Category: Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine

Be Selfish: Volunteer

On By Karen SternheimerIn Karen Sternheimer, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine, Social Psychology1 Comment

By Karen Sternheimer

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We all know that volunteering is good for the group or organization we are helping. They get our free labor, leaving more specialized tasks for paid employees.

But what if you could gain more from volunteering than you give? Would that make you more likely to share your limited amount of free time?

As a perpetually busy person, I have often shied away from volunteering my time. This year I have volunteered to be on two non-work-related committees and for a trail race organization. It helps to share your time for a cause or activity that you care about. I remember decades ago, my grandfather, an avid golfer, volunteered to be an usher at a PGA tournament in his area. He talked about meeting the pro-golfers at the tournament for years after. He saw a few hours of his time as a very small price to pay for an opportunity to be in the same place as famous golfers.

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Skating Past Midlife Career Failure: Taking Inspiration from Figure Skaters

On By Karen SternheimerIn Popular Culture and Consumption, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine, Stacy Torres, Theory1 Comment
author Stacy Torres

By Stacy Torres

As a sociology professor without an athletic bone in my body, I’d hardly compare myself to an Olympian, but recent professional hurdles have reminded me how much academics share with competitive athletes in our big-risk, big-reward striving.

Facing the prospect of my own epic failure to secure a spot on the podium in my career—achieving tenure—long after the winter games have concluded, I’m still drawing inspiration from the examples of two American figure skaters, Alysa Liu and Ilia Malinin, with wildly divergent medal outcomes.

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The Robots are Taking Over: Low Wage Work and the Future

On By Karen SternheimerIn Behind the Headlines, Karen Sternheimer, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine, Social Problems, Politics, and Social ChangeLeave a comment
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By Karen Sternheimer

When I was in high school, I watched Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Years later, I didn’t remember much about the movie, other than the computer Hal’s monotone voice when speaking to Dave, the astronaut, who must “kill” Hal to save himself after Hal killed the rest of the crew.

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Impressions of Goffman

On By Karen SternheimerIn Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine, TheoryLeave a comment
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By Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Professor Emerita, University of Wisconsin-Parkside, associate faculty at Royal Roads University (Canada), and Director of the Center for Intercultural Dialogue

One of the concepts Erving Goffman wrote about was “impression management.” He was interested in the control people have over what others learn about them. Sometimes the impression one gives is quite different from the reality, and often that’s deliberate. Let me give an example, describing something from Goffman’s life. He has often been said to have been a “loner.” While it is true that he never co-authored a publication, there is a difference between publishing and more informal collaborations.

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From the Inside Out: Education is Still Big Business

On By Karen SternheimerIn Alyssa Lyons, Class and Stratification, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine3 Comments
Alyssa Lyons author photo

By Alyssa Lyons

When my daughter, my partner, and I walked into the large high school gymnasium that crisp fall Saturday, we were immediately overwhelmed. It was our very first high school fair, and my eighth-grade daughter was exploring her options. As we walked around the gym, we were surrounded by schools. Glossy brochures, shiny leaflets, and nifty swag adorned the tables as eager school representatives regaled us with dizzying statistics of high school graduation rates, college attendance, and career and internship prospects. 

While my family’s focus was on exploring different high schools in New York City, the sociologist in me couldn’t help but notice we were standing in the middle of a veritable marketplace with each school selling us its wares. Schools were competing against one another in real-time. Families were potential customers shopping around for a quality education. Each high school emphasized one selling point in particular: how their school would help prepare my daughter for the working world. In other words, how they would best prepare my daughter to be a worker in the labor market.

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High School and the Sports Spirit Complex

On By econnellIn Class and Stratification, Karen Sternheimer, Popular Culture and Consumption, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and MedicineLeave a comment

By Karen Sternheimer

I currently live about a block away from a large public high school. Students walk by sporting their school merch, including hats, t-shirts, and sweatshirts. During track meets, in addition to starter pistols, you can hear a wave of cheering from an apparently large crowd. They seem to have “school spirit.”

This, along with Michael Messner’s new book, The High School: Sports, Spirit, and Citizens 1903-2024, got me thinking about the concept of “school spirit” and why schools work so hard to cultivate it among students and communities. It harkened back memories of our high school cheerleaders’ ubiquitous chant at football games:

Yes, yes, yes, we do; we’ve got spirit, how about you?

The crowd was supposed to respond in kind. But why?

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The High School: An Analysis of Yearbooks

On By econnellIn Karen Sternheimer, Popular Culture and Consumption, Race and Ethnicity, Sex and Gender, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine, Social Problems, Politics, and Social ChangeLeave a comment

By Karen Sternheimer

Michael Messner’s new book, The High School: Sports, Spirit & Citizens, 1903-2024 is a great example of how artifacts of everyday life can become data for sociological analysis. As a scholar of gender and sports, Messner realized that yearbooks serve as a window to view past constructions of both sports and gender.

His own high school, Salinas High School, seemed like a natural fit, as he had about 30 years of books—not just his own, because his father served as a coach for nearly 30 years and other family members attended, he had decades of books. The book blends the author’s memories (and occasionally his niece’s reflections, who attended more recently) with content analysis of the number of pages spent on boys’ sports compared with girls’ sports.

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Teaching and Learning during Catastrophe

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Crime and Deviance, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change, Stacy Torres4 Comments

By Stacy Torres

The unease that greets me each morning, as I brace myself for the latest chaos erupting in higher education, listening to the radio and eating my oatmeal, feels both new and strangely familiar. I recognize this dread and the chronic fear of further attacks from living through September 11, 2001, in New York City.

But now that terror comes from my own government, with a torrent of executive orders and memos banning DEI, freezing communication, canceling research funding opportunities, terminating active grants, and capping NIH indirect research costs. The recent ICE detentions of Tufts doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk and Palestinian activist and legal permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University, my alma mater, sends another chill through me as I consider the repercussions of such intimidation for dissent and free speech.

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To Go or Not to Go:  Why Student Choice Matters in the Class Attendance Debate

On By econnellIn Monica Radu, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine7 Comments

By Monica Radu

Does attendance really matter?

It’s a question I ask myself a lot, especially on days when it feels like I’m lecturing to an empty classroom.

The topic of optional class attendance at colleges and universities often sparks heated debates. At its heart, this isn’t just about policies, it’s about agency, the ability of students to make meaningful choices about their education. In higher education, agency shapes how students engage with their learning environments, whether in a lecture hall, a small classroom, or a virtual meeting space.

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Why Many Americans Don’t Feel Worse About a UnitedHealthcare CEO’s Murder

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change, Stacy Torres1 Comment

By Stacy Torres

Confession time. I’m having difficulty mustering much sympathy for the brazen and targeted murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, shot outside a Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan as he walked to a shareholders meeting.

And apparently, I’m not alone. The intrigue-filled assassination has drawn the ire of Americans fuming at a health insurance industry that prioritizes profits over people’s lives. Social media reactions have ranged from dark, sarcastic humor to outright cheers, compelling UnitedHealthcare to turn off comments on a Facebook post about the murder when 41,000 of 46,000 reactions were laughing emojis. One user wrote, “My thoughts & prayers were out of network.” I couldn’t help but chuckle grimly.

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