Author: Lucy Towers

Research Brief

Approaching normative coherence in development from different perspectives

We all have certain principles, values or norms in our lives that we follow. But what about those principles in politics? Especially since the launch of the 2030 Agenda and its set of sustainable development goals (SGDs), norms should be represented in policies ranging from the global to the local. The 2030 Agenda provides normative standards for development policies as well as sectors where the Agenda might not seem relevant at first glance. One policy can have (intended or unintended)...

Opinion / Social Movements / Social Change

We don’t remember the O-Platz migrant protest camp for the sake of it

  Nearly 10 years ago, dozens of refugees set up a protest camp on Oranienplatz, in Berlin Kreuzberg. The protest camp gave rise to the O-Platz refugee movement, which is still nowadays very much remembered by activists in Berlin. This article complements my recent publication in Sociology Compass.  I learnt for the first time about O-Platz in early 2014. I was then travelling around Germany to research racist hate crimes. The protest camp had often been the target of racist...

Opinion / Social Identity / Social Movements / Social Change

Youth on the sidelines – What keeps protest sympathizers from joining social movements?

Youth activism seen around the globe shows that young people are interested in politics and push for social and political change. Recent studies contradict speculations about apolitical, disengaged, and politically uninterested youth. Instead, young people are interested in particular political issues and prefer participation in less hierarchically organized activism than previous generations (Miranda et al., 2020). At the same time, social media and online platforms have made the mobilization and documentation of protests much easier. Protest contents are streamed in...

Class & Stratification / Opinion / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Culture / Urban Sociology

Undoing Residential Segregation: Is Housing Access Enough?

More than fifty years after passage of the Fair Housing Act, many Americans continue to live in neighborhoods that are segregated by race/ethnicity and class (Loh et al. 2020). How does this spatial separation come about, and what would it take to meaningfully integrate neighborhoods? Is providing affordable housing enough, or do we need to think about other dimensions of belonging within a community, such as shared opportunities for recreation, consumption, or making friends? Questions like these are of central...

Class & Stratification / Opinion / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Organizations & Work

College Inequalities: The Best Four Years for Whom?

Going to college is a revered part of young adulthood in U.S. society. It is often said that the four years spent in college are “the best four years of your life,” riddled with expectations that everyone in college is having fun, learning endlessly, and “finding themselves.” However, this pervasive societal encouragement of attaining a college education can easily feel like an anxiety-ridden pressure campaign. Many U.S. teens grow up hearing from parents, relatives, friends, or guidance counselors that their...

Research Brief / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Globalization

What Are Challenges from COVID-19 to Internationalization of HE and Global Responses?

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed challenges to many aspects of higher education (HE), with a particularly obvious and profound impact on the internationalization of HE These challenges range from the restrictive cross-border movement of students and academics to various forms of international collaboration in teaching and research [i]. Moreover, earlier studies suggested that, the pandemic of 2020 would affect some countries and systems more radically than others [ii] [iii] [iv]. For example, the challenge from the pandemic to countries such...

Opinion / Social Theory / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

What happened to Crime during the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Since the announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, there has been a drastic change in people’s daily lives with emerging news reports suggesting that criminal and violent behaviors have also been affected.[i], [ii] Specifically, in the U.S. and across other countries, different types of crime (i.e., theft, robbery, assault) were found to decline since the onset of containment measures and lockdown orders.[iii], [iv] However, studies found increases in other crimes such as non-residential burglary and motor vehicle theft.[v], [vi]...

Social Identity / Sociology of Children / Sociology of Culture

What Is Socialization, Really?

              One of the very first concepts I teach my students in Introduction to Sociology is “socialization”. Referring to how individuals come to learn and reproduce the social order of a given society, the concept of socialization is fundamental to sociologists’ understanding of how society works. As we grow up and are exposed to the social influence of family members, teachers, and peers, we come to internalize the societal norms and beliefs that they adhere to so that we can...

