Challenging Inequality: Why We Should All Love Boosters

On August 3, 2026August 4, 2026 By Karen SternheimerIn Class and Stratification, Crime and Deviance, Popular Culture and Consumption, Stacy Torres, TheoryLeave a comment

By Stacy Torres

If you see one movie in theaters this year, make it I Love Boosters, Renaissance man Boots Riley’s wildly inventive, absurdist comedy crime caper and love letter to the San Francisco Bay Area.

What’s a booster? Musician, writer, producer, filmmaker, and activist Riley (Sorry to Bother You) defined the term in The Coup’s eponymous 2006 rap anthem: “A booster is a person who jacks from the retail/ And sells it in the hood for dirt-cheap resale.” Both song and film pay tribute to the “hardworking women who risk jail-time just to make them a living.”

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Tell Me Lies: Power, Privilege, and What Goes Unsaid

On April 6, 2026 By Karen SternheimerIn Class and Stratification, Monica Radu, Popular Culture and Consumption, Race and Ethnicity, Theory1 Comment

By Monica Radu

I have been waiting years to write this. Tell Me Lies has wrapped after three seasons; For those unfamiliar, the TV series follows a group of college students as they navigate relationships, friendships, and identity over several years, with a central focus on Lucy and Stephen’s complicated and increasingly destructive relationship.

The main timeline begins in 2007, when Lucy starts college, and unfolds through her college years, while a flash forward to 2015 shows how those earlier dynamics continue to affect their lives into adulthood. When people talk about Tell Me Lies, the conversation usually centers on how “toxic” the relationships are. And they are. The lies, the manipulation, the emotional push and pull, the way certain dynamics keep repeating even when they clearly are not healthy. It is hard to miss.

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The Collective Effervescence of a Marathon

On March 13, 2026 By Karen SternheimerIn Karen Sternheimer, Popular Culture and Consumption, TheoryLeave a comment

By Karen Sternheimer

If you want to see the best humanity has to offer, run a marathon.

Emile Durkheim, one of sociology’s founders, coined the phrase “collective effervescence” in his 1912 book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life to describe coming together to experience something outside of everyday life. These experiences take on a religious-like fervor, with rituals that heighten a community’s cohesion.

Durkheim probably wasn’t thinking about marathons when he wrote about collective effervescence. The revival of the classic Greek 26.2-mile race had just recently happened in 1896, a few years before Durkheim’s book was published. Based on my first marathon experience, it fits Durkheim’s concept very well.

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Understanding Social Construction: What Makes a Country a Country?

On September 15, 2025October 20, 2025 By econnellIn Karen Sternheimer, TheoryLeave a comment

By Karen Sternheimer

Recently, I took a hiking trip to the Alps, spending time in Chamonix, France, and Courmayeur, Italy. These two alpine towns are connected by a tunnel through Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps. The tunnel is just over 7 miles, and it took us less than an hour to get from town to town by bus.

And yet, when some acquaintances heard that we were in Italy and France, they asked if we went to Rome (about 500 miles from Courmayeur) or Paris (about 425 miles from Chamonix) and were perplexed when we said no.

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Getting into Sociology: Advice for High School Students

On September 1, 2025October 20, 2025 By econnellIn Karen Sternheimer, Theory1 Comment

By Karen Sternheimer

I had a really cool social studies teacher in high school, and he taught a sociology class as an elective. I didn’t take it. Why?

It could have been the age-old “didn’t fit my schedule” or someone mentioned it was “hard.” I took his psychology class instead, maybe because I thought I knew something about psychology (I didn’t) or thought it might be easy (it wasn’t).

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Longboarding Towards Social Interactionism

On August 27, 2025October 20, 2025 By econnellIn Popular Culture and Consumption, TheoryLeave a comment

By Joey Colby Bernert, Graduate Student, Michigan State University

The first time I fell off my longboard, I learned something about pain. The second time, when I got back up in front of all my friends, I learned something about performance. Longboarding, for me, has never only been about rolling downhill. It has been about meeting people, reading signals, and figuring out how to play a role in a scene.

This is where sociology comes in. Symbolic interactionism is the idea that people create meaning through everyday interactions. Gestures, objects, clothing, and language all matter. A nod from a stranger, a quick joke with someone you just met, or even how you take a fall can say more than words.

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Overtourism: Revisiting the Sacred and Profane

On August 18, 2025October 20, 2025 By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Karen Sternheimer, TheoryLeave a comment

By Karen Sternheimer

You have probably seen news of protests in Europe about overtourism—locals upset about their hometowns being overrun with crowds, often pricing them out of local housing markets. Cities like Barcelona, Florence, Venice, and Paris have experienced problems with overwhelming summer crowds.

While the rebound after the COVID shutdowns of 2020 kept people from traveling for a year or more is part of the explanation, we can use our sociological imagination to think more deeply about why certain places draw crowds.

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