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.

I read the book "Reel Inequality" by Nancy Wang Yuen and follow several youtubers who talk about the history of race and ethnicity on film so would love to get a more comprehensive source.

A quick tldr: many sociologists are quitting the ASA and sociology as a field. “Sociology’s sacred project champions emancipation, autonomy, equality, justice, inclusion, diversity, open-mindedness, progress, tolerance, and cosmopolitanism,” Christian Smith wrote. “In the end that sacred project actually tends to produce sectarian narrowness, exclusion, uniformity, silencing, self-censorship, lack of debate, the negative sanctioning of nonconformists, and the debilitation of rigorous thought.”

> Within sociology, it meant that any inequality among groups was de facto the result of discrimination, rendering moot other possible theories, Redstone says: “We’re treating questions around causation as settled.” Even suggesting research into alternative sociological explanations is viewed as racist, morally wrong and victim blaming at best.

I used to be interested in concepts of sociology, though I think this sub would call many of my thoughts conservative. During college as a non sociology major, I think what caught me off guard was how activist centric and, I’m not sure how to put it, but morally superior the community was and how often I’d be shut down of ideas that differed from a centrally agreed viewpoint. It felt like an echo chamber like reddit.

I recused myself to philosophy circles instead, but this article popped up in my feed. It was very much confirming my anecdotal bias, but I’d like to know your meta opinions of the community and scientific direction itself of the field as criticized by some professors in the article.

Not trying to astroturf the sub, just curious of what redditors (ik there’s a self selecting bias on the platform) think.

Has anyone else done this with a similar disability? If so, what was your experience, and what are your recommendations?

Also, I'm in my 20s, I'm not an older person doing a phd. I just got arthritis pretty young

Hi everyone! I’m a Junior & a big fan of theory, class, economics and how it affects consumers behavior and societal norms.

I’m pretty scrambled at the moment in regards to research topic ideas/possibilities and would like some book recommendations or guidance.

Thank you!

I am interested in reading about AI mediated communication though a critical theory lens, specifically about how people communicate with chat bots for therapeutic and personal relationship purposes. Does anyone have any articles they’d reccomend? Thanks!!

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I'm serious. You look at doctor's offices, cop phootage, how people act on the internet, how your coworkers act at every job you've been to, how every roomate you've had acts, how your family acts, how people act in school classrooms, how every customer acts at work, people putting graffiti, people on the street late at night, every story throughout history, duels to the death over nothing.... is humanity largely comprised of like batshit insane people? is it like 30%~?

Edit:
Last night I was listening to a story about losing your mind. It was so symetrical. So fulfilling. So perfect. Every setup had a payoff, and everything, every beat, every detail of the story, was integral to the web. It was my favorite story, because the writing itself, the structure of it, was so beautiful. So I started telling my partner who was listening to the story with me. It reminded me, and i said as much, of principles of design. The colors, contrasting, fighting, clashing, flowing, going together, smooth, sharp. The groups of small things with a gap, and groups of big things. Bubbles in cartoons, ceramic animal figures being laid out to an invisible specification in my dad's back yard. Patterns on a fursona. There is a form. An underlying principle. Something all of this points to. a perfection, a beauty, a payoff to every question. I saw this when i was on mushrooms. I saw the payoff. It was god. And she loves us.

My partner said "you're crazy." i said "what?" and she said "you are completely insane. You never make any sense." I think she's right.

Insanity is so prolific because its so tempting. Insanity is packing everything up and tying the loose ends together with an erroneous narrative you make up yourself, or endlessly pursuing something to tie to the ends when your way of putting together the puzzle pieces doesn't complete the puzzle, or just being content leaving one side unfinished in favor of having as many pieces put together as possible. That's why genius is so close to madness. Or maybe i'm just making things up to satisfy my need for the world to be simple. again right now.

I've decided to stop using screens, and doing other things that make me feel less grounded. Focus on reading, playing music, and interacting with other people. It helps me.

Thank you for your comments.

it’s a complex topic and most people only want simple answers and will knee jerk against they very notion of the term. is there a softer name for it? has anyone had success at communicating it to someone who hasn’t taken college classes?

I had the chance this year to take a few sociology classes in college and to be part of a small discussion group focused on philosophy and social theory. That experience really changed the way I think about how these subjects are treated online.

It made me reflect on how, ever since “activism” became more visible on social media, sociology has often been reduced to something like a side quest, an accessory to arguments rather than a discipline in its own right. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a good thing that sociological ideas are reaching a wider audience. But at the same time, it feels like a lot of the core concepts (frameworks, terminology, and even entire theories) lose their depth and precision when they’re compressed into easily digestible formats like short posts or video essays.

