinson West Little League baseball team, which won the Little League World Series and then had their title taken away for having players on the team who lived outside of their geographic area. The emphasis of his essay  is a critique of what McCutchen, who was raised by a poor family in Fort Meade, Florida, sees as a broader problem: the cost and difficulties that talented kids from poor families face as they hope to be discovered by scouts.