This article examines Sahar Akhtar’s antidiscrimination approach and global social status framework in immigration ethics and identifies possible pressure points in its practical application. Within immigration literature, Akhtar’s account offers a significant intervention by arguing that identity-based selective immigration may not be inherently impermissible, but must be carefully considered according to policy effects on group-based global vulnerability, way-of-life, and self-respect. Through an analysis of Akhtar’s treatment of specific cases (Navajo, Arab, and Jewish cases) the article identifies possible tensions in how relational vulnerability is weighed. It then assesses the framework’s application to the Palestine/Israel case, arguing that while Akhtar offers critical insight on Israel’s Law of Return, the alternatives she gestures toward may not fully resolve the degrading effects with which the framework is concerned. The article does not reject Akhtar’s framework, but argues that its application requires further attention to three pressure points: the difficulty of settling relational vulnerability, the possibility that less harmful immigration policy alternatives may still preserve degrading inequalities, and the role of ethno-national state structures in limiting genuinely non-discriminatory policy options. The article aims to contribute a critical perspective in real-world application of antidiscrimination duties and the global social status framework intervention offered by Akhtar.
This article is a grounded theorizing study exploring pluralistic views of body size based on interviews with Black, big-bodied women living in Khayelitsha, a township in Cape Town, South Africa. The aim is to articulate a system of beliefs that affirms the possibility that all body sizes can be the right size and defies the idea of intentional change in body size. Using a Constructivist Grounded Theory approach, we introduce and explore three analytical categories: bodies as given, bodies as circumstantial, and maintaining bodies as given. The first category refers to viewing body size as predetermined and, to a very limited extent, changeable through intentional action. Changes are partly explained by natural events such as growing up, giving birth, and aging. The second category refers to assumed connections between body size and living conditions or mood, such as happiness or worry. The third category, maintaining bodies as given, complements the idea of bodies as given and provides an understanding of changes in body size that are not covered by the idea of circumstantial bodies. This article shows how these ideas encourage efforts toward maintaining body size rather than changing it.
In March 2018, the Pueblo Sin Fronteras migrant caravan began making their way to the U.S. border, drawing political and media attention from the United States. News coverage of immigrants and migration events have historically been linked to negative topics, such as poverty, disease, crime, drugs, and threats to the American way of life. These negative themes emerged against the backdrop of the Trump administration and their use of inflammatory rhetoric, describing migrants as social, economic, and criminal threats to U.S. border security. To obtain a better understanding of the media’s construction of migrants fleeing to the U.S., we conducted a summative content analysis of online news articles from CNN and Fox News covering the 2018 Pueblo Sin Fronteras migrant caravan. This research found that while two sources can report on the same event, contrasting framing and contextualization can leave readers with extremely different messages. Implications regarding media influence on public understanding of and support for U.S. immigration policies are also discussed.
The Israeli welfare state has linked its welfare policies to its Zionist goals, creating different levels of access to public resources for different social groups. While most research has focused on specific groups, benefits, or periods, this paper provides a more comprehensive look by examining the connection between the Israeli welfare state inequalities and the prolonged Israel-Palestinian conflict. Using an intersectional lens, I evaluate how the conflict interacts with other oppressive forces, such as sexism, ethno-racism, and nationalism, to affect Israeli civil lives in non-military but no less disruptive ways. The paper introduces the concept of the bureaucratic logic, which refers to how the welfare state exercises power over its beneficiaries, reinscribing the most marginalized groups in Israeli society—Mizrahi Jewish mothers, Ethiopian Jewish mothers, and Palestinian-Israeli mothers—into lives of poverty. The bureaucratic logic is shaped by the overarching binary of “Jews versus Arabs,” which works to exclude Palestinians, preserve Jewish supremacy, and bracket Jewish ethno-racial inequalities. The analysis demonstrates that the Israeli welfare state uses its power to define and reproduce the gendered, ethno-racial, and ethnonational boundaries of Israeli society, ensuring the preservation of the existing power structure rather than the welfare of its most marginalized residents.
Palestine solidarity protests, ignited after October 2023 to pressure Canada to end complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, have faced intense police repression amid state and media discourses framing these as hubs of “hate.” This article argues that Canadian policing agencies intuitively align against Palestine solidarity protests due to affective affinities with Israel. We extend the strategic incapacitation literature by demonstrating how police absorb racial ideas of the War on Terror that enshrine Israel as a civilizational ally and construct predominantly Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab protestors as threats. Through an analysis of police communications and recorded protest violence in Toronto and Vancouver, we discuss how protest policing is informed by organizationally structured forms of police knowledge, which reflect the interests of pro-Israel politics. Pigmented by the contours of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian racism, the Palestine solidarity protests are delegitimized by amplifying antisemitism claims. Police at protests wear patches with the racially laden violent symbology of the “thin blue line”—most recently taken up by the “blue lives matter” movement—infusing pro-Israeli symbolism with vigilante violence. We contribute to critical scholarship on protest policing, police subculture, and race by foregrounding the racial grammar normalized under the War on Terror to explain police violence against Palestine solidarity movements.
