Everyday Sociology Blog

Who Gone Check Me Boo? The Backlash to Women and Power

By Myron Strong

In season two of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, a now iconic scene is featured where co-star Sheree Whitfield demanded to know “who gone check me boo?” Her powerful retort came in response to her blatantly disrespectful party-planner refusing to follow her instructions. While meeting with him, the planner started screaming profanities and calling her names saying that someone needed to “check her.”

His aggressive manner prompted Sheree to verbally remind him that not only does he work for her, but also that she was in control. Sheree’s calm but strong-willed comment illustrates how she refused to back down. As she asserted her point of view, the male party-planner felt insecure and powerless--prompting him to say that someone was going to check her to which she defiantly replied, “who gone check me boo?”

What the COVID-19 Crisis Means for Work Expectations: A Sociology Student’s Perspective

By Colby King and Jackson Tumlin (sociology student, University of South Carolina Upstate)

I am always working to make my Sociology of Work and Organizations class meaningful to students by, among other things, getting them to connect with people who work in areas they are interested in. In the course this spring, though, as the COVID-19 crisis upended the economy and changed how so many of us do work, I got to see how students were applying course concepts in how they were thinking about work.

In this class we typically cover how work is changing, including the development of the new economy, which Stephen Sweet and Peter Meiksins describe as involving new patterns in work, including things like flexible work arrangements and interactive service work. We study how technological change and flexible work arrangements have made new kinds of work possible. Many of these new jobs are more rewarding for workers. We also see how, even with these new patterns of work, many aspects of the old manufacturing-based economy, which emerged from the Industrial Revolution, remain.

What's that I Feel? Role Strain!

By Jennell Paris

Professor of Anthropology, Messiah College

Most of the time I feel fairly comfortable in the roles that correspond with my social statuses. I know what to do, as a daughter, or a church member, or a U.S. citizen.

As a professor these days, I'm feeling something unpleasant. I can't find the right word for it: overwhelmed, verklempt, disoriented, stumped? Whatever it is, it's not good. The word I'm after is not a mental health term like depression or anxiety. It's sociological: role strain, when the expectations or duties of a role become overwhelming or confused.

The Working Class and Service Industry Workers: The Front Lines of the COVID-19 Economy

By Colby King

As the U.S. responds to the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen quick and dramatic changes to how people work and how our economy functions. I wrote a few days ago about one worker, a migrant laborer, was made to dress as a hand sanitizer dispenser at Saudi Aramco. Since then I have seen stories that highlight the risks and challenges of working in the COVID-19 economy, especially for the working class and service industry workers. As Todd Schoepflin wrote here last week, these are the people “who are working to hold the fabric of society together.”

These dilemmas came into focus for me the other night as I talked with my cousin Randy on the phone. Randy lives in Colorado and works multiple jobs part time, as a lighting designer for theaters in Colorado and driving for a rideshare app. When Governor Polis of Colorado banned gatherings of more than 10 people, it had an obvious impact on Randy’s lighting gigs.

Applying Sociology of Work and Organizations Concepts to the COVID-19 Pandemic

By Colby King

During spring break this past week, I was grading midterm exams from my Sociology of Work and organizations class while also following the news about the spread of COVID-19. Karen Sternheimer wrote the other day about how we can apply the sociological imagination to better understand the ongoing situation with the disease. I also saw ways in which the pandemic vividly illustrates some of the sociological concepts in the exam I was grading.

On March 11, Megha Rajagopalan at BuzzFeed posted a report about how a migrant worker at Saudi Aramco’s headquarters was made to dress as hand sanitizer. Pictures of the worker were shared on Twitter. In the pictures you can see the man is wearing a face mask and gloves, and over his khakis and shirt he is also wearing a box with the words “HAND SANITIZER” at the top and “Office Services” at the bottom (in English) and also an actual hand sanitizer dispenser attached to the front of the box.

Applying the Sociological Imagination to COVID-19

By Karen Sternheimer

By now you have likely heard of the Novel Coronavirus, or COVID-19. Maybe your school or workplace has shifted online for the time being, or you have noticed a shortage of cold and flu related items at your local store.

While this is a rapidly changing situation, we can use this example to help us understand several sociological concepts:

The Working Class is More Diverse than You Might Think (and We’ve got Stories to Share)

By Colby King

We have been hearing a lot about the working class the last few years, in part because many observers of national politics see the white working class as an important voting base. With the 2020 presidential race underway we can expect to see continued debate about how the white working class is likely to vote.

In these discussions, the working class is largely presented as white, male, employed in manufacturing, and often rural. But, these discussions that focus specifically on the white working class give a misleading representation of who comprises the working class altogether.

Social Institutions: Central to our Lives—and Beyond

Sally Raskoff: Social Institutions Central to our Lives - and Beyond

Download this episode

By Karen Sternheimer

Social institutions, the building blocks of societies, are not only central to our lives, but they continue to be part of us even after death. Social institutions such as family, medicine, government, religion, and the economy are part of the process of death as well as its aftermath.

In this podcast conversation, Sally Raskoff and I discuss our experiences with these social institutions following the deaths of family members. We do not just mourn with family members when someone passes away. After a death it also takes work to disentangle all of the threads from other social institutions (think closing bank accounts, taking a name off of a title deed to a house, ending pension and Social Security payments, to name a few tasks for survivors).

In this brief conversation, we touch upon the involvement of family members with hospitals and hospice, mortuaries, religious practices, and the long-term process of dissolving economic arrangements.

As you listen to this podcast, think about the following questions:

1. What roles do social institutions play in our lives that are often hidden? How does the death of a loved one reveal these connections with social institutions?
2. How does the involvement with these social institutions vary by age, gender, and socio-economic status?
3. How else might social institutions be part of our lives, and how might these connections linger beyond death? What other social institutions might be an ongoing part of our lives and their aftermath?
4. Are there social institutions that we can never fully separate from, even after death?

A Strong Economy?

By Todd Schoepflin

How long does it take you to get to work? Would you drive an hour to get on a bus for a four-hour round trip to make $13.26 an hour?

This is what people are willing to do to travel from the Mississippi Delta to Memphis, Tennessee, to work at FedEx sorting and loading packages (FedEx covers the cost of the bus ride). As explained in this Wall Street Journal article, workers have been recruited in places with high unemployment rates at a time when the national unemployment rate is low. In one example, the $13.26 starting wage was a big improvement compared to the $7.85 hourly wage a person was making at a previous job. These part-time jobs, with some overnight shits, offer health and retirement benefits.

Teaching in the Shadow of Slavery

By Myron Strong

On a warm day in the spring, a colleague and I walked into Hilton Hall located on the Catonsville campus of my college. The campus was once a plantation and Hilton Hall, which more commonly is known as “the mansion,” had been renovated over the past 3 years for $10 million. I had never been there before and it was an eerie experience. It reminded me of growing up in Eudora, Arkansas, a small rural town that also was once a plantation, and had evolved into a segregated town separated by railroad tracks. There is spiritual weight to these places. History has mass – you feel it, see it and taste it. I felt it in “the mansion.”

I was there giving a lecture for a program, Invisible History: Exploring CCBC Hilton Center, a program created to address complaints expressed by some students, faculty, and staff concerning the college embracing a symbol of trauma and oppression. The program featured a panel of professors from different disciplines as well as the college president. When I heard about the program, I was afraid that it would glance over or romanticize history, so I insisted on being a part of it.