Negotiating Intimacy via Dating Websites and Apps

Author(s):  
Shantel Gabrieal Buggs

Since the early 2000s, researchers have illustrated the primacy of online spaces for people to find platonic, sexual, and/or romantic intimacy. Online dating has increasingly become among the most common ways for couples of all sexual orientations—particularly heterosexuals and gay men—to meet in the United States. As the study of online and offline intimacy moves forward, it is necessary not only to assess the effects of political contexts and discrimination but to consider how marginalized groups like queer women, trans and nonbinary people, fat, and/or disabled people rely on and navigate these spaces in their efforts to fulfill their sexual lives and find romance. This article provides an overview of existing sociological research on online dating to illuminate the ways dating websites/apps are shaping contemporary relationship formation along the axes of race, gender, class, and sexuality, while also noting avenues for new research trajectories.

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Harker Tillman ◽  
Karin L. Brewster ◽  
Giuseppina Valle Holway

Sociological research has long recognized the important role that intimate relationships play in young people's lives. In recent decades, relationship formation patterns and relationship trajectories during the early years of adulthood have become increasingly diverse and complex. In recognition of this, we review contemporary research on sexual and romantic relationships among young adults in the United States, noting how relationship attitudes, expectations, and experiences have changed in response to broader social and economic developments and how they vary by gender, socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, and sexual identity. Data and methodological limitations are also considered. We conclude by identifying promising directions for future sociological research and data collection efforts.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Petty ◽  
Dakota King-White ◽  
Tachelle Banks

Abstract Throughout the United States there are millions of Black and Brown students starting the process of attending college. However, research indicates that students from traditionally marginalized groups are less likely than their counterparts to complete the process and graduate college (Shapiro et al., 2017). While retention rates for students from traditionally marginalized backgrounds continue to decline, universities are beginning to pay attention to the needs of this population in search of ways of better supporting them. The examination of these factors may also inform programmatic adjustments, leadership philosophies, and future practices to help retain students and lead to eventual completion of a baccalaureate degree. In this article, the authors review the literature to explore factors that can affect Black and Brown students’ completion rates in higher education. By reviewing the literature and the factors impacting Black and Brown students, the authors share with readers initiatives at one university that are being used to support students from a strengths-based approach.


2008 ◽  
Vol 21 (suppl) ◽  
pp. 27s-37s ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugo Melgar-Quinonez ◽  
Michelle Hackett

Measuring household food insecurity represents a challenge due to the complexity and wide array of factors associated with this phenomenon. For over one decade, researchers and agencies throughout the world have been using and assessing the validity of variations of the United States Department of Agriculture Household Food Security Supplemental Module. Thanks to numerous studies of diverse design, size, and purpose, the Household Food Security Supplemental Module has shown its suitability to directly evaluate the perceptions of individuals on their food security status. In addition, challenges and limitations are becoming clearer and new research questions are emerging as the process advances. The purpose of this article is to describe the development, validation procedures, and use of the Household Food Security Supplemental Module in very diverse settings. The most common Household Food Security Supplemental Module related studies have been conducted using criterion validity, Rasch modeling and Cronbach-Alpha Coefficient. It is critical that researchers, policy makers, governmental and non-governmental agencies intensify their efforts to further develop tools that provide valid and reliable measures of food security in diverse population groups. Additional work is needed to synthesize a universally applicable tool able to capture the global human phenomenon of food insecurity.


Author(s):  
Xiaoli Tian ◽  
Qian Li

With more social interactions shifting to online venues, the different attributes of major social media sites in China influence how interpersonal interactions are carried out. Despite the lack of physical co-presence online, face culture is extended to online spaces. On social media, Chinese users tend to protect their own face, give face to others, and avoid discrediting the face of others, especially when their online and offline networks overlap. This chapter also discusses the different methods used to study facework online and offline and how facework is studied in different parts of the world. It concludes with a brief discussion of how sociological research has contributed to the study of social media in China and directions for future research.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert DeFina ◽  
Lance Hannon

