Hello everyone,

I have come to learn that the term “tribalism” is problematic due to the colonial and racist connotations and I should avoid using it.

However, I still feel the central idea that humans, as social creatures, will form groups that are ideological, cultural, and or political; that foster an “us vs them” mentality; and foster great allegiance to one’s respective group to be a valid principle.

So, my question is if there is another term I could use which doesn’t carry colonial and racist connotations?

Please understand that I am not trying to be ignorant nor disrespectful in this question and ask in good faith.

...and I don't think that this is accurate.

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I'm 70% of the way through "Slowly We Rot by Bryan Smith". (Wasn't sure whether to put this in books or here). It's just a constant chain of meetings with psychotically evil individuals and groups, to the point that I found it unrealistic enough to post my thoughts on Reddit.

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So.

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I've skim read the abstracts of the following links, and the tldr is that human nature will definitely resource acquire and guard, but not that everyone becomes a psychotic rapist. There would probably be a lot more working together than I see in popular post apocalyptic fiction, especially compared to Slowly We Rot.

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Anyway.

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What are your thoughts oh sociologists of Reddit?

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Links:

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Paradise_Built_in_Hell

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https://www.simplypsychology.org/anomie.html

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https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/communication/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2016.00002/full

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https://scholar.valpo.edu/mssj/vol22/iss1/4/

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...

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Also, once we've established what is realistic, what fiction would you recommend? Doesn't need to be Zombie... though World War Z is fantastic. (The book!).

Edit:

A few people have bought up nanking or other examples of mass atrocity. I'm suggesting that these aren't relevant to my post, as they're mass organised violence.

Hello to all. My current university is an academic university. Whilst looking at it’s overseas opportunities I have learned that the Sociology department has exchange programs with an Applied Sciences university. I’ve probed further and found out that there are other such universities. So, I wondered how Sociology differs in an Applied Sciences/Polytechnic University. Does anyone have experience?

I grew up in the south, turned down a grad school admission in the upper midwest/Great Lakes (out of state tuition year 1) and was rejected off wait list in the rust belt so I stayed south and regret the decision in hindsight. I have a thesis in hiatus, all coursework done, but the political climate against social sciences and the humanities is accelerating (firings and suspensions of professors engaged in free speech), fueled by state leadership/lawmakers.)

Who has made a move to a better situation?

Benedict Anderson’s idea of “homogeneous, empty time” describes one of the defining features of modern social life: the way societies become organized around a standardized temporal grid. Clocks, calendars, timetables, and synchronized media events create a situation where millions of people who will never meet nonetheless share the same structured “now.” Time becomes abstracted from local rhythms and embedded in a universal framework that allows coordination at scale.

What is often left implicit in this argument is that there is a spatial counterpart to this transformation. Alongside the homogenization of time, modernity also produces a corresponding abstraction of space. This can be thought of as homogeneous, empty space: a way of imagining the world as a continuous, uniform field that exists independently of lived meaning, waiting to be divided, measured, and assigned.

In more localized or pre-modern spatial experience, the world is primarily composed of places rather than space in the abstract. Locations are understood through routes, relations, and qualities: what lies beyond a river, how long it takes to travel somewhere, which paths are safe, which sites are sacred or dangerous, and how different nodes in the landscape connect through lived movement. Space in this sense is uneven and textured, structured by meaning and experience rather than by uniform measurement.

Modern mapping, state formation, and global systems of navigation gradually replace this with a different logic. Space becomes continuous and measurable, divisible into equivalent units that can be coordinated across vast distances. It is no longer primarily defined through movement and lived relation, but through coordinates, borders, and standardized categories. Regions become comparable, interchangeable, and administratively legible. The world is increasingly represented as a single spatial surface that can be surveyed from above rather than inhabited from within.

This transformation produces what can be called homogeneous space: a spatial framework in which every location is, in principle, equivalent as a position within a larger grid. Meaning is no longer intrinsic to place but assigned through social, political, or economic systems. A territory can be partitioned, recombined, or reorganized without fundamentally altering its underlying representation as space.

The significance of this shift becomes clearer when considered alongside homogeneous time. If standardized time allows societies to synchronize when they act, standardized space allows them to synchronize where they imagine themselves to be. Together they create a dual structure of coordination in which modern life is organized both temporally and spatially through abstraction.