This article looks at the historical origins and political contours of the Association for Humanist Sociology (AHS). In particular, I explore the impact of a radical sociological movement in the 1960s and 1970s, its institutional and disciplinary impact, and the ways in which AHS represented and expanded its visions. I conclude by proposing that the success of AHS will be in its ability to similarly embrace and further drive a revolutionary sociology steeped in a humanist critique of colonialism, racism, patriarchy and other forms of institutionalized exploitation and injustice.
This article advances a revolutionary framework for humanist sociology grounded in the struggle for human emancipation amid intensifying capitalist crisis, racialized exploitation, ecological collapse, and emergent fascist rule. Drawing on Marxist, Black radical, and humanist traditions, we distinguish between a bourgeois “science-of-humanity” that interprets and manages inequality while reproducing capitalist hegemony, and a revolutionary “science-for-humanity” committed to transforming the material conditions that produce dehumanization. We argue that humanist sociology is inseparable from the humanist imperative – the ethical and political responsibility to actively struggle for systemic change. Central to this analysis is the dialectical relationship between class and race, with particular attention to anti-Blackness as a strategic weapon of capitalist domination and a key obstacle to working-class unity. Within this framework, woke is theorized not as a pejorative slogan, but a renewed expression of race and class consciousness expanded through collective struggle against white supremacy, capitalism, and fascism. Situating contemporary struggles within a world-historical context, we identify three interconnected fronts of struggle – the fight against inequality and poverty, the fight against state violence and militarism, and the fight for revolutionary education – as key sites for cultivating woke revolutionary consciousness and building multiracial, multinational, and multigender working-class power aimed at abolishing systems of dehumanization.
Betty and Al Lee initiated the founding of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) 75 years ago and the Association for Humanist Sociology 50 years ago. The political and conceptual changes in sociology and American society bracketed between 1951 and 1976 as well as the change in the direction of change with the advent and reformulations of neo-liberalism over the last 50 years allows us to appreciate the prescience of the Lees. Raymond Williams concept of a structure of feeling suggests ways creative minds can capture in their imagination the urgency of what remains unsaid in one’s own historical time. None of us can see the future in the way that Asimov’s fictional “psychohistorian,” Hari Seldon, could predict it; perhaps, though, from the vantage point of humanist sociology, we can discern vacancies in our present and gather tools for its making.
In this issue, the first of two special issues to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the journal, we look back at our origins and reassert the important of doing humanist sociology. Now, more than ever, the contributors to this special issue feel that the type of sociology that we teach and practice is essential to the betterment of our profession, but also, and more importantly, to the betterment of our society.
Academic research in sociology primarily defines problems, explores puzzles, develops theory, and produces knowledge for colleagues in academia. I argue for a greater focus on the study of solutions and our active participation in bringing them about. This article explores the literature on public sociology and scholar activism, as well as examples focused on researching and teaching climate and environmental justice. An exploration of scholar activism can tell us more about how to do humanist sociology in service to climate justice.
This article examines how Zionism has functioned as both a settler-colonial project and an instrument of imperial dominance. Drawing on the works of Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, Norman Finkelstein, Eric Hobsbawm, Erik Olin Wright, Louis Althusser, Perry Anderson, Antonio Gramsci, Maxim Rodinson, David Harvey, Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Nelson Mandela, George Habash, and Abdel Wahab El-Messiri, the study situates Israel within the broader context of Western hegemony. Incorporating Althusser’s perspective on ideological state apparatuses, the paper explores how Zionist narratives legitimize imperial control. Gramsci and Anderson’s theories of hegemony elucidate Israel’s role in advancing Western interests, while Harvey’s critique of neoliberalism reveals Israel’s integration into global capitalism through its military and technology sectors. A key focus of this critical examination is the normalization of Israeli-Arab relations, particularly in the wake of the Abraham Accords, arguing that these agreements serve imperial interests while undermining Palestinian resistance. This study incorporates post-colonial and Marxist critiques to analyze the future of Palestinian liberation within the broader struggle against global imperialism. It concludes that Israel’s role in the imperialist system is dynamic, evolving alongside shifting geopolitical strategies and necessitating renewed anti-colonial and anti-imperialist resistance.
