Tag: sociology

April 6, 2018

Article: “Weaponization”: The Metaphor That Rejects Politics

N.B.: This post is now published at Metaphor and Symbol. The scandal about Cambridge Analytica’s theft of Facebook data for political marketing is often described as the “weaponization of social media.” On March 25, 2018, Meet the Press‘ Chuck Todd asked Senator Mark Warner if Steve Bannon’s company was designed “to weaponize something that we weren’t…
June 10, 2017

Learning from Pulse, Listening to Latinx Queers

[This piece is an excerpt from the book I’m writing on changes in gay bars–written as it was for print media, it has a works cited rather than hyperlinks.] In 2016, two gay bars became national monuments, one in the early hours of June the 12th in Orlando, Florida. The way we learned of the…
December 29, 2016

I Made the List! “The Best Writing From and About Northeast Ohio From 2016”

My short piece on my favorite lost gay bars, A Man’s World / Tool Shed / Crossover, made The Cleveland Scene’s list of the best writing from and about Northeast Ohio from 2016. The Editor, Vince Grzegorek, called it “An insightful and at times scathing look at the branding experiment turned neighborhood built, as the author…
June 16, 2016

Consulting an Expert: If Orlando wasn’t terorrism, why do gays feel terrorized?

Greggor Mattson, interviewing Lisa Stampnitzky, author of Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented “Terrorism” and Politics Lecturer at Sheffield University. GM: Experts have been walking back classifications of Omar Mateen’s massacre at Orlando’s pulse nightclub as terrorism. And yet, LGBTQ people have consistently described the attack as terrorism. How can we understand the different understandings of…
March 5, 2016

Supporting colleagues, repudiating anti-Semitism

I am writing to show support to my Jewish colleagues in the face of the anti-Semitic speech by one of our colleagues. I appreciate President Krislov’s strong defense of academic freedom, even though it makes me queasy to have it applied in this situation. As someone who conducts research into and teaches about sexuality, I…
January 8, 2016

How do Black Finns celebrate hockey victories?

By screaming, stripping in -10°F, and sauna, of course: the same as everyone else: From Dosdela‘s Instagram. On January 6th, Finland’s Young Lions won the 2016 World Juniors Hockey championship over Russia in overtime before a home audience. The title comes on the heels of the National Ringette Team winning its world championship the day…
January 4, 2016

Against moral panic (for cultural politics)

Pundits, sociologists, and activists frequently use the term “moral panic” to describe what they perceive as a public overreaction to an issue (or non-issue). Examples include “Prostitution and Human Trafficking – The Anatomy of a Moral Panic,” “What’s Flakka and is it Real? A Guide to the New Moral Panic Drugs,” From Miasma to Ebola:…
December 25, 2015

Chapter: Sociologies of (in)security

This chapter was written with Lisa Stampnitzky for the edited volume by Philippe Bourbeau. Preprint available here. “In contrast to other disciplines, “security” has not traditionally been a central focus of sociological research. This is not to say that sociologists have not studied problems, sites, interactions, and discourses that are relevant to what has elsewhere…
November 24, 2015

The Traffic in Deer

Deer trafficking: another example of the spread of what I call trafficking talk, or the traffic in trafficking. Recent headlines include Two Florida Men Sentenced for Trafficking in Deer or Deer-Trafficking Scheme Nets Record $1.6 Million Fine Up until around 2010, news outlets usually called such crimes “smuggling,””poaching,” “illegal sales” or “illegal transport” (the earliest…
November 16, 2015

The Key to Political Persuasion – The New York Times

A great news article by my former colleague Robb Willer succinctly explains why cultural politics are so durable and contentious: our fundamental moral frames are so encompassing its almost impossible to see another’s point of view. Via The New York Times.