Are we Being Replaced? Fertility, Mortality, and Demography

On By econnellIn Immigration, Population, Aging, and Demography, Karen Sternheimer, Relationships, Marriage and Family1 Comment

By Karen Sternheimer

During a trip to Milan, one of the first places I visited was the Cimitero Monumentale, a cemetery famous for its ornate sculptures. We noticed a lot of funeral homes on our walk to this famous landmark, and flowers for sale for visitors to place on graves. This wasn’t surprising. But what was surprising were the many ads for funeral services on street signs in other parts of town.

Cemetery featuring sculptures and cryptsThe signs caught me a bit off guard, but they shouldn’t have. Italy’s population is aging; nearly a quarter of Italians are 65 or older (by contrast, only about 17 percent of the U.S. population is 65 or older). Funerals are a growing business.

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Magnified Trauma: Losing Your Home While Elderly

On 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 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 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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Unwritten Rules: What to Say (and What Not to Say) to Someone Dealing with Loss

On By econnellIn Karen Sternheimer, Social Psychology, Theory1 Comment

By Karen Sternheimer

Many of our social interactions are guided by unwritten rules. But sometimes we don’t know what to say when someone experiences a profound loss, or the words others use in attempt to provide comfort can miss the mark.

Writing in the nineteenth century, sociologist Émile Durkheim described anomie as a breakdown of social rules during times of rapid change. While he was focused on macro-level changes, and how we communicate about loss is more micro-level, we can borrow his insights. After all, in the U.S. we tend to avoid talking about death and thus might not know how to do so even if we want to.

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Humans, Dogs, and Social Interaction

On By econnellIn Cities and Urbanization, Lisa Smith, Social Psychology2 Comments

By Lisa Smith

When I hear someone refer to their dog as a “fur baby” I cringe. Apparently, I’m not alone. I recently came across a reddit thread titled r/Dog-free, where someone posted, “There is no such thing as a dog ‘parent.’” Another user said, “Anyone who thinks owning a chihuahua is the equivalent of being a father or mother is mentally ill and should be shunned by polite society.”

As a parent of two human children and an owner of one dog, I can attest that parenting and dog owning are not the same thing. I don’t know if the extreme social sanctions proposed by this disgruntled poster are quite in line with the offense. That said, it got me thinking about the ways we work out what human and dog relations mean through social interaction—online and off.

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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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Love Letter to the Indie Bookstore: Radical Third Spaces 

On By econnellIn Alyssa Lyons, Behind the Headlines, Popular Culture and Consumption, Race and Ethnicity, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change2 Comments

By Alyssa Lyons

I’ve always loved books. And I mean loved books. As a child, I’d often comb through the trash to recover discarded tomes. Where my neighbors saw old and water-stained trash, I saw glorious treasure. I’d sniff dog-eared yellowed pages as I skipped home with my latest additions. So it’s not surprising that as an adult, I would come to love bookstores.

Bookstores, especially independent ones, are what sociologist Ray Oldenburg  referred to as “third places.” Third places are virtual or physical spaces outside of home and work/school where people gather, organize, and find and build community. In independent bookstores, it’s not uncommon to find people sipping coffee, working, or quietly sharing space with others who have bookish affinities. Madeleine Roberts-Ganim identified third spaces as places that can “affirm our identities and build empathy for identities different from our own.”

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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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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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