Our growing Sociology list has a global outlook featuring high-quality research across emerging and established areas in the field, such as digital sociology, migration, gender, race and ethnicity, public sociology, and children and families.
Our series include Gender and Sociology, Global Migration and Social Change, Sociology of Children and Families, Sociology of Diversity and Public Sociology.
We publish leading journals in the field, including Emotions and Society in association with the European Sociological Association's (ESA) Research Network on Sociology of Emotions (RN11) as well as Families, Relationships and Societies and the Journal of Gender-Based Violence.
Food access and food insecurity are topics of great consequence within public health, city planning, and public policy conversations. Food insecurity is a “lack of consistent access to enough food for every person in a household to live an active, healthy life.” While food access conversations have rightfully interrogated institutional policies and practices, the central stakeholders—the community and citizens experiencing limited food access—have been mainly silenced from these conversations. This chapter will analyze the problem of current governmental policies and commercial agricultural practices, outlining the resulting issues of food insecurity perpetuated when community collaboration and citizen participation disappear from the agricultural production and distribution processes. We argue that food retailers are oriented towards generating profits, promoting the commodification of food, and perpetuating systemic health and social inequities through the disparate implementation of food retailer locations. We also argue that discriminatory zoning and land-use practices have facilitated diminished power and decision-making abilities for community residents in food production and distribution. Subsequently, these communities experience increased issues related to food insecurity, which may be more equitably addressed within a more participatory and community-based food system. We advocate for the necessity of community-informed food distribution and grocery stores and call for collaboration between city officials, urban planning professionals, and community residents to implement community-informed and culturally responsive food retailers and agricultural structures. Since the 1970s, national agricultural policies have spurred an increase in the mass production of food and commodity crops alongside the changing landscape of food retail outlets.
The idea of the American Dream is consistently connected to homeownership. Research shows that a majority of Americans still see owning a home as one of the most significant measures of success and accomplishment. Yet the average American is unable to afford his or her own home. The lack of affordable housing makes it difficult to buy a home and gain access to a piece of the dream so many wished for growing up. Housing affordability is measured by the share of a person’s income spent on a mortgage or monthly rent. Whether a renter or homeowner, if more of one’s income is being spent on housing, it means less money for food, transportation, health care, and utilities. Additionally, financial stress brings with it mental stress that can affect one’s health. Lack of access to affordable housing is exacerbated by a narrative and culture connected to a legacy of racism and institutional discrimination that has made racial residential segregation a seemingly permanent part of the landscape. Redlining practices, blockbusting, exclusionary zoning policies, and other housing discrimination practices have denied access to housing, neighborhoods, and opportunities that disproportionately affect people of color. Additional barriers that hinder home purchases include not having enough money for a down payment, wages that do not keep pace with rising housing costs, high mortgage rates, and exclusionary policies. Research on social class, social mobility, and housing clearly shows that homeownership is the primary way that Americans have established financial security and intergenerational wealth.
In her brilliant collection of essays, Thick, Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom invites readers to engage with scholarly research—and to take this engagement personally, ‘The things we touch and smell and see and experience through our senses are how stories become powerful. But I have never wanted to only tell powerfully evocative stories. I have wanted to tell evocative stories that become a problem for power. For that, I draw upon data and research.’ Cottom applies sociological research to challenge systemic injustices that deeply affect people in real and intimate ways. Like Cottom, the authors in this collection are interested in addressing social problems. They offer readers stories about the problems, asking you to consider ways we might solve them. The first version of the Agenda for Social Justice was published in 2004. Now, 20 years later, much has changed. Although these changes are not always progressive, they show that another world is possible. For example, we have seen the ways social media can act as a transformative feminist agent, such as what the #MeToo movement exposed. We witnessed the rise of a Movement for Black Lives, where people organizing under Black Lives Matter protested in the streets for an end to racist policing and brutality. And, as I write this Afterword, people around the world are calling for a ceasefire and a free Palestine, pleading for an end to the genocide of Palestinian people who have suffered for decades under Israeli occupation. The problems evidenced in our world are serious, severe, and far-reaching.
The Agenda for Social Justice 3: Solutions for 2024 provides accessible insights into some of the most pressing social problems and proposes public policy responses to those problems.
Written by a highly respected team of authors brought together by the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP), the book offers recommendations for action by elected officials, policymakers and the public regarding key issues for social justice. Chapters include discussion of social problems related to criminal justice, the economy, food insecurity, education, healthcare, housing and immigration.
The book will be of interest to scholars, practitioners, advocates and students interested in public sociology, the study of social problems and the pursuit of social justice.
Criminal legal systems are some of the largest providers of physical and mental health care in the United States yet scholars, health professionals, and system-impacted individuals have continuously pointed out the lack of dignified, client-centered sexual and reproductive health (SRH) care received within these settings. The juvenile legal system (also referred to as the juvenile justice system) is tasked with providing those services for young people ages 12–18 when in the custody of the state. A 2006 study by Gallagher and Dobrin found that, while juvenile detention centers partially meet some of the minimum standards for the provision of healthcare services suggested by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (2004), services were only provided on an ad hoc basis and, for some portions of the population rather than systematic access for all individuals within this system. The study also found geographic and racial differences in quality and scope of services for those in the legal system. Lastly, while there are mandates that require access to SRH care in correctional settings, these mandates do not apply to the significant number of youth who are under the gaze of a punitive system but supervised in the community, therefore leaving many youth underserved. Discrepancies in quality SRH care for adolescents in the juvenile legal system are especially alarming when examining the paucity of effective SRH care services for a particularly invisibilized and underserved group in the juvenile legal system: system impacted Black girls ages 12–18. The past 20 years have seen lower relative decreases in girls’ rates of arrests for a variety of offenses, including status offenses and violent crimes.
