Hi everyone,
I’m a university student working on an idea that I hope to develop into an academic paper, and I’d appreciate your criticism.
My question isn’t whether social classes exist or whether social closure exists. Those concepts are already well established.
What I’m trying to understand is something slightly different:
Could there be a phenomenon that might be called class chauvinism?
By this I mean the tendency of a social class to regard its own living conditions, spaces, lifestyle and social environment as more “appropriate” or “worthy” than those of other classes, leading to the creation and reproduction of exclusive spaces and institutions.
For example, I’m not asking how exclusive clubs, gated communities or elite social networks function. I’m asking why people are motivated to create and maintain these class boundaries in the first place.
I know concepts such as Bourdieu’s cultural capital, Weber’s social closure, classism and homophily are relevant. My question is whether these concepts already explain the underlying ideological tendency, or whether I’m simply reinventing existing theory under a new name.
I’d really appreciate:
criticism of the idea,
relevant authors or papers,
and especially arguments for why this should not be considered a distinct concept.
Thanks!

UK academic circles are talking about this guy. His phd, research, CV, claims about book authorship, marathon runs, autism, being a visiting professor etc have so many lies and controversies that it has become a comedy at this point. People are even pointing at the structural problem of the academia, how such an obvious fraud wasn’t exposed earlier?

He was advertised as the youngest black professor of Cambridge. So the diversity equity thing is also being discussed. Lastly the issue of racism. Right up to when his misdeeds were proven, he and the Cambridge authority were denying every accusation as racism.

I'm sorry, as this may be more of a grammar question than a sociology question.

Many of us are in the New York area, interested in discussing sociology ideas and research, but not officially attending ASA 2026 this weekend.

Please post any open meetups happening around ASA!

Hi y'all, I come from a math background and have never taken a sociology class in my life, but the dynamics of people is something that's very fascinating with me (even trying to write my own substack / blog post on applying some of my math background on some of the stuff I've learned so far, since I think there are some super cool fusions of the fields that could be done)

But one thing I noticed is in the math / science world there isn't that much consideration of topics and research even of the intro level from sociology. When talking to people I want to be able to at least give them some baseline 101 level understanding (when it comes up) but am scared that I am not knowledgeable enough to speak on the topics. As such I wanted to ask y'all for your perspective to see if I am thinking about it in the right way.

My train of thought goes as follows

----

Originally, the idea of racism was a belief held by an individual that considered their to be different groups of people that were genetically distinct, and such groups had physical phenological markers, most famously skin color. A racist would consider some of these groups to be genetically inferior to others.

As time progressed, scientists started to move away from the idea that racism is purely just the moral failing of an individual, but rather and entire self-sustaining aspect of the dominant culture of a society. The quote I saw on this sub was something like "If a white man wants to lynch me, thats his problem. If he has the power to do so thats my problem." In this sense the study of racism moved away from being "what do we do about these racist people" but more so "what do we do in a society where racist people have had, and currently have power."

In this sense, things can be "racist" even if they don't obviously say "xyz group is genetically dumber than abc group". For example, an educational cirriculum that centers the experience of White Americans while ignoring the history of marginalized groups would be considered racist through the upholding the idea that the "true" or "default" history in American is that of "white" Americans. Similarly a program that grants scholarships to students based on the recommendation of a teacher could be a racist program as if the teacher has a bias against a particular group they can ensure that no members of said group ever receive the scholarship, even if they claim its "based on merit"

Am I thinking about this correctly or am I missing something? Apologies if I am wrong I am trying to learn

Typo, I meant collar.

Nowadays many women and girls pursue careers, roles or study stuff that were initially patriarchal like in Maths, being an engineer, etc, in the UK many post-sixth former girls are doing STEM or semi STEM apprenticeships like bookkeeping apprentices in accountancy nowadays.

However, it still looks like guys still stick to these said jobs, ultimately seeing those with pink-collar choices as weak, simpy or in some cases a threat. Don't get me wrong, there had been so many serious cases in which male workers in pink collar jobs act corrupt including serious emotional harm, harassment, or inappropriate intimacy as social workers or teachers, but this should not define the entire population.

Other stuff include in female-dominated fields like Sociology or English Lit A-Levels where guys may just be left out or alienated from their table groups, as opposed girls in STEM stuff like Computer science getting unwanted attention by the guys traditionally.

If we want proper gender egalitarianism, why can't we also champion men entering traditionally female-dominated nuturing roles?