Humanist sociology has long faced challenges in remaining relevant amid mainstream sociology and ongoing political and economic turmoil. This piece explores the “science in service of humanity” tenets of humanist sociology in the face of challenges and changes of the twenty-first century. Drawing on humanist sociologists of the past to guide this discussion, it also explores how sociologists can survive and thrive amid cultural divisiveness, distrust of scientific facts, and the pressures of securing and maintaining a career as a sociologist.
On the fiftieth anniversary of Humanity & Society , I reflect on the compatibility of humanist sociology and the academy as an institution. While public-facing work in academia continues to be acknowledged and, at least in some places, celebrated, it nonetheless places limits on its practitioners. In this article, I focus on these limitations and how being a scholar-activist is not compatible with being an activist-scholar.
Euro-humanism often appears progressive while masking its complicity with oppressive systems. The concept of Euro-humanism cannot be considered in isolation, as its foundational knowledge is intricately linked with the dynamics of racial capitalism and imperialism. This article explores the roots and lasting influence of Euro-humanist thought on modern humanism. It calls for a new humanist epistemology that goes beyond the exploitative rationale of Euro-humanism. This involves creating models that recognize every human being’s intrinsic value. Realizing this humanism requires using knowledge systems of Othered people to radically reshape it.
Humanist sociologists seek to address social problems and create positive social change. Humanist sociology tends to focus on issues of human rights, and thus humanist sociologists must challenge themselves to address issues pertaining to animals and the natural environment. For those who may not yet be convinced of the inherent import of animal and environmental issues, this essay explains how animal exploitation ultimately harms humans, either directly or through harming the natural environment. Thus, even if one were still caught in the anthropocentric grip of sociology’s past, animal issues can become relevant by virtue of their damage to humans. However, to achieve an emancipatory humanist sociology for humans, animals, and the environment, this anthropocentrism must be abolished alongside the capitalist structures that profit from their exploitation.
In this article, we provide readers with a brief history of the philosophy, origin, and institutionalization of four seemingly-distinct disciplines (Anthropology, Psychology, Mathematics, and Medicine) to illustrate the undercurrents of humanistic paradigms that guide each. In delineating these undercurrents, and in reflecting on their histories with the philosophy of humanism, we aim to show readers that we collectively share a legacy of disciplinary-specific humanistic struggle, which can unite us on our campuses and beyond. In contextualizing this overview through the concept of sociological hypnagogia within and outside of the structures of academia, we encourage readers to reflect on the role and responsibilities we have as humanistic sociologists toward contemporary sociopolitical and humanistic crises, and encourage the development of interdisciplinary solidarities with scholars who share similar histories of disciplinary-specific humanistic struggle.
This crochet piece was begun after Aaron Bushnell’s act of protest and completed over the course of a year and a half. Measuring at 50″ × 58″, made with 21,025 half-double crochet stitches, a 4.00 mm hook and medium-weight acrylic yarn, it reflects endurance and care through creative expression. The work became a meditative response to global suffering and a way to draw attention where it is often averted.
To commemorate the Association for Humanist Sociology’s (AHS) 50th anniversary, in this article I reflect on the influence of the organization’s objectives on academic sociology, and my own practice of humanism in my everyday life. First, I briefly summarize the presence of humanist sociology in the origin story of 20th century U.S. sociology. Next, I discuss my years of affiliation and service to AHS and reflect on the values added from this mutual relationship. Then, I reflect on humanism in our everyday lives as sociologists – for example, in what we teach and research as employees of our institutions. Finally, I conclude with a discussion on the significance of humanist sociology amidst the whither of academia, and my vision for the future of the organization that has a significant role to play in the coming years.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s (1862–1931) contributions as a journalist and activist have been documented extensively. However, her contributions to the discipline of sociology have not been fully acknowledged. Moreover, despite the analyses of gender and race in U.S. society that Wells-Barnett presented in her work, she has yet to be formally canonized. The marginalization of Wells-Barnett and her scholarship has implications for the discipline, principally in doctoral programs where the sociological canon is reproduced. Using the framework of Black feminist thought, this paper asserts that the intellectual contributions of Ida B. Wells-Barnett fulfill the criteria to be considered a classical theory. Through an examination of Wells-Barnett’s 1895 book The Red Record , I posit that Wells-Barnett’s scholarship was a precursor to intersectionality, surveying historical context and power as it relates to racialized violence. The paper concludes with suggestions for substantively integrating her scholarship into sociological curricula.
This paper explores how yoga has helped me become a better professor. I begin by reflecting on the challenges of teaching race and ethnic relations as a White faculty member at a predominantly White institution, and how my early efforts were marked by insecurity, resistance, and disembodiment. I then trace how my personal yoga practice led me to incorporate contemplative practices such as meditation, reflective journaling, and active listening into my courses. Drawing on student reflections, I show how these practices helped cultivate openness, empathy, and critical engagement with systemic racism.