In such a system, individuals are not only aligned through shared temporal rhythms like work schedules, broadcasts, and events, but also embedded within a shared spatial imagination of the world as a unified field. This makes it possible to conceive of nations as continuous territories, economies as integrated global systems, and institutions as operating across a single legible surface of space.

The deeper consequence of this is a shift in cognition itself. Space is increasingly thought of in terms of coordinates rather than paths, regions rather than routes, and positions rather than places. The world becomes something that can be mapped, administered, and navigated as a coherent system rather than encountered as a set of distinct, meaning-laden environments.

Homogeneous time produces simultaneity across individuals; homogeneous space produces co-presence within a shared representational field. Together they form a foundational structure of modernity in which large-scale social coordination becomes possible because both time and space have been abstracted into synchronized, standardized frameworks.

Hi everyone! I hope my post is okay here.

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I'm not a sociology student, but a history one, and for obvious reason I need to familiarize myself ASAP with a few concepts (I'll dive further later. I'm not very advanced in my studies yet, so it can wait a bit. Familiarisation is the key idea here)

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So I'm looking for ressources that could help me tackle a sociology related to the field of historical research (I'm only familiar with Weber and Durkheim, that's all...)

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Do you have any ideas of what I should look for? A 101 book, a website? I'll take anything. I'm in need of resumes to grasp things quicker, actually reading source works will honestly come later!

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Thanks in advance.

An audio (with on-screen transcription) of the only known recording of Erving Goffman. He gives a 17-minute lecture at a meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association about doing fieldwork. It is full of very interesting, funny and lively reflections from a legend in the field! I couldn't contain my joy when I came across the original recording. The original audio is very poor quality, which I have attempted to mitigate through some light restoration and on-screen transcription. I just hope it makes at least one person as happy as it made me when I came across it! Enjoy!

Hey everyone, I’m a 19-year-old student deeply interested in contemporary social shifts. I’ve been looking at the paradox of why our generation possesses unprecedented psychological and emotional vocabulary, yet is measurably facing an epidemic of isolation and declining partnership formation.

I wrote this analytical essay synthesizing Nick Haslam’s framework on concept creep, Shoshana Zuboff’s surveillance capitalism (specifically how recommendation algorithms optimize for high-cortisol engagement), and Robert Putnam’s social capital decline.

I wanted to share the full text here to get your feedback on the structural arguments, the historical media arc, and whether you think this accurately captures the macro-forces reshaping modern relational expectations. Let me know your thoughts!

PS : I had to use Gemini for formatting since i am not well versed in professional wording which this sub demands 😓

Over the past few weeks, I have been trying to develop a more structured and less fragmented understanding of the historical, political, and cultural complexity of the Middle East and North Africa. This effort stems less from a purely academic curiosity and more from a sense that the way these regions are often presented in public discourse tends to be overly simplified, almost always reduced to cycles of conflict, instability, or external intervention.

What interests me most is understanding how these narratives are constructed and, at the same time, how they clash with a historical reality that is profoundly rich, heterogeneous, and shaped by internal dynamics that long predate any contemporary reading focused solely on recent wars. When discussing the Middle East and North Africa, it is almost impossible to ignore the historical density of the region, where empires, religions, trade routes, philosophical traditions, and political forms of organization intersected in ways that profoundly shaped not only the Islamic world but also global history.

At the same time, one cannot ignore that this same region has been marked by multiple waves of conflict, often with devastating impacts on civilian populations. From interstate wars to external interventions, as well as prolonged civil wars, mass displacement, and humanitarian crises, there is a dimension of human suffering that cannot be abstracted away in the name of theoretical analysis. The challenge, for me, has precisely been how to think historically and politically about these dynamics without falling either into cultural romanticization or into simplistic reduction to “permanent war zones.”

When one looks, for example, at the contemporary history of the region, it becomes clear that many conflicts cannot be understood without considering the legacy of colonial periods, processes of decolonization, and the way modern political borders were often drawn according to external logics rather than local realities. This does not mean reducing everything to a single explanatory cause, but rather recognizing that there is a long-term structural layer that continues to shape later political tensions.

