A long-standing public health measure, social distancing became a contested issue in academic literature and public discourse during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study revisits the puzzle of social distancing behaviors during the pandemic in the United States. It leverages the Fundamental Cause Theory (FCT) to examine how social and economic disparities, group norms associated with political partisanship, and states' COVID-19 policy response shaped county-level social distancing behavior during the different waves of the pandemic in 50 states. Drawing upon nationally representative secondary data, results indicate that race, income level, income inequality, political orientation, vaccination rate, and state-level policy significantly influenced aggregate social distancing behaviors. These effects were not uniform across the different waves and suggest a complex interaction of social conditions in shaping social distancing patterns during the pandemic.
This discussion essay, which mainly draws from Richard V. Reeves, explores growing gender disparities in education and the workforce via the prism of positive masculinity. It makes the case that developmental structural and cultural factors-rather than personal failure-are the primary causes of boys deteriorating academic performance and subsequent difficulties in the workplace. According to neuroscientific research boys' cognitive development lags behind girls during crucial school years, especially in areas like impulse control planning and verbal skills. This can lead to poorer academic performance and higher dropout rates. Even though there are still gender differences in STEM fields where women are now more likely than men to enroll in and complete degrees in higher education. Reeves provides a practical and inclusive framework that acknowledges male disadvantage while rejecting misogyny in contrast to the combative rhetoric of manosphere leaders like Donald Trump and Andrew Tate. In addition to specific educational reforms, this discussion argues that encouraging a positive emotionally intelligent version of masculinity can help reduce gender disparities without undermining feminist advancements. In the end, encouraging positive masculinity promotes equity, flexibility, and mutual social progress.
Despite extensive research on spatial access to social services, scholars tend to overlook cultural organizations as a component of neighborhood institutional infrastructure. Access to cultural resources is particularly important for newcomers to navigate and reshape social boundaries. This study explores the spatial dimensions of cultural organizations at the neighborhood level in New York City, which we conceptualize as "cultural accessibility" through two measures: the number of organizations within a 1-mile radius (spatial availability) and the distance to the nearest organization (spatial proximity). Using spatial analysis and regression models, we focus on the intersection of neighborhoods' ethnoracial composition and concentrated immigration. Our findings reveal divergent patterns: higher immigrant concentration reduces access in White neighborhoods, but in Hispanic and Asian neighborhoods, it increases access. Black neighborhoods exhibit lower cultural accessibility, which is largely explained by socioeconomic disadvantage and residential mobility. These patterns persist in access to citywide organizations, while ethnic-oriented organizations enhance access across immigrant neighborhoods of diverse ethnoracial types. Our study furthers the understanding of spatial inequalities in cultural access and advocates for greater attention to it role in shaping opportunities for immigrant communities.
Using cross-sectional face-to-face survey data collected in 2018 from 234 Chinese university students, this study examines how social health and media use relate to cyberbullying victimization, focusing on the moderating effects of social media use and face loss (i.e., perceived damage to one's public self-image). Our approach is based in routine activity theory, which emphasizes that victimization occurs when motivated offenders encounter suitable targets engaged in risky activities without capable guardianship. Ordinary least squares regression and conditional process analyses indicate that depression and anxiety increase cybervictimization risk, especially among daily social media users; face loss moderates the association between social health and cybervictimization. These findings extend routine activity theory to the Chinese context by demonstrating that social health and cultural factors shape online target suitability. Practically, we offer recommendations for universities and policymakers to strengthen prevention and intervention, such as improving cyberbullying awareness and providing digital-literacy training.
As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly prevalent in everyday life, its impact on higher education raises important sociological questions regarding the nature of learning, the shaping of professional identities, and broader implications for academia. The current study examines how college educators are discussing these AI-related issues through posts on the subreddit r/Professors. A qualitative content analysis of 189 posts from a 30-day period revealed four interrelated themes: (1) Help-seeking, (2) Proposing solutions, (3) Ways students use AI and how to "police" it, and (4) Professors' perspectives on the impact of AI in higher education. Many posts expressed uncertainty, frustration, and demoralization as faculty attempt to navigate student use of AI, which they often perceive as dishonest and potentially destabilizing to academia. While some sought or offered strategies to mitigate student AI use or integrate AI constructively, many lamented their growing role as "AI police," a shift that strains relationships with students and undermines morale. Overall, faculty expressed a sense of urgency: Higher education must adapt to AI or risk losing credibility. These findings highlight how these rapid technological changes have reshaped the social organization of teaching, the boundaries of academic labor, and the legitimacy of higher education as a whole.
