Man vs. Bear: A Sociological Hike Through Fear, Gender, and Stereotypes

On By econnellIn Monica Radu, Sex and Gender1 Comment

By Monica Radu

I hadn’t thought about the “Man vs. Bear” debate in quite a while—not since TikTok first erupted with heated takes on whether a man or a grizzly bear would be more dangerous to women. But then today, I took my three youngest kids on a hike in the woods (something I’ve never actually done before), and the question took on a whole new meaning.

We were about 30 minutes into our hike. It was mid-morning, a little cool and rainy, and we hadn’t seen another person on the trail. My kids and I joked about what we’d do if we saw a bear: run away, play dead, or (in my 4-year-old’s plan) fight it off with a stick. It was lighthearted fun. We were thinking about wildlife, not people.

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On the Disappearance of Community, Part 2

On 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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How Adolescence Misses the Mark on Incel Culture

On By econnellIn Alyssa Lyons, Popular Culture and Consumption, Sex and Gender1 Comment

By Alyssa Lyons

The praise for the recent U.K. show Adolescence is effusive. Popular publications like Slate called Adolescence the best show of the year while the Guardian said it was “such powerful TV that it could save lives.” In just three weeks, Adolescence became the 9th most watched Netflix series of all time. With all the hype, I was curious. So, I settled down to watch the show that captured the “miserable realism” of modern incel culture.

The term “incel” emerged during 1990s internet discourse. Initially, it was used as a self-identifier among men who were involuntarily celibate. As time went on, the term took on a newer meaning: it described men who felt entitled to have sex with women but weren’t able to.

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The Role of Military Chaplains in the Ukraine War

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Religion, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change3 Comments

By Jan Grimell, Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Umeå University and Research Fellow at Linnaeus University, Sweden

For decades, Europe has lived under the illusion of lasting peace, where full-scale war on the continent felt like a distant part of history. Since the end of World War II, armed conflicts—both in Europe and in more remote parts of the world—have required military interventions from European countries, NATO, and allied forces. But we have been spared the total war in which an entire nation’s existence is at stake. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed this.

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Do Freebies Build Communities?

On By econnellIn Cities and Urbanization, Karen Sternheimer, Social Psychology2 Comments

By Karen Sternheimer

The community where I live now is littered with Little Free Libraries, small boxes containing books for passers-by to take, and presumably also leave used books in as well. While taking walks in my new neighborhood, I started noticing that these little boxes are everywhere. I’ve also spotted a Free Blockbuster box in former newspaper boxes painted with the now defunct Blockbuster Video colors and logo. These boxes apparently contain DVDs and VHS tapes that are free for the taking.

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Surreal or Hyperreal? Applying Theory to Disaster

On 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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We Need More Empathy for the Emotions of Animals

On By econnellIn Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change, Social Psychology3 Comments

By Amanda Gernentz, Sociology Graduate Student, Texas Woman’s University

There is an episode of the kid’s show Rugrats that is burned into my brain. It’s called “A Dog’s Life,” and features scenes from the Pickles family dog’s point of view.

Spike (the dog) continually tries to protect baby Dil from a contraption that his father, Stu, built for him to play in, despite being repeatedly scolded. When the audience hears things from Spike’s point of view, the words the humans speak are gibberish (other than his name), but the tone is clear. You can feel Spike’s emotions, how he hates getting in trouble, but he is so loyal to his small companion that he continually risks the scolding. It really shaped my childhood understanding of the life of a pet and showed me what love and loyalty were from a companion animal.

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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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Minimalism after Losing “Everything”

On 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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Privilege in Disaster

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Class and Stratification, Karen Sternheimer3 Comments

By Karen Sternheimer

As I write, it’s been a few months since losing my home in the Los Angeles-area firestorm. In addition to my regular job, I now effectively have a part-time job working to settle insurance claims, get our missing mail, learn about the rebuilding process which means attending Zoom meetings multiple times a week, and also seek disaster relief. I describe this as a major inconvenience, but one that is manageable.

I recognize the role that privilege has played in this process, and how others might have a lot more difficulty navigating losing one’s home in a fire. Setting aside the unique emotional experiences that this might bring—I tend to deal with challenges as problems to be solved intellectually rather than emotionally—there are structural factors that have made this process easier to address for me than for others.

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