Everyday Sociology Blog

Fifth Anniversary of Everyday Sociology Blog!

We have now been blogging about sociology for five years. Thanks to all of our readers for joining in the sociological conversation! Here's some info about the blog for those of you new to our site.

 

 

 

For more video, go to www.youtube.com/nortonsoc

What is this site about?

What if sociologists ran the world?

Okay, that’s probably not going to happen any time soon, but what if they commented on everything from politics, religion, race, and inequality to pop culture on a colorful, fun, website?

That’s more like it.

Welcome to Everydaysociologyblog.com, a brand-new site that features interesting, informative, and most of all entertaining commentary from sociologists around the United States. Come to this site regularly to get a sociological take on what is happening in the news (and on what should be in the news).

Although this site was created primarily for people taking or teaching classes in sociology, we are all really students of sociology, aren’t we? Whether we know it or not, we all generate ideas about social groups, about why things happen and about what should be done to address some of the challenges our society faces (like terrorism, health care and education). Issues like war and peace, gay rights, and why Paris Hilton is always on the news are things that many people try and make sense of.

We are trying to figure this stuff out too, and the many tools that sociology offers will help us to do so. These tools are not magic wands or secret codes—in fact, we want to share them with you to so we can all have a deeper and richer understanding of the world around us.

So here’s what you can expect from this site:

1.  We promise to stay on top of current events and be as relevant as people over 25 with Ph.D.s possibly can be.
2. We will avoid using jargon and terms that you actually need a Ph.D. to understand (although personally I think even people with Ph.D.s sometimes just pretend to understand).
3. And most of all, we will keep things interesting—all of the posts on this site will pass the “so what?” test that some academic research frankly does not.

Sociology is a very diverse field, and our contributors have a wide variety of interests. You will see discussions of immigration, mental health, race, religion, gender, and other topics from a wide variety of perspectives. To bring in fresh ideas, we will also periodically have guest contributors.

And we will do more than lecture you. Even though most of us are professors who teach regularly, this site will be more of a conversation than a class. Okay, there might be some charts and graphs occasionally, but we promise there won’t be a test. We are going to do our best to help these ideas come to life through pictures and occasionally even streaming video. We also might write a little about our lives to bring some of the basics of sociology to life, but we promise—no endless blog rambling about what we had for dinner or random thoughts about why the cat hates the guy who lives next door.

You might be wondering—where do you fit in with all this? What about what you think? This site will present a variety of ideas and viewpoints, and you may not agree with some of them. That’s okay. In fact, sometimes we might purposefully play devil’s advocate.

For now we will just be posting our contributors’ columns, but eventually we will have a letter to the editor feature, which will allow you to respond to us with your thoughts, and we will also open select posts to reader comments. Remember, the point of this site is to learn more about how sociology helps us understand everyday life, not to vent! Quality control is really important to us, so you can be sure when you visit you won’t have to sift through a lot of junk.

So, welcome! We invite you to visit regularly and (eventually) to tell us what you think. But for now, sit back, relax, and enjoy the sociological conversation.

Karen Sternheimer

Editor