Social Science Space

When a mother with minor children is imprisoned, she is far from the only one facing consequences. Their children can […]

One of the most salient aspects of what generally makes a ritual a ritual is that the action itself is divorced from real life or its real life roots – and that fascinates anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse. By his own admission, what intrigues the latest guest in the Social Science Bites podcast series is that ritual is “behavior that is ‘causally opaque.’

“I think the debate about why people use the foodbanks has become really politicized to the point where apparently individual faults and failings are the reason why people are using them,” Kayleigh Garthwaite tells interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast. To find out, she volunteered to work at a Trussell Trust foodbank in northern England’s city of Stockton, deploying ethnographic methods to learn from the workers and the food recipients.

Britain’s former chief economist knows a thing or two about the impact of immigration on native Britons. In this Social Science Bites podcast, he reviews what data can tell us about the UK’s current heavy inflow — such as that new arrivals create both supply AND demand.

“Education,” says sociologist Sam Friedman, “doesn’t wash away the effects of class background in terms of allocating opportunities. That’s quite profound – I believe there are a lot of people who believe quite strongly that these sorts of educational institutions can and do act as sort of meritocratic sorting houses.”

Humanitarian aid organizations often find themselves torn by reasonable expectations – to address a pressing crisis and to show that what they are doing is actually helping. While these might not seem at odds, in practice, says sociologist Monika Krause, they often do. Krause, is the author of The Good Project, an award-winning book from 2014, and guest of this Social Science Bites podcast.

You and a body of like-minded people want to reform a wretched regime, or perhaps just break away from it and create an independent state. Are you more likely to achieve your goals by a campaign of bombings, assassinations and riots, or by mass protests which are avowedly peaceful? Your first step should be to schedule a sit-down with Erica Chenoweth, who has been studying that question since 2006.

Gina Neff doesn’t approach smart devices as a Luddite or even that much of an alarmist; she bought first-generation Fitbit when they were brand new and virtually unknown (all of five years ago!). She approaches them as a sociologist, “looking at the practices of people who use digital devices to monitor, map and measure different aspects of their life.”

Reflecting on his new book Migrant City, Goldsmiths sociologist Les Back tells interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast, co-author and co-researcher Shamser Sinha and Back learned their work was “not really just a migrants’ story; it’s the story of London but told through and eyes, ears and attentiveness of 30 adult migrants from all corners of the world.”

In this Social Science Bites podcast, experimental psychologist David Halpern, the British Nudge Unit’s chief executive, offers interviewer David Edmonds a quick primer on nudging, examples of nudges that worked (and one that didn’t), how nudging differs between the UK and the United States, and the interface of applied nudging and academic behavioral science.

Metrics on the average living standards from the best-off countries in the world (say, Norway) to the worst-off (such as the Central African Republic) vary by a factor of 40 to 50. So notes James Robinson

Fake news, whether truly phony or merely unpalatable, has become an inescapable trope for modern media consumers. But apart from its propagandist provenance, misinformation and disinformation in our media diets is a genuine threat. Sociologist Nick Adams, in this Social Science Bites podcast, offers hope that a tool he’s developed can improve the media literacy of the populace.