Congratulations to all Members in the news! This page provides space for SSSP members to share news* of recently published books, articles and papers, award nominations and receptions, and other items of interest. If you are a member of SSSP and would like to post an item of interest, please contact the Executive Office at .

*News and Announcements will remain posted for 1 year.

Steven E. Barkan, Professor of Sociology at University of Maine and 2008-2009 SSSP president, recently had an op-ed published in the Bangor Daily News. The piece is titled "Mass incarceration: the great American folly" and details the social drivers and social consequences of mass imprisonment in the United States as well as some policy recommendations to address this issue. Click here to read the full article.
2/11/13

Stephen J. Morewitz had a solo exhibit, "Dr. Stephen J. Morewitz: a Retrospective," at the California State University, East Bay, Library, June 11, 2012 – September 1, 2012. This exhibit showcased eight books and one play, “Steamship Quanza,” (with Susan Lieberman) by the awards-winning author.
4/1/13

Sam Friedman of the National Development and Research Institutes has been awarded the 2012 NIDA Avant-Garde Award. Dr. Friedman is the first sociologist to receive this prestigious award for prevention in the spread of HIV. Here is a description of Dr. Friedman's research from the NIDA website: "Dr. Friedman’s research team plans to identify people newly infected with HIV and link them to care, since the first few months of infection represent a period of high infectivity and risk behavior. Novel interventions that include community alerts and education within affected drug using and other social networks and venues, and efforts to prevent stigmatization of the newly-infected, will be developed and tested to prevent further spread within the community."

Click here for the official announcement.
7/30/12

Matthew W. Hughey, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Mississippi State University, recently published White Bound: Nationalists, Antiracists, and the Shared Meanings of Race with Stanford Univeristy Press.

Discussions of race are inevitably fraught with tension, both in opinion and positioning. Too frequently, debates are framed as clear points of opposition—us versus them. And when considering white racial identity, a split between progressive movements and a neoconservative backlash is all too frequently assumed. Taken at face value, it would seem that whites are splintering into antagonistic groups, with differing worldviews, values, and ideological stances.

White Bound investigates these dividing lines, questioning the very notion of a fracturing whiteness, and in so doing offers a unique view of white racial identity. Matthew Hughey spent over a year attending the meetings, reading the literature, and interviewing members of two white organizations—a white nationalist group and a white antiracist group. Though he found immediate political differences, he observed surprising similarities. Both groups make meaning of whiteness through a reliance on similar racist and reactionary stories and worldviews.

On the whole, this book puts abstract beliefs and theoretical projection about the supposed fracturing of whiteness into relief against the realities of two groups never before directly compared with this much breadth and depth. By examining the similarities and differences between seemingly antithetical white groups, we see not just the many ways of being white, but how these actors make meaning of whiteness in ways that collectively reproduce both white identity and, ultimately, white supremacy.

Click here to visit the Stanford Univeristy Press information page for White Bound.
7/20/12