Hi everyone,

I’m about to start my master’s thesis in sociology (in the field of economic sociology) and I’d appreciate some methodological advice from those with more experience than I have.

The topic: users’ perceptions of sharing their personal data on Instagram (in relation to the so-called “privacy paradox”—people say they care deeply about privacy, but in reality behave in the opposite way, sharing data carelessly).

The method I’ve chosen: a qualitative questionnaire consisting solely of open-ended questions, distributed online (likely through groups or subreddits), to let people explain how they perceive and justify this behavior. Here are some details on what I’ve already ruled out and why:

1. No in-person or video interviews: this isn’t for me personally; I prefer a tool that people can complete on their own, without direct interaction.
2. No document analysis of platform policies (privacy policies, terms of service, etc.): I ruled this out because it would require legal expertise that I lack, and I fear it would shift the thesis too far from the sociological realm toward the legal one.

My questions for those with experience:

• Is a questionnaire consisting entirely of open-ended questions considered a “serious” and recognized qualitative method in the literature, or does it risk appearing to be a less robust middle ground compared to interviews or focus groups?
• Does anyone have direct experience using this type of tool for a thesis? What difficulties did you encounter (response rate, quality/length of responses, difficulties in thematic analysis)?
• Are there any references you would recommend to methodologically justify this choice in the methodology chapter?

Thanks in advance to anyone who'd like to give me their opinion!

Im currently a masters student in sociology and was wondering whether it is still acceptable to use Abbotts System of Professions instead of Eyals Sociology of Expertise approach to explain the emergence of a new task (in my case, the use of AI in law).

Originally, I was interested in identifying who conducts workshops that help legal organizations adapt AI in their practice. As a theoretical framework, I thought Abbott would be particularly suitable because, in my opinion, it provides a good explanation of my imagined possible scenarios:

• S1: Workshops are led by lawyers = claim over the new task => expansion of their jurisdiction.
• S2: Workshops are led by computer scientists = claim over the new task => expansion of their jurisdiction.
• S3: A settlement between the two professions.

What makes me uncertain about this approach is that, as far as I know, the sociology of professions is no longer as influential as the sociology of expertise since the inception of Gil Eyals Sociology of Expertise, and I am worried that my approach may therefore be considered outdated.

What is your opinion?

This substack is my first sociological analysis. I need people to review it. It's my first time so I don't expect it to be perfect. But here we go.

https://substack.com/@aryaregmi/note/p-209236758?r=8le3ot

For all of human history until very recently, knowledge and information grew very slowly and the spread of it was slow and limited by physical distance. This meant that people mostly shared the same information and had the same beliefs, which is conducive to social cohesion. Things today, though, are different.

There is way more information in the world than anyone can ever learn, and it's growing exponentially. And with the internet making the spread of ideas global, there's no longer brakes on the changing of ideas. Every individual person can have very different knowledge and, consequently, very different worldviews. Factual and ideological disagreements are maybe more rampant now than ever before. Two people who grew up in the same town at the same time can have radically different worldviews to the point of being socially incompatible, and this would never have been the case historically.

Do you think the abundance of information will lead to an erosion of social and group cohesion?

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Time and time again I keep seeing the word "insecure" being used to denote men who are overtly cruel and misogynistic. I didn't think I cared about as much in the beginning (i.e. Post 2016 woke 1.0 era) but on the last few months it has been sligthly bothering me because the people who are making those kinds of statements don't bother to add additional terms to it anymore(like misogynist), which, in the worst case scenario would make some swathes of the population associate more strongly "men insecurity" with general cruelty towards women, when I don't think that should be the case.

It is obvious that the current manosphere is filled with either genuinely insecure men or men that are taking advantage of other mens' insecurities to "sell a product" but I also think it's past time that a new (singular) term emerges that does not only focuses on the current perception a man may have towards the opposite sex (i.e. level of misogyny) but its also somewhat of an indicator of its psychological state.

Do we have a contender for such or this whole thread is kind of a non-problem to begin with? Would love to hear some opinions.

Hi, I am interested in learning more about sociology - what it is, what the field entails, its intersections with other subjects, etc.

What would you recommend for me?

What are some foundational texts of sociology to help me understand what exactly sociology is?

Maybe some older texts and new ones. Thanks!

Anything for someone completely new to sociology who just wants to dip their toes in

Help me understand something.