Immigrants are more likely to lack health coverage and adequate access to health care compared to US citizens. By immigrants, we refer to undocumented and documented non-citizens and first-generation immigrants who are naturalized citizens. A primary reason for this discrepancy is immigrants’ continued exclusion from public policies. The most recent example is the historic 2010 Affordable Care Act, the provisions of which are only available to citizens and a specific group of documented immigrants. Since the 1970s, lawmakers have pursued public policies denying both undocumented and recently arrived authorized immigrants access to public benefits, which provide a social safety net for many US citizens. This social safety net includes access to public health coverage, food and housing assistance, and supplementary income for lower-income individuals. And because 79 percent of contemporary immigrants are people of color, this exclusion has racialized implications. As immigrants have become more non-White, public policies have broadened the scope of immigrants’ exclusion from the social safety net, especially healthcare access. Correspondingly, perceptions of immigrants’ of color (non-) deservingness have often shaped these policy decisions. The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (PRWORA) established a 5-year residency bar for Lawful Permanent Residents (LPRs or green card holders), limiting their eligibility for public benefits. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), also passed in 1996, made both undocumented and documented immigrants more subject to deportation for minor infringements than before. These policies made immigrants of various legal statuses ineligible for subsidized health coverage in the landmark 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA). Despite increasing healthcare protections and extending health coverage access for many Americans, ACA provisions excluded millions of immigrants.
Few topics in education have dominated the news since 2021 as much as efforts to ban critical race theory (CRT) from public schools in the United States. The larger problem is the widespread effort to impede public education, stifling students’ opportunities to think critically about our nation’s history and denying them their right to a complete education. In September 2020, after protests over the police killing of George Floyd prompted new conversations about structural racism in the US, the Trump administration issued a memo to federal agencies directing them to identify and cancel any staff trainings that focused on CRT or “White privilege.” Weeks later, President Trump issued Executive Order 13950, prohibiting federal agencies and recipients of federal funding from teaching “divisive concepts,” including the idea that the US is “fundamentally racist or sexist.” Trump’s focus on CRT likely originated with a 2020 Fox News interview of Christopher F. Rufo, a conservative scholar, who warned of the “cult indoctrination” of CRT and the “danger and destruction it can wreak”; Rufo helped draft the Executive Order. Conservative think tanks, thought leaders, media figures, and politicians operationalized and conflated “divisive concepts” to mean “CRT”—a college-level analytical framework rarely taught in K-12 schools that examines how race and racism intersect with other forms of social identity, power, and oppression. The theory, which emerged in the mid-1980s in American law schools, holds that racism is not simply expressed on a microlevel but, rather, is deeply rooted in the nation’s laws, policies, regulations, and institutions.
The United States emergency response framework is crucial for safeguarding public safety and well-being during times of crises, be it natural disasters or public health emergencies. Nevertheless, racial inequities persistently undermine the efficacy of the US federal emergency response system as communities of color shoulder an undue share of the emergency burden, confronting heightened vulnerability, restricted access to resources, and deficient support systems. The heart of the issue lies in the failure of the US emergency response framework to adequately address and rectify systemic disparities, perpetuating historic and ongoing social, economic, and environmental racism. This inability to grapple with pre-existing inequities privileges Whites and further marginalizes racial and ethnic minorities during times of crisis. Left unaddressed, systemic racial inequalities in resource allocation, relief efforts, and decision-making processes heighten the vulnerability of communities of color, imposing a disproportionate burden during emergencies. Seminal moments, like Hurricane Katrina, became catalysts for public health responders to recognize and address racial disparities in emergency response. More recent instances, including Hurricane Harvey as well as the H1N1 and COVID-19 pandemics, underscore the persistent challenges faced by marginalized communities, revealing ongoing disparities in mortality rates and access to life-saving resources. Furthermore, two significant strategies of the US emergency response framework reproduce racial inequalities during disasters—data-driven decision-making and utilitarianism. Decision-makers often analyze large datasets and rely on statistical models to identify areas of need, allocate resources, and prioritize interventions. Data-driven decision-making is seen as an objective and efficient method that allows for evidence-based choices. The assumption is that by incorporating various social variables—including race—into algorithms and tools like the Social Vulnerability Index, decision-makers can account for social inequities and tailor responses to meet the specific needs of different communities.
A pretext is a lie, a false justification to avoid accountability. A pretextual stop occurs when a police officer pulls someone over for a minor traffic violation merely as an excuse to investigate whether the person has any outstanding warrants or contraband. Promoted as an integral part of the war on drugs in the 1990s, the practice continues to be widespread throughout the United States. Since nearly everybody commits some form of technical violation when they drive, police officers have the de facto ability to investigate people at random. However, these fishing expeditions are not conducted randomly. Instead, police officers try to maximize their chances of finding someone with contraband or an outstanding warrant by targeting people believed to be more involved in serious crime. Ultimately, by asking police officers to follow their “gut” rather than evidence-based procedure the practice of pretextual stops enables racial profiling. Study after study has shown that people of color are much more likely to endure fruitless investigations during traffic stops. This is especially true for stops justified by non-moving violations, such as having items hanging from the rearview mirror.
