Mary Brinton has been studying gender inequality for a long time, motivated in particular by the high level of gender inequality in Japan and other East Asian societies. Her current project considers gender inequality in light of what many social demographers consider a crisis of the family as an institution—namely, the emergence of historically low birth rates throughout the postindustrial world.... Read more about Gender Inequality, Employment, and Family in Postindustrial Societies

The Confounding Island: Institutions, Culture and Mis-Development in Post-Colonial Jamaica was just delivered to the press by Professor Orlando Patterson. This book examines one of the world’s most perplexing societies. Famous for the spectacular successes of its athletes and musicians, its vibrant democracy, and its religiosity, Jamaica is equally infamous for being among the world’s most violent places.... Read more about Making Sense of a Perplexing Country and an unwieldy Subject: Studies in the sociology of development and of modern-day trafficking and slavery

In their new study, professors Devah Pager and Bruce Western and graduate students Helen Ho and Becca Goldstein examine the long-term consequences of legal debt for social, economic, and criminal justice outcomes.... Read more about The Costs and Consequences of Legal Debt: A Field Experiment

Environmental regulation is undergoing radical changes, posing a direct threat to America’s health and potentially deepening inequality.  Since the spring of 2017, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed sharp cuts in the testing of children for lead exposure, and the Interior Department directed the National Academy of Sciences to cease studying the health effects of a common mining technique that deposits toxic minerals in ground waters.  Meanwhile, recent investigative reports have documented that the appointment of top regulators with conflicting business interests at the EPA continues apace. ... Read more about Truly Toxic

Mario L. Small’s new book, Someone To Talk To, a study of how people decide whom to approach when seeking support, is an inquiry into human nature, a critique of network analysis, and a discourse on the role of qualitative research in the big-data era.

... Read more about Small’s *Someone To Talk To* Aims To Change How We Think about Networks

Scholarly and journalistic accounts of the recent successes of radical-right candidates and parties in Europe and the United States tend to conflate three phenomena: populism, nationalism, and authoritarianism. While all three are relevant features of contemporary politics, they are neither coterminous nor limited to the political right. This lack of analytical clarity has hindered explanations of the causes and consequences of radicalism on both sides of the Atlantic. In a new project that builds on his past empirical research, Bart Bonikowski draws analytical distinctions between populism, nationalism, and authoritarianism, theorizes their elective affinities, and examines their shifting prevalence over the past three decades, both in political discourse and public attitudes.... Read more about The Mobilization of Resentment: Making Sense of Populism, Nationalism, and Authoritarianism in the United States and Europe

We tend to think of social movements as promoters of social change, but might they also be key agents in maintaining—and even reinforcing—the status quo? Harvard professor Jocelyn Viterna, with graduate student Bo Yun Park and undergraduate students Quinn Sluzenski, Enya Huang, and Bryant Park, are examining hundreds of press releases from 10 oppositional “pairs” of U.S. social movements (e.g., gun rights vs gun control, anti-abortion rights vs pro-abortion rights, etc) to examine this question. Building from existing social movement theory, our team hypothesizes that all social movements incorporate culturally resonant “tethers” into their calls for social change. ... Read more about Examining the Unintended Consequences of Social Mobilization