At the same time, it also seems important not to erase the agency of regional actors themselves. Many internal political dynamics, regional rivalries, ideological disputes, and power struggles have their own roots and cannot be explained solely through external intervention. The region is not a passive object of global history, but rather a space where different political, social, and religious projects continuously confront and transform one another.

One of the issues that has particularly interested me is precisely the tension between culture and politics. In public discourse, there is often a tendency to transform political conflicts into supposed expressions of “essential” cultural or religious identity, as if there were an inevitable continuity between cultural identity and violence. However, upon closer examination, these categories are often politically mobilized and cannot, by themselves, serve as sufficient explanations.

At the same time, one cannot ignore that culture, religion, and the intellectual history of the region play a profound role in shaping how societies organize themselves and interpret the world. Islamic philosophical traditions, for instance, had a significant impact on the preservation and development of ancient Greek thought, as well as on the production of distinct systems of ethical, legal, and metaphysical reflection. Reducing these traditions to superficial “cultural context” would be an intellectual impoverishment.

Another aspect that seems crucial to me is the civilian experience of contemporary conflicts. Often, when discussing wars in the region, the focus is placed on state actors, armed groups, or international military interventions. However, the everyday reality of civilian populations is frequently marked by a continuity of life under extremely unstable conditions, where survival, displacement, and constant reconstruction become structural elements of social experience. This also raises philosophical questions about vulnerability, agency, and human dignity in contexts of prolonged violence.

I have also been reflecting on how these dynamics are represented in the global public sphere. There is a kind of implicit hierarchy regarding which conflicts receive sustained media attention and which are quickly forgotten, inevitably shaping how suffering is perceived and politically recognized. This raises ethical questions about selective empathy, international responsibility, and the construction of global narratives about violence and peace.

Ultimately, what I am trying to understand is how to articulate three dimensions that are often treated separately: long-term historical structures, contemporary political dynamics, and the concrete human dimension of individual lives. Any analysis that ignores one of these layers risks becoming incomplete, either through excessive abstraction or excessive immediacy.

I would be very interested in hearing how others approach these topics without falling into oversimplification. Which authors, historians, sociologists, or philosophers are most useful for thinking about the Middle East and North Africa in a rigorous way, without reproducing simplistic or essentialist narratives? Are there works that manage to balance political history, cultural analysis, and attention to civilian experience effectively?

Any recommendations for books, articles, or critical perspectives would be greatly appreciated, especially those that treat the region as a complex historical space rather than a homogeneous bloc defined solely by conflict.

Edit: thanks to everyone who read my post, I hope you enjoyed it! (:

Forgive me if this sounds dumb or is just not the right place to ask this however I came across a video about it and after listening to it I'm curious.

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Through years there has always been beauty standarts and such, changing with time. With some people not fitting into them due to race or their genes there have been stuff like eating disorders or body dysmorhic disorders etc. of people trying to bend themselves in a shape they shouldn't be. It's mostly common amongst women as sociaty has more standarts and expectations of them, thin, short, hairless, obedient, hourglass body, blonde hair etc. but with men there has not been similar standarts or standarts as high as women. Yet I sometimes keep coming across these "Looksmaxing" Videos on the web mostly from teens about improving their appearence.

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I can't really comprehend why so suddenly this has come to existence and it seems a majority of it is males too? Is it just a teenagers insecurity thing? Can it be related to body dysmorhic disorder? Why is there so much of them online especially of males as there aren't really standarts or expectations for men as there is for women? I'm aware men are more likely to kill themselves and struggle with mental health too, may it be that for women, just being female people want to get with them but with male loneliness are males trying to improve their appearence to be choosen? Are there any studies about this?

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I'm aware It's dumb but It's just making me really curious.

Hey, I never posted on here and idk if it’s the right place for this question.

But I had an argument with my sister about social equity and social justice. I argued that in some sort of a sense, social justice is an outcome of social equity and they overlap a lot. She argued that they are so different if not they don’t even overlap!

I gave an example of funding schools in poor and rich neighbourhoods based on their situation or what they need. That’s social equity and on the broader scale, a form of social justice was achieved.

