A weekly link round-up of sociological work – work by sociologists, referencing sociologists, or just of interest to sociologists. This scatterplot feature is co-produced with Mike Bader.
Science, Knowledge, and Technology
- Historian and biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling reminds us that even biological sex has never been a simple binary.
- “If anything, our current post-truth moment is less a product of Latour’s ideas than a validation of them. In the way that a person notices her body only once something goes wrong with it, we are becoming conscious of the role that Latourian networks play in producing and sustaining knowledge only now that those networks are under assault.” The NYT profiles Bruno Latour.
Climate Change
- The Atlantic looks at how climate change is already furthering inequalities in the US, and perhaps threatening democracy itself.
- “Increasingly, those displaced seek to relocate in other countries as “climate change refugees,” but there’s a problem: the 1951 Refugee Convention, which defines the rights of displaced people, provides a list of things people must be fleeing from in order to be granted asylum or refuge. Climate change isn’t on the list.” National Geographic looks out how climate change causes unpredictable weather and increased droughts in Guatemala, in turn leading more Guatemalans to migrate North.
- The Spanish government just negotiated a deal with Spanish coal miners to close the last coal mines in the country in exchange for early retirement and other benefits, including job retraining to work in the green energy sector.
Affirmative Action
- “The concern for diversity was not contrived in the late 1970s as an end-run around the Constitution. Bakke did not introduce the diversity rationale so much as give it heightened importance and legal legitimacy.” Tony Chen and Lisa Stulberg on the early history of affirmative action.
- “When it comes to the ongoing debate over affirmative action in U.S. college admissions, both opponents and supporters among Asian-Americans have plenty to say. The problem is what people say about race-conscious affirmative action in higher education in the U.S. often doesn’t match how it is actually practiced.” OiYan Poon writes about her research on how activists (fail to) understand contemporary affirmative action practices.
