Everyday Sociology Blog

Smoking, Travel, and Culture Shock

By Karen Sternheimer

As a kid in the 1970s and 1980s, I remember waiting to be seated at a restaurant. There were occasionally vending machines for candy, gum, and even cigarettes in the waiting area. While cigarette vending machines were apparently only banned in 2010 (except in adults-only venues), I don’t remember seeing a single machine for decades.

That is, until I visited Germany recently. We stayed in an apartment-style hotel, run by someone who also operated a bar on the first floor. When we stepped in the bar to check in, I noticed a cigarette vending machine. Oh wow, I thought, hadn’t seen one of those in years! But it was in a bar, after all, and I didn’t think much of it.

Spam, Scams, and Social Norms

By Karen Sternheimer

There’s really no such thing as good spam. I’m talking about the email variety of spam, not the canned pork from which unsolicited emails got their name (see this Monty Python sketch for its origin). Emails claiming to have money waiting for us, threatening us if emails go unanswered, or promoting questionable products are annoying and typically easy to spot. So easy that email platforms often identify it before we even see it.

Spam is annoying, but it’s also sociological.

Who are You: Work, Education, and Identity

By Karen Sternheimer

The phrase “I am a Ph.D.” always strikes me as odd. One might earn a Ph.D. or hold a Ph.D., but to be a Ph.D. suggests that there is no separation between the self, education, and work.

Earning a Ph.D. connotes an extended study and expertise into a field, one that can only realistically be achieved if one has a great deal of personal interest in their topic of study. And earning this degree can create new identity pathways: a title change from Mr./Ms. to Dr., and in many cases “Professor.” These identity changes are linked with career opportunities that an advanced degree might bring. This career path might bring upward economic mobility and new peer groups, both of which shape our sense of self and identity.

Our Social Caravan

By Todd Schoepflin

Each time I teach a Social Psychology course, I enjoy showing students excerpts from The Saturated Self by Kenneth Gergen. As described in the book, we live in a time when we can meet people from anywhere in the world, and those relationships can endure because of travel capabilities and technologies. The following passages can be applied to both romantic relationships and friendships, but the focus of my post is friendships:

A century ago, social relationships were largely confined to the distance of an easy walk. Most were conducted in person, within small communities: family, neighbors, townspeople. Yes, the horse and carriage made longer trips possible, but even a trip of thirty miles could take all day. The railroad could speed one away, but cost and availability limited such travel. If one moved from the community, relationships were likely to end. From birth to death one could depend on relatively even-textured social surroundings. Words, faces, gestures, and possibilities were relatively consistent, coherent, and slow to change (p. 61, emphasis mine).

Formerly, increases in time and distance between persons typically meant loss. When someone moved away, the relationship would languish. Long-distance visits were arduous, and the mails slow. Thus, as one grew older, many active participants would fade from one’s life. Today, time and distance are no longer such serious threats to a relationship. One may sustain an intimacy over thousands of miles by frequent telephone raptures punctuated by occasional visits (p. 62).

Macro Meets Micro: Time Management

By Karen Sternheimer

I’d like to think I’m pretty good at managing my time. At least until I start thinking about time as linked with structural forces, and then I realize there are a lot of factors at play in the regulation of time that are not solely up to the individual.

Tears as Social Phenomenon

By Cornelia Mayr

November marks the point in the year when the cold beings to set in. Fields, buildings and streets are blanketed in heavy fog, blurring the city like an old painting. Trees look like skeletons and dawn frost carpets the grass. It is the time when biting winds gnaw on our skin and whip chilly, wintry air into our eyelashes. Our eyes tear up, because it's freezing.

Tears keep our eyes lubricated when it is cold and blustery; wash away smoke, dust or other irritant substances; and protect us from foreign particles that enter the eye’s environment. Though some animals do have the physiological ability to produce tears, humans are the only creatures whose tears can be triggered emotionally.

Competitive Socialization and Exercise

By Karen Sternheimer

I’m not training for a triathlon. At least I don’t think I am.

Occasionally, people ask me if I am training for an event like a triathlon because my workout routine at our local rec center is pretty intense, and I can work out for an unusually long time. The staff might notice that some days I’m at the gym before the crack of dawn, go home for breakfast, and return soon after for a few hours of lap swimming. I also watch lots of videos on YouTube with training tips for swimming and running.

Why do I do this, if I’m not training for an event or trying to lose weight, you might wonder? I actually enjoy doing it.

Lonely at the Top: The Toll of “High Functioning” Depression and Our Pandemic Mental Health Crisis

By Stacy Torres

From the vantage of midlife, I’ve pondered social mobility’s toll on myself and others who’ve climbed from the poor or working-class into the professional class. I’ve spent my entire life developing a titanium outer shell, making myself strong and tough as poverty conspired to knock me off track. Skilled at powering through, I’ve worn my resilience like a Purple Heart. I had to fight. And fight. And fight.

But I’m tired of running to stay in place. At 42, I still spend considerable time quieting the inner monologue that says I’m not good enough. In my current position as an assistant professor of sociology, work and productivity remain intertwined with my identity and self-worth. Rejections can feel personally crushing. I’ve often dwelled on my failures, feeling like an imposter. Being hard on myself served me in the climb, but harmful perfectionism now yields diminishing returns.

Greetings: The Cultural Context of Saying Hello

By Karen Sternheimer

Saying hello seems pretty straightforward, and something we seldom think about unless we are in an unusual cultural context. When do we offer a greeting, and when we do, what do we say? Recent travels abroad made me think about these questions as I interacted with people who spoke different languages and had different cultural customs.

We usually don’t have to think much about these questions because we have cultural and social scripts that guide our behavior when interacting with others. We might think of these scripts as a series of words and actions to take in particular situations.

Smile for a Change

By Cornelia Mayr

Department of Sociology, University of Klagenfurt, Austria

“The circus is coming! The circus is coming!” a colorful street poster silently shouted at us while a friend and I were walking down the sidewalk. Amazing trapeze artists, skilled acrobats in fabulous costumes and exotic animals, all captured in a performing pose in front of a tent-like symbol. Right next to the artistic performers grinned the huge face of a comical clown cheerfully down on us. “Clowns are creepy,” my friend claimed determinedly. “Why?” I asked him. “It’s because. I don’t know. Just look at them. They are... clownish.”