Drug death rates in the United States have risen dramatically in recent years, sparking urgent discussions about causes. Most of these discussions have centered on supply-side issues, such as doctors overprescribing pain killers. However, there is increasing recognition of the need to go beyond proximate causes and to consider larger social forces that bear on the demand for pain-relieving drugs. Informed by sociological research linking labor unions to community health, we empirically examined the relationship between union density and drug death rates for the years 1999 to 2016. We found that states experiencing greater declines in unionization also tended to experience greater increases in drug deaths. Estimates from our fixed-effects models suggested that a one standard deviation decrease in union density was associated with a 42 percent increase in drug death rates over the period. Although the incorporation of a variety of statistical controls reduced this association, it remained negative and significant. Beyond variation in the availability of substances to misuse, our findings underscore the importance of considering institutional decline and broader social conditions as deeply relevant for contemporary drug death trends.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hana Shepherd

Organizational practices are important dimensions of the social contexts that shape relationship formation. In workplaces, the formation of relationships among coworkers are resources for personal outcomes, and they can be channels through which workers might identify common grievances, form workplace solidarity, and engage in collective action. Using a unique dataset of retail workers across the United States, The Shift Project, this paper examines two potential pathways by which organizational practices common in precarious jobs in the retail industry in the U.S. might shape the formation of workplace relationships. I find evidence of the role of both pathways: practices that limit the opportunities for regular contact and practices that negatively impact the conditions of contact among employees are both associated with fewer workplace ties. I discuss the implications of these findings for the study of collective action, and network ecology.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 594
Author(s):  
Karinne M. Carvalho ◽  
Mariana S. N. De Carvalho ◽  
Rafaela L. Grando ◽  
Livia A. De Menezes

Children with complex chronic conditions (CCC) belong to a distinct pediatric group, characterized by the (potential) manifestation of a wide range of pathologies requires long-term multidisciplinary health care, alongside recurrent hospitalizations and, in many cases, dependent on the use of technology for life maintenance. The need to seek, organize and disseminate bibliographic information on CCC led us to chart the scientific production on this theme, and a complete search of the academic publications was conducted in two scientific databases, the Web of Science and Scopus. The results indicate a significant growth in CCC research over the years, matching both, the increased number of cases and the consequent rise in life expectancy of these children. The scientific production on CCC is concentrated in the United States of America, reflecting and discussing the access to the health system of that country. We observed that the main thematic areas of the publications were related to hospitalization, health needs, coordination of care and oral health. Children have inequitable levels of access to treatment for CCC, according to family income, place of residence, educational level, race/ethnicity, evidencing the urgent need for formulation and implementation of public policies that address this portion of the population. Thus, it is expected that the present study will serve as a bridge guide for the development of potential new research projects, actions to promote and stimulate studies on this relevant theme and so far, neglected.


2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 286-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Lamont Hill

In this article, I examine the role of Black Twitter as a “digital counterpublic” that enables critical pedagogy, political organizing, and both symbolic and material forms of resistance to anti-Black state violence within the United States. Focusing primarily on post-Ferguson events, I spotlight the ways that Black people have used Black Twitter and other digital counterpublics to engage in forms of pedagogy that reorganize relations of surveillance, reject rigid respectability politics, and contest the erasure of marginalized groups within the Black community.


Meridians ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (S1) ◽  
pp. 340-362
Author(s):  
Kimala Price

Abstract Frustrated by the individualist approach of the “choice” paradigm used by the mainstream reproductive rights movement in the United States, a growing coalition of women of color organizations and their allies have sought to redefine and broaden the scope of reproductive rights by using a human rights framework. Dubbing itself “the movement for reproductive justice,” this coalition connects reproductive rights to other social justice issues such as economic justice, education, immigrant rights, environmental justice, sexual rights, and globalization, and believes that this new framework will encourage more women of color and other marginalized groups to become more involved in the political movement for reproductive freedom. Using narrative analysis, this essay explores what reproductive justice means to this movement, while placing it within the political, social, and cultural context from which it emerged.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Herf

Israel's Moment is a major new account of how a Jewish state came to be forged in the shadow of World War Two and the Holocaust and the onset of the Cold War. Drawing on new research in government, public and private archives, Jeffrey Herf exposes the political realities that underpinned support for and opposition to Zionist aspirations in Palestine. In an unprecedented international account, he explores the role of the United States, the Arab States, the Palestine Arabs, the Zionists, and key European governments from Britain and France to the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Poland. His findings reveal a spectrum of support and opposition that stood in sharp contrast to the political coordinates that emerged during the Cold War, shedding new light on how and why the state of Israel was established in 1948 and challenging conventional associations of left and right, imperialism and anti-imperialism, and racism and anti-racism.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document