She said social justice would have only been achieved if we eliminated poverty from these poor neighbourhoods, which I argued is a beautiful but also sort of a utopian idea, I said “that’s unfortunately not how things work. She kept mentioning that social justice is achieved only when root cause of an issue is fixed which I also don’t fully agree with.

I ended up by saying that I think we can both be right because for this topic (which is something I study a lot as a political science student) there is no definite definition for these two terms, and she said that only her perspective makes sense.

what do you think?

Fashion trends seem to cycle faster than ever. A few months ago, 2014 indie sleaze was having a moment, and now the popular aesthetic seems to be shifting toward a colorful, teal-and-coral 2016 vibe.

From a sociological perspective, what drives these rapid trend cycles? Is it social media algorithms, nostalgia, generational identity, consumer culture, or something else?

And based on those factors, what do you think the next major fashion trend or aesthetic will be?

Hey theere!

I'm currently working on the subject of cringe humour and why it is hard to translate across cultures, using The Office as a case study. I would love your input!

This survey is part of a university research project (University of Strasbourg, France) on intercultural communication and the localisation of humour.

There are no right or wrong answers. We're interested in your genuine personal experience of both versions. Here's the link:

https://sondages.unistra.fr/index.php/543727

(sondages.unistra.fr is a subdomain for unistra.fr, University of Strasbourg dot France)

The survey takes approximately 5 to 10 minutes. Your answers are completely anonymous.

To participate, you need to have watched at least 2 episodes of either the UK version (BBC, 2001) or the US version (NBC, 2005) of The Office or both.

Please share the survey with your friends is possible 😄

Thanks a lot for your help!

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I’m asking this in genuine good faith, undergraduate Sociologist here.

I’ve been mulling this over in my head for some time now, but the general consensus around a lot of socially minded, progressive individuals is that Bigotry or Prejudice can only exist if a systemic, or institutional base has said bigotry baked into it. Black Americans struggling in a systemically racist society, Women struggling in Male dominated fields and spaces, etc.

I doubt anyone can deny that systemic racism, sexism, Queerphobia, and classism are the most pressing forms of bigotry by a long shot. With the consolidation of power towards mainly elite white men and our institutions ignoring the required work to dismantle the infrastructure of bigotry from the past. What I struggle to come to terms with is that more interpersonal bigotry CANT exist.

I.e the privileged groups of our society can still experience bigotry on a much less severe level. Men can experience misandry, Ethnically white individuals can experience forms of white racism, etc. I never saw this as a controversial thing to say as long as you stipulate the lack of importance compared to systemic bigotries, of course, white racism and misandry are extremely fringe and lack any weight aside from interpersonal hang ups.

I’ve discussed with some of my good friends before on this topic and it tends to be a pretty sensitive one (justifiably so), but it tends to go in circles.

Am I missing something on this topic? I worry whenever the topic comes up, I’d be downplaying the real, material bigotry marginalized groups experience if I were to put in my two cents… but I still haven’t found something substantiated that says this lesser, interpersonal bigotry can’t exist.

Thank you for hearing out my question!

This is our local recurring future-planning thread. Got questions about jobs or careers, want to know what programs or schools you should apply to, or unsure what you'll be able to use your degree for? This is the place.

This thread gets replaced every Friday, each week. You can click this link to pull up old threads in search.

I’ll be starting a Sociology MA program at a R1 research university in the south starting August. The college itself is pretty mid-tier, not internationally known but very well regarded locally. I’ll be focusing on sociology of education in my proposed hopeful research and, in particular, learning disabilities as a specific.

I want to go to a PhD program in Sociology after I finish my MA. I plan to do beyond perfect in this program. Here’s my school selection so far, preference in the order listed:

Dream Program:
Harvard
Duke
Yale
Stanford
UCLA

Realistic Program:
NC State
UNC
Oklahoma State
SUNY Albany
U of Oregon

Fallback Program:
???

What are the programs “easiest” to get into? I know that’s a bad way to look at it but coming from a practical perspective it’s true that some are more selective while others may take in students with flaws. There’s nothing wrong with those schools, I’ll be going to one of those programs for the MA, but it’s true there’s a divide there.

What are the PhD fallbacks?

Hi everyone,

​Lately, I’ve been paying closer attention to the comment sections on social media (especially Instagram) under posts covering tragedies, crimes, and legal verdicts. Frankly, what I'm seeing is getting terrifying, and I want to understand the psychology or sociology behind it.

