Magnified Trauma: Losing Your Home While Elderly

On August 4, 2025October 20, 2025 By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Immigration, Population, Aging, and Demography, Karen Sternheimer1 Comment

By Karen Sternheimer

This year has been particularly challenging for the elderly people in my neighborhood, or I should say my former—and hopefully future—neighborhood. The Los Angeles firestorm earlier this year wiped out more than 16,000 structures, including my own. It also destroyed my 87-year-old mother-in-law’s home of 60 years.

While it’s impossible to know exactly how many people aged 65 or older lost their homes, we do know that older people were more likely to die as the result of the fires. Of the 30 deaths listed on the Los Angeles County Coroner’s website, 23—nearly 77 percent of victims—were 65 or older. Mobility issues can make evacuation more difficult, especially for people who don’t drive.

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Travel and Relationships

On July 29, 2025October 20, 2025 By econnellIn Karen Sternheimer, Relationships, Marriage and Family1 Comment

By Karen Sternheimer

Sociologists have long studied marriage and relationships, asking big-picture questions about how relationships reflect changing social structure, shifts in gender and power, and economic factors. Sociologists are also interested in interpersonal experiences, such as how do people make meaning of love and relationships? How is love more than just a private feeling but a public issue?

We know that strong relationships with family and friends are good for longevity and overall health, with one study finding that strong social ties is as important as healthy eating and active living for overall health. This is more than just interesting intellectually—we all likely want to cultivate strong relationships for both our short-term and long-term happiness. But it can be easier said than done, especially if we are not in social situations where we might meet new people (such as, after we are no longer students or no longer have children who are students).

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The Drama of a Lost Credit Card: Living in a Culture of Consumption

On July 21, 2025October 20, 2025 By econnellIn Karen Sternheimer, Popular Culture and ConsumptionLeave a comment

By Karen Sternheimer

Recently my credit card fell out of a zipped lining in my handheld water bottle while running. I don’t usually carry a credit card for a run but planned on stopping for a breakfast burrito as a special treat when I was done. I hadn’t been to the restaurant before and wasn’t sure that they accepted Apple Pay (they did), so I thought best to have the actual card with me just in case.

I retraced my steps to no avail, it was gone. A lost credit card is easy enough to remedy. I went to the app and clicked that it was lost. It was inactivated and a new one would be mailed in 5-7 days.

This shouldn’t be a major crisis, especially after losing my home and most of my possessions in a wildfire a few months earlier. But it really upset me, and I used my sociological imagination to unpack why. The loss of a central artifact in our consumer culture sheds light on the role of consumption itself.

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On the Disappearance of Community, Part 2

On June 2, 2025October 20, 2025 By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Cities and Urbanization, Karen Sternheimer1 Comment

By Karen Sternheimer

A few months ago, I wrote about how losing a home is not just about losing one’s place to live, but losing a community and the people within it. People around us can shape our daily rhythms and feelings of connectedness to place. Sociologists study the importance of communities, most notably how they are not just the places in which our everyday lives take place, but provide access to opportunities, economic contexts, and impact our health.

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Surreal or Hyperreal? Applying Theory to Disaster

On May 5, 2025October 21, 2025 By econnellIn Karen Sternheimer, TheoryLeave a comment

By Karen Sternheimer

How often do you use the word “surreal” to describe an unusual or otherwise mind-boggling experience? That’s the word that kept coming to mind when visiting the remains of my home for the first time two months after it burned down. The AI overview of the word “surreal” describes it as “strange, dreamlike, or unbelievable, often seeming detached from ordinary reality and evoking a sense of the uncanny or fantastic.” Yep, that’s the word.

It got me thinking about the differences—and similarities—between surreal and hyperreal—a concept central to postmodern theory which sociologists have sometimes used to critique traditional theoretical approaches. Can sociological theory help teach us about the meanings we make of disaster?

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Minimalism after Losing “Everything”

On April 14, 2025October 21, 2025 By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Karen Sternheimer, Popular Culture and Consumption3 Comments

By Karen Sternheimer

Over the years, I’ve written about minimalism a lot on this site. After losing my home and most of my possessions in the Los Angeles fire storm in January 2025, I am now officially a minimalist.

Before having this experience, when I’d see emotional reports of people returning to a burnt home, sifting through wreckage of their former stuff, I couldn’t bear to imagine that happening to me. A quick news search of the terms “lost everything in a fire” yields countless hits. What does it mean to lose “everything,” from an insider’s perspective, and why might we define our possessions as “everything” from a sociological perspective?

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