This article examines the interactions of low socioeconomic status (SES) parents of children with disabilities with the educational system's institutions in their pursuit of special education services. In-depth interviews with low-SES parents indicate that they possess a strong class consciousness, derived from their understanding of social hierarchy and realizing that their lower position within this hierarchy does not afford them social advantages. Moreover, the findings indicate that the institutional interactions of low-SES parents concerning their children's special education services are characterized by a choice between two suboptimal outcomes: acquiescing to the system's stance and professional authority or engaging in conflict with the system and its professional decisions. The study highlights that all low-SES parents ultimately achieved the same outcomes: receiving only basic, and at times minimal, services. The Discussion addresses what we call the "gap preservation mechanism." It explains that even when low-SES parents use the same practices as higher-SES parents, they are still seen as having a subaltern status when it comes to parenting children with disabilities. It appears that as long as the public system does not offset the mechanisms that perpetuate educational disparities, the prospects of low-SES parents successfully advocating for the special education services they deem desirable and optimal for their children remain low.
This study examines socioeconomic change at the neighborhood level in 10 small metropolitan areas in the Midwest affected by deindustrialization between 1970 and 2019. Using k-means cluster analysis, four neighborhood typologies were identified. Only 33.8% of neighborhoods remained in the same classification over the 5 decades. In 1970, 53.0% of neighborhoods were classified as middle-income compared to 39.2% by 2019, suggesting erosion of the middle-income neighborhood. By 2019, there were three types of metropolitan areas. One retained upper-middle-income and middle-class neighborhoods in the city and a few struggling neighborhoods in the suburbs. The second type had few upper-middle- or middle-income neighborhoods remaining in the central city by 2019 and an expansion of struggling tracts into the suburbs, suggesting the suburbanization of poverty. The third type was a hybrid with pockets of upper-middle-/middle-income neighborhoods remaining in the city by 2019 and a few struggling neighborhoods in the suburbs.
Rising racial diversity among active-duty military and veterans has coincided with a shift from predominantly Republican and conservative identification to considerable variation in political alignments and views. Given the sizeable voting bloc that veterans represent, we ask the following: (1) How does race/ethnicity impact veterans' political affiliation and ideology? (2) To what extent do service length and political period (Obama/Trump) moderate this impact? Using 2010-2018 General Social Survey data, we find that veterans identify as Republican and conservative at higher rates than non-veterans and at higher rates when serving longer military tenures. Yet, Black veterans largely eschew both Republican and conservative identification, while Hispanic veterans tend to avoid Republican affiliation but lean conservative. Estimates also denote significant interactions between race/ethnicity and veteran status, service length, and political period. Taken together, our results shed important light on the complex ways in which race/ethnicity and military service shape political party and ideological leanings, holding implications for future elections, representation, and research.
Since 2002, the United States government has detained almost 800 men in a legal vacuum at Guant & aacute;namo Bay Detention Camp as a part of the global war on terror. Detainees at Guant & aacute;namo Bay Detention Camp have participated in hunger strikes and other forms of necroresistance, or bodily weaponization, seeking due process, an end to torture, and dignity. Their protest claims were counterframed by the American government through a rhetorical conflict that mirrored their simultaneous battle over bodily autonomy. After performing a content analysis of 101 publicly available documents that discussed the protests and suicides at Guant & aacute;namo Bay Detention Camp, I argue that the dual clashes of framing and counterframing, fasting and forced feeding identify an inherent condition of necroresistance. The inability to define the conditions of one's necroresistance can further the power of the biosovereign. Through bodily appropriation, impenetrable might of the biosovereign and inhumanity of the resister are made legible, obscuring the social and political conditions of dehumanization and domination. This dually faceted yet interdependent interplay of resistance and repression upon bodily and rhetorical lines reveals the significance of a multidimensional analysis of power in the ability to name the hunger for justice that leads the necroresister to starve.