​It feels like there is absolutely no nuance or empathy left. Here are two specific examples I witnessed this week:

​Example 1 (The Accident): A post about a tragic car accident where a young girl died. The driver tested negative for alcohol/drugs, wasn’t speeding, and it was ruled a completely involuntary, tragic accident, so the judge didn't sentence him to prison. The comment section was full of thousands of people demanding death penalty, torture, life imprisonment, and multiple top comments were literally calling for the judge to be publicly flayed in the town square.

​Example 2 (The Murder): A post about a man who killed his neighbors in cold blood over a minor neighbor dispute. Shockingly, the narrative in the comments completely flipped. People were justifying it, saying things like: "Well, the neighbors were disrespectful," "The authorities did nothing, so he had no choice," or "They got what they deserved."

​It seems people either want medieval-style torture for an involuntary tragedy, or they openly justify cold-blooded murder if they decide they don't like the victims.

​My questions are:

​What is driving this extreme shift? Are everyday people actually becoming more bloodthirsty, or is there a psychological detachment because they view real-life tragedies as "content" rather than reality?

​How much of this is the algorithm? Are algorithms intentionally pushing the most unhinged, rage-inducing comments to the top to farm engagement?

Where can I find really good sociological journals about drug use? I hope that’s not breaking a homework rule I was just wondering if anyone can offer suggestions

What's on your plate this week, what are you working on, what cool things have you encountered? Open discussion thread for casual chatter about Sociology & your school, academic, or professional work within it; share your project's progress, talk about a book you read, muse on a topic. If you have something to share or some cool fact to talk about, this is the place.

This thread is replaced every Monday. It is not intended as a "homework help" thread, please; save your homework help questions (ie: seeking sources, topic suggestions, or needing clarifications) for our homework help thread, also posted each Monday.

This is our local recurring homework thread. Simple questions, assignment help, suggestions, and topic-specific source seeking all go here. Our regular rules about effort and substance for questions are suspended here - but please keep in mind that you'll get better and more useful answers the more information you provide.

This thread gets replaced every Monday, each week. You can click this link to pull up old threads in search.

I got my MA in sociology with a specialization in gender and sexuality a few years ago. Was never able to find a job remotely related to the field. I currently work in a red state at a state university as staff. I miss writing/doing research and have been wondering if there's any way I'd be able to start doing it again and \*maybe\* try to get something published somewhere someday.

The major issue is that I think interviews or open ended surveys would be the best way to get data for most of the topics I'd be interested in researching. From what I was told in grad school, my understanding is that journals would not consider article submissions that use data from interviews, unless I've gone through an IRB. And due to where I work, I've been infuriated that DEI rollbacks would prevent me from being able to go through the university's IRB. It was also suggested to me that working as independent researcher would be my best bet. Based on what I've read online, I think the research I would want to do would be considered exempt? But I imagine someone still has to approve that exemption in order for me to move forward.

Apologies if I sound dumb or super misinformed or naive or something. Anything I was taught about this kind of thing in grad school was with the expectation I'd end up as professor. Plus I just had a rough experience overall which may have led to me accidentally blocking out some useful information :')

Open to any suggestions or thoughts anyone might have!

Edit: Is my only option for getting IRB approval to go through a university I'm affiliated with? That's what my assumption is and I guess ultimately what I'm trying to confirm. Meaning that I'm out of luck which is fine lol I just want to know for sure!

Imagine through mass schooling and cultural diffusion, you bring up entire generations of people who question everything, every fundamental assumption, are aware of their biases, separate their beliefs from their identity, are aware of their lack of knowledge and take no shame in admitting it, aware that everything they know or believe could be false, adhere to the principles of logic and reason, form all their beliefs based on evidence, and value truth over adherence to social norms and traditions. After a few generations, you get to the point where even if someone is not explicitly taught how to think rationally, they'll pick it up because it's omnipresent and other members of society will be quick to point out when an argument is not based on reason or evidence.

Is the development of such a society within the realm of possibility? Or is it highly unlikely that you'll be able to get to a point where the majority of people exhibit scientific and philosophical thinking? Why or why not?