Department of Sociology
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Hustling Today to Rest Tomorrow
Kathleen Griesbach explores the myths and narratives of unstable work
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Economics of the Unconscious
Economic sociologist Daniel Fridman on what Americans can learn from Argentine therapists
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Law, Societies, and Justice for All
UT’s Initiative for Law, Societies, and Justice unites scholars, researchers, students, and community organizers in the pursuit of a more equitable criminal justice system
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A Selfless Art
A wanderer (and COLA alum) puts down roots and grows communities.
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Finding Humility Along the Supply Chain
Sharmila Rudrappa brings students from Texas to Sweden to India to explore the realities behind “ethical fashion.”
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Bringing the Liberal Arts to Texas Prisons
The Texas Prison Education Initiative offers college-credit courses to incarcerated students in the Austin area. The courses, which span subjects from physics to philosophy, are taught by volunteer instructors and offered at no cost to students. Since it began in 2018, the program has served some 230 students in over 400 classes. But there’s still…
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Leaf Through a Good Book
Keep your to-read list up-to-date with our fall book list, featuring a selection of titles from College of Liberal Arts faculty members and alumni.
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Book Excerpt: Gaslighted by Christine Williams
After years of education policy and diversity campaigns encouraging women to pursue scientific careers, the industry was kicking them out.
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The Body’s Real-Time Response to Racism
For the first time, researchers have recorded how the body responds when someone is confronted with racism or discrimination in the real world, providing new insight into health disparities in the United States and the stress experienced by students-of-color.
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Scarred by Zika and fearing new COVID-19 variants, Brazilian women say no to another pandemic pregnancy
“We have to avoid a pregnancy,” said Rosa, about the possibility of getting pregnant during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Celebrating a Lifetime of Achievement
The American Sociological Association honors Jennifer Glass, Debra Umberson and Gloria González-López for their contributions to the field.
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Shake Up Your Winter Reading
Winter 2020-21 books from our college community.
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2020 Vision: Examining Some of the Country’s Big Issues
Experts from UT Austin’s College of Liberal Arts weigh in on some of the major issues facing our country and the president-elect over the next four years.
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Ticket to Read
Fall 2020 books from our college community.
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How Bias Sneaks into Big-Data Policing
Like all human endeavors, technology is at its core still social, argues Sarah Brayne in her new book Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing.
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Why Do People in Hawaii Live 7 Years Longer than People in Mississippi?
Add living a longer life to the list of reasons to move to Hawaii, which tops the list in a national study on average life expectancy.
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Rebooting Our Lives After COVID-19
The world’s new reality amid the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing us to confront issues and critically think about how to revive communities slowly, safely and sustainably.
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Smile, You’re on Camera: Behind the Lens of 24/7 Surveillance
“Even a strutting exhibitionist has something to hide: certain diary entries, genetic predispositions, financial mistakes, medical crises, teenage embarrassments, antisocial compulsions, sexual fantasies, radical dreams,” writes Randolph Lewis. “We all have something that we want to shield from public view. The real question is: Who gets to pull the curtains? And increasingly: How will we…
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Where India Goes
UT Austin economist Dean Spears and sociologist Diane Coffey founded the Research Institute for Compassionate Economics (r.i.c.e.) in 2011 with the goal of improving health and well-being in India. They focus on an important driver of economic development: the health of children. Despite rapid economic growth, India’s infant and under-five mortality rate continues to be…
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An Educated Decision
Voter turnout in the U.S. is below turnout in most other advanced democracies, with only about 60 percent of eligible voters participating in the past four presidential elections and about 40 percent participating in midterm elections. While prior research indicates that those with higher levels of education are more likely to vote, new research shows…
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The Cost of Crime
Despite crime rates being at a historic low, the United States is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to achieve an 80 percent recidivism rate. We’ve spent $1 trillion during the past 40 years on criminal justice, not including $1 trillion more on the war on drugs. William Kelly, a professor of sociology at The…
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The Criminal Justice System is a Massive Failure. Here’s a Solution
Contrary to logic, intuition and common sense, the hard fact is that punishment does not reduce criminal offending. This may be a difficult one for some to swallow, especially since the past 45 years and more than $1 trillion have been spent on punishment as the centerpiece of American criminal justice policy. We essentially bet…
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Your Turn to Do the Dishes
Most young women – and men – prefer shared household responsibilities There’s no shortage of advice for women these days about how to balance work and family — everything from becoming a supermom who can “lean in” at the workplace and do it all, to embracing the role of a full-time homemaker. But when given…
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Depression: Making Treatment Personal
For the estimated 350 million people worldwide who suffer from depression, the health consequences go far beyond “feeling down.” In fact, it is a leading cause of disability worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people with symptoms of depression will never receive treatment, and for those diagnosed with major…
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Borderline: The Politics, Law and Identity of Immigration
Temperatures hovered around the triple digits in deep South Texas when the children arrived on the U.S.-Mexico border. They traveled alone, without parents. They traveled from the faraway mountains of Guatemala and El Salvador and the depths of the world’s most violent city — San Pedro Sula in Honduras. Their numbers grew over months until…