This study focuses on identifying the growth in the field of transgender research from the earlier field till now. It aims to analyze the year-wise publication activity, leading authors, most productive countries, collaboration among authors and countries, evolution of themes and trends, and the most frequently used keyword. The bibliographic data for the study was retrieved from the Scopus database and the analysis was performed using the software Biblioshiny, VOSviewer, and MS Excel. The earliest document indexed is from 1994. The analysis found that the research activity in this field had a significant increase from 2016 onward, with 2024 identified as the peak year. Sari L. Reisner from the United States is the most productive author. The United States, having more than half of the publications, is the dominant contributor, also having the highest number of collaborations. The keyword and thematic analysis reveals that recent years give more attention to clinical and health-care related topics. This study will help researchers by providing an overview to the evolution and present situation of global transgender research.
This paper examines the killing of fifteen-year-old Felani Khatun at the Bangladesh-India border to interrogate how postcolonial border regimes produce racialized and gendered forms of violence. Drawing on feminist, postcolonial, and migration studies frameworks, I conceptualize the "illegal body" as a product of sovereign power-where law, religion, and class converge to determine whose lives are protected and whose deaths are rendered ungrievable. Situating Felani's killing within the intertwined histories of Partition, nationalism, and securitization, the paper traces how colonial laws such as the Foreigners Act and contemporary policies like the Citizenship Amendment Act reproduce exclusionary citizenship regimes that criminalize Muslim mobility. Through a close reading of public narratives, legal proceedings, and human rights reports, the analysis reveals that border violence is not an anomaly but a routine performance of sovereignty that transforms legality into a tool of dispossession. By linking gendered nationalism, humanitarian discourse, and state power, this study contributes to the sociology of borders and migration by theorizing how sovereign violence and moral governance sustain the production of disposable lives at postcolonial frontiers.
Morrison's Beloved (1987) presents the house at 124 Bluestone Road in Cincinnati, Ohio, as a symbol of a confluence of the traumatically lived experience of Blacks and their constant memories of the harrowing experience they underwent in Sweet Home, Kentucky. Using Kristeva's notion of abjection, this article makes the case that slavery causes a crisis of familial and bodily boundaries that undermines subjectivity. Slavery mercilessly violates bodily autonomy and leads to seclusion and fragmentation. Sethe and her daughter Denver, suffer tremendously at the house because of their secluded life. Nonetheless, her daughter, feeling a necessity for a communal bonding of Black women as a healing force through narrative sharing, embarks upon an uncustomary world of outside to realize some agency to move on. Therefore, through a correlation between Kristeva's abjection theory, slavery, and women bonding as a manifestation of resilience, I argue that Black characters' trauma of enslavement paves the way for abjection, but they re-stabilize identity and build resilience through communal support.
This study explores factors associated with Latino "low profile" behavior, a series of acts or intentions that individuals use to reduce or mitigate exposure to a variety of risky environments and institutional threats, particularly law enforcement. Tied to prior research and their importance in criminal justice domains, this study draws inspiration from constructivist and interactionist frameworks to examine the effect of three factors on low profile behavior: skin color, police-based discrimination, and Latino threat. Using an online sample of 294 Latino adults from the United States, survey data revealed the more threatening that respondents viewed other Latinos, the less they adhere to low profile behavior. Skin color and police-based discrimination did not influence the outcome. Of all variables analyzed including statistical controls, procedural justice was the most influential on low profile behavior. These varied findings are discussed.
The perceived threat of victimization can impact an individual's well-being in their neighborhood. For that reason, extensive research has investigated how the perceived threat of victimization is related to the characteristics of a neighborhood. The current article attempts to shed a new light on this relationship by employing cluster analysis to study (the co-occurrence of) cognitive (perceived risk) and affective (fear) threat perceptions. Using multinomial logistic regression analysis, we then test if these threat perception clusters can be explained by neighborhood characteristics. The analyses revealed several distinct threat perception clusters. Cluster membership is partly explained by neighborhood characteristics. We found that the degree of observed social disorder in the neighborhood differentiated all clusters, irrespective of threat severity, whereas other neighborhood characteristics distinguished only the clusters with the highest levels of perceived threat. These findings contribute to a more detailed understanding of (neighborhood effects on) threat perceptions and suggests ways in which policy interventions might be more targeted, in terms of neighborhood characteristics and target groups.