Opinion / Sociology of Organizations & Work

How Digital Platforms Cause Mental Disorders in Platform Workers

The recently released films The Equalizer and Sorry, We Missed You drew attention for featuring an Uber driver and a delivery driver as the main characters, respectively. These films vividly capture the lives of platform workers. Specifically, the films show how platform workers function by receiving customer ratings through apps and transmitting their movements on the streets to customers with real-time location-tracking systems. Platform labour is not only done on the streets. The territory of platform labour is expanding into...

Opinion / Sociology of Children

The post-war generation remembers

The children are busy with the finishing touch when I enter their classroom. “Lest we forget”, is written in the middle of the poster that they just made. Around, multiple hands are drawn in which every child has written why commemorating World War Two (WWII) is important to him or her. I’m joining this primary school class today to ‘their’ monument, a Jewish graveyard with a WWII memorial. At the graveyard, all children place a painted stone in front of...

News

New Website for Wiley’s Compass Journals

We’re excited to announce a new publications hub for Wiley’s Compass journals: https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ The new site provides a unified web presence for our cutting-edge review journals in the social sciences and humanities. It will improve the discoverability of related content across all eight publications. Launched in 2003, Compass journals are online-only resources that combine the speed of an academic journal with the breadth of focus of reference works. The journals publish original, peer-reviewed survey articles summarizing the state of the field...

Opinion / Sociology Compass Issues / Sociology of Health & Illness

What’s Sociological About Self-Injury?

Sam was 12 when she began cutting herself.[i] She had been grounded by her parents after she pierced her ears without their permission. ‘I don’t know if it was revenge’ she explains, ‘[but] I felt like “you’re not letting me be who I want to be. I’m an individual, I should be able to do what I want to do.” You know? . . . I felt so upset that no one was listening to me.’ Her frustration led her...

Opinion / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Good for Business, Bad for Asian Americans? Affirmative Action and the Lawsuit against Harvard University

Human heterogeneity in culture, race, gender, sexuality, and any other characteristics – commonly referred to as “diversity” – is often lauded in organizations across the U.S. for its various positive outcomes. While hiring or recruiting a diverse pool of people is arguably an ethical imperative, much of the narrative around diversity instead revolves around how it’s “good for business”. For example, a recent Forbes article argues that “diversity and inclusion are essential to business success”, and Amazon’s website claims that...

News

Culture and Cognition: New Approaches and New Applications – A Special Issue from Sociological Forum

This is an excerpt from the special issue introduction by Vanina Leschziner and Karen Cerulo. Click here to read their full editorial. It has been 25 years since Paul DiMaggio’s (1997) agenda setting article, “Culture and Cognition,” graced the pages of the Annual Review of Sociology. In that piece, DiMaggio noted that cultural sociologists were increasingly drawn to ideas about cognition. However, he noted that such ideas were implicit assumptions rather than explicit claims, and often incorrect assumptions at that. DiMaggio...

Opinion / Sociology of Children / Sociology of Health & Illness

The State and My Happiness: Youth Mental Health, Citizenship Education, and Discursive Contestations in Contemporary Indonesia

In 2015 we all sighed a sigh of relief when mental health was eventually included in the Sustainable Development Goals – Goal 3 to be precise. Conveniently, the World Health Organisation also offered a concise definition: The World Health Organization (WHO) defines mental health as ‘a state of well-being in which the individual realizes their own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or...

Applied Sociology / Opinion / Sociology of Children

Can you hear me? Two researchers’ perspectives on children’s rights, participation and voice

The Topic We have recently published an article in Children & Society journal exploring parent and professional views on the child’s voice in multi-agency meetings, considering how meaningful and impactful this was, or if there was voice present at all. An online survey combined with educational documents, subject to thematic and documentary analysis, presented some interesting findings. The findings highlight the importance of professional beliefs around child capacity and their understanding of what constitutes a competent view. In turn, they...