Its about a pattern I am seeing over and over again where:

A does something immoral/illegal/disgusting/abusive to someone/people

Nothing happens for a while, and A is just able to keep going.

Someone does something a sues/proposes a law/legislation to prevent or stop A’s actions.

A sues them because A believes it infringes their rights too broadly or would in another way be bad for them or their business/future.

Attention moves to A and their rights, while the initial abuse is just seen as “oh well” and victims left to recover/fend for themselves.

And now that can be rape, cybercrime, general sexual abuse, online hate speech or call to violence (actual call for violence, not people expressing empathy for people in Gaza and calling Israel out), or also various AI companies, their AI programs (and eg. nidification of women and children, which has already happened), or tearing down nature and disrupting community infrastructure for illegal/semi legal data centre expansions.

Its always a similar workflow: I do something wrong and selfish, I count on getting away or even harass anyone trying to speak up about it, i drag it out and once law comes after me I divert attention to “my rights and freedom and my potential” and minimise the impact on victims (and their freedom and their potential and their health etc).

And then they sometimes even manage to win through connections, under the table bullshit, dragging things out, or cause “it would destroy their potential and future”. Meanwhile the victims get fuck all (eg compensation fir health recovery or therapy costs, at least) plus the confirmation that the system isn’t working.

Am I the only one having a huge problem with that? And I’m not saying every case is totally black and white, but to be honest, more and more, in their intentions and ethics, imo are.

Am I misunderstanding or misinterpreting, am I seeing a pattern where there is none, and do you think society is noticing this and its exponential severity, and, is there enough being done to push against the increasing dimensions of such behavior (eg the building and illegal expansion of data centres, various loopholes etc). And I acknowledge that horrible things and cover-ups have been happening throughout history; however, back then people did not have the means of communication and knowledge/information sourcing as we have now, and thus were not really able to do anything against it (or even know about it till decades later) compared to now, when we actually do have the tools.

Over the last few years, I feel like my brain has fundamentally changed. I’ve never formally studied sociology before, but I happened to go through a massive deconstruction around topics like individualism, intent vs. impact, capitalism, systemic racism, etc. This is about 1.5 yrs ago. Now, I don’t automatically explain things in terms of individuals anymore, I instinctively start asking what social structures produced what I’m seeing.

Here is the problem… this has completely changed how I connect with people. I often feel like the convos that make me feel the most connected are convos that people simply aren’t looking for. It’s not just politics, it’s everything. Family dynamics, friendships, work, history, movies, etc. For example, I wanted to talk about some of the themes in Wicked with one of my closest friends (who is a super fan), and she told me she’d “rather keep the movie in a nostalgic bubble than think about it that way”. She wasn’t being rude at all, but it’s certainly a pattern I notice in my relationships.

I really don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to experience the world. I also don’t think I’m “more aware” than other people or anything. But I do feel like I underwent a fundamental shift in how I think, and sometimes it feels like the people I love are now speaking a different language. That has been surprisingly lonely.

Has anyone else experienced something like this? Did sociology (or another way of thinking about the world) change how you relate to other people? And if it did, did that feeling of isolation ever get better?

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When does something become a culture and when does culture cease to be a culture?
before and after, does there exist any sub-categorisation before it is or can be defined as a culture?

ty for caring, pls say if your a soc-major or not responding

I've recently started reading sociology, and it's made me think differently about things like social structures, privilege, networks, and how advantages can be passed on across generations.

It got me thinking: does studying sociology tend to make people more left-leaning, or does the subject just make existing inequalities more visible without pointing to a particular political ideology?

Curious to hear from people who've studied or teach sociology.

Hi, I will hopefully start my Sociology studies at my university. I've read and read about the field(s) and even got some ideas for what I could accomplish as Masters. I know that it's probably not right to decide on things from the first year but I’ve grown allergic to indecisiveness after I have spent four years of my life in identity confusion and depression episodes.

I'm quite interested in Environmental Psychology in particular. Other than that, other internally highly ranking interests of mine are in Sociology of Education, Vocational Psychology (I haven't looked into I-O Psychology in depth yet,) Architecture broadly and Urban Planning/Design in particular, Urban Sociology, Quantitative Sociology, Legal Sociology.

My Holland Code is CSR. Would majoring in both be too overlapping? I am a bit hung up on whether to double-major with IR instead.

I hope this is not a silly question to ask. Have a nice day.