African Americans have the highest rates of single parenthood in the U.S., and this divergence from

the two-parent family is routinely indicted as a fundamental cause of their disadvantaged position in

society. One need only take a cursory glance at recent academic studies, news articles, policy briefs,

or social media posts to witness the single-parent family being implicated as the source of a wide

array of problems disproportionately affecting African American families. Implicit in this perspective

Past research shows that there is significant ethnic attrition among some ethnic groups in the U.S. Some descendants of Hispanics and Asians do not identify with the same ethnic label as their ancestors. This attrition could impact estimates of intergroup inequality if attriters differ from non-attriters. Past studies on ethnic attrition have mostly relied on parental country of birth to establish ancestry due to data constraints. Nevertheless, this approach could miss individuals whose families have been in the U.S. for several generations.

Sociologists defined the state by their monopoly of organized violence and national militaries and domestic police departments are examples of the state’s institutionalized violence. In this talk, Dr. Alvarez presents a unique dataset of closed domestic U.S. Military installations to explain the rise and fall of military bases and their consequential environmental problems. Results show robust disparate selection of federal-level environmental remediation for decommissioned bases. The evidence reveals the state perpetuating environmental inequalities through militarized spaces.

This talk presents arguments from an ongoing book project that compares the role of the Internet in India and in China. For China, the main questions about the internet so far have been about censorship and surveillance, a rather narrow scope. For India, research about the role of the internet has been scarce. Social theories have focused on the internet in Western democracies, and there is abundant research. How are theoretical comparisons possible under these circumstances?

Wikipedia is an exemplar – a digital poster-child -- of Robert K. Merton’s 1936 essay on exclusion as unanticipated consequence of purposive action. Editorial practices, algorithms, and communities typically undermine the representation of notable women and minorities on academic Wikipedia and thereby create new gender and racial inequalities in on-line encyclopedias and their digital cousins. This is not invariably the case, however. What practices make for more -- or even less --- accurate forms of disciplinary knowledge?