I talk about how we create societal narratives in most of my courses. These are stories we tell ourselves as a society about how we think things work. These narratives often have more to do with backing up other beliefs we have than with what is really going on. The problem is that these societal […]
Talk about voter fraud has been swirling around the internet a lot. This is where it is important to go out and look for good data. Is voter fraud a problem? (you know the answer if you read the title above) Should we be worried? Why are people talking about this? It is common in […]
Most students who take an introduction to sociology class don’t take another sociology class. That begs the question – why do we ask students to take this class? The short answer is that it helps people understand the effect of society on the individual. It also helps them see how the system works which, from […]
As the primary season gets underway, statistics are flying all over the place. It can be very hard to analyze how value and reliable they are. FiveThirtyEight is a great site that does a meta-analysis of the polling data so you can get a better look at what is really most likely to happen (remember that […]
I just ran into this story about an extreme norm violation. This is news because the violation is so unthinkable to us. In fact, we have declared public nudity illegal and she was charged accordingly. This kind of violation is so uncommon because this is one of our most deeply enforced norms, although it is […]
My introduction to sociology classes have been looking at class mobility the past couple of weeks. As I result, I have been looking more intensely at class mobility the past couple of weeks. I ran into a very thoughtful series of reports about the realities of mobility in the U.S. from the Pew Charitable Trust’s […]
A sociologist from my old department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amy Schalet, has completed a comparative study of Dutch and American attitudes towards teen sexuality. I haven’t read the book yet, but there was an interesting interview in Salon, an online magazine. The basic upshot of her research is that families in the […]
My introductory sociology classes have been looking at statistics. This made me think about how we represent income in the U.S. News stories often just report “average” income without defining what that means. The Census released a new report on Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance on September 13. Their press release states that median income […]
Berkshire Community College’s sociologists will be blogging here regularly. There is much in the world that can be connected to sociology. This blog gives us a place to bring together our commentary on current issues, resources, and ideas that connect to what we do in the classroom. We will be kicking the blog off at […]