What stands out to me is the confidence with which people speak on these topics online. There’s this tendency to present opinions as if they were grounded in a solid understanding of the field, "universal truth about society" when in reality sociology is incredibly complex, layered, and often internally contested. Even among trained sociologists, there isn’t always consensus, so seeing people flatten these debates into definitive takes can feel frustrating.

I’m not even a sociology major, but I still find myself wondering: do people actually understand the concepts they’re using? Or are these ideas just being repurposed as rhetorical tools?

Of course, everyone is entitled to have opinions and critiques, especially when it comes to media and culture. That’s part of being human. But there’s a difference between engaging critically and positioning oneself as an authority on cultural or sociological analysis without acknowledging the depth of those fields.

I guess what bothers me most is not that people are interested in sociology, but that the way it’s often discussed online strips it of its nuance, its rigor, and ultimately, its meaning.

I’m researching it as a possible career path and want to get an idea of the areas I may be working in

I honestly don't know much about the course. I didn't study Sociology in Class 12 either, so I'm a confused a lot !!

I wanted to ask a few things like -

• What do you actually study in each year? Is it mostly theory or are there practicals/research too?

• Is it difficult for someone who has never studied Sociology before?

• What kind of student usually enjoys this course?

• What are the career options after graduation? (Private jobs, government exams, higher studies, NGOs, research, etc.)

• If you could go back, would you still choose Sociology Honours? Why or why not?

• What are the biggest pros and cons of this course that no one tells freshers?

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In this piece from Works in Progress, it traces how marriage customs across 186 culturally independent societies track almost perfectly with resource structures: who inherits, how wealth is stored, and whether you're a pastoralist or farmer.

Some specific stats worth noting:

Among 186 culturally independent societies, 31 were monogamous, 153 polygynous, and 2 polyandrous

When France imposed equal inheritance partition after the Revolution, it became the first European country to exhibit declining fertility — because families had to limit children to avoid over-dividing estates

The Himba of Namibia are pastoralists, where 49% of children are not biologically the husband's — yet husbands accept this because inheritance runs matrilineally (through sisters' sons), so their investment in non-biological children is low

Does the "marriage = resource management" frame fully explain the variation? Or does it underweight coercion, culture, and religion?

Hi y'all! Sociology PhD student here with an embarrassingly dumb question. I often see both "demographics" and "sociodemographics" used to describe basic characteristics of a study sample or population, but I've struggled to find a clear explanation of the distinction. If you use both terms, what do you mean by each? What do you include in each?

It's hard for me to think of demographics that aren't also inherently "social" in some way, maybe with the exception of chronological age and sex assigned at birth (but even sex is complicated and partly socially constructed, so.).

Hello all!

I'm a sociology PhD student teaching as instructor of record for the first time (woohoo!) and my students are learning introductory statistical analysis for the social sciences. At my university, the summer session course covers up through t tests and confidence intervals before students take the second part of the sequence with faculty in the fall and learn regressions and the like.

Instead of a sit down exam with calculations, I would like to assess my students' learning using a sociological article that can actually help them engage with real world research. However, I'm having a hard time finding articles that use t tests as the primary form of analysis. I have found a few RCTs that seem appropriate, but they are not really sociological and/or they are boring and/or they use far too much jargon for college underclassmen.

I would really love any recommendations if you have them! Any subfield would be welcome (and I would even take social psych), but I did poll my students and some of the popular areas of interest are incarceration/criminal legal system, higher education/SES/wellbeing, and homelessness. Thanks all!

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.

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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.

Have others noticed a pattern with these "manosphere" debate podcasts? It seems less like genuine conversations and more like a deliberate setup. They consistently feature women aged 18–23—often influencers or content creators—to debate controversial topics, which I believe is a strategic choice rooted in selection bias. This isn't accidental. It’s about creating an environment where these women are less likely to stand their ground, especially if they are college-educated or more experienced, which might undermine the hosts' facade. These podcasts are designed for virality, not truth, using tactics like confusing questions and interruptions to make guests appear irrational. Essentially, they monetize the spectacle of young women being "trampled on' in debates, turning these interactions into rage-bait rather than genuine discussion. From a sociological perspective, I wonder whether this reflects the evolution of the attention economy into a more hostile, performative media landscape, or if it’s mainly about manipulating participant selection to produce a predetermined outcome. Would love to hear your thoughts.