Focus: Personalized Medicine: The Sociology of the Deceased Harvard Medical Unit at Boston City Hospital

Many graduates of the Harvard Medical Unit (HMU) at Boston City Hospital, in either the clinical training/residency program or the research program at the Thorndike Memorial Laboratory, contributed in major ways to the HMU and constantly relived their HMU experiences. The HMU staff physicians, descending from founder and mentor physicians Francis W. Peabody, Soma Weiss, and George R. Minot, were dedicated to the teaching, development, and leadership of its clinical and research trainees, whose confidence and dedication to patient care as a result of their mentorship led many to lifelong achievements as clinicians, teachers, and mentors. Their experience also led to a lifelong love of the HMU (despite its loss), camaraderie, happiness, and intense friendships with their associates.     

The Professionalization of Science Studies: Cutting Some Slack

During the past hundred years or so, those scholars studying science have isolated themselves as much as possible from scientists as well as from workers in other disciplines who study science. The result of this effort is history of science, philosophy of science and sociology of science as separate disciplines. I argue in this paper that now is the time for these disciplinary boundaries to be lowered or at least made more permeable so that a unified discipline of Science Studies might emerge. I discuss representative problems that stand in the way of such an integration. These problems may seem so formidable in the abstract that no one in their right mind would waste their time trying to bring about a unified field of Science Studies. However, those of us who limit ourselves to the study of the biological sciences have already formed a society in which workers from all disciplines can share their expertise -- the International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science.     

Racialized political shock: Arab American racial formation and the impact of political events

This article explores significant factors influencing the process of Arab American racial formation. I bring into conversation theories of racial formation and ‘political shock’ in social movement scholarship to develop the notion of ‘racialized political shock’ as an important factor in how racial and ethnic groups mobilize and organize. Many moments of political shock are highly racialized and have the potential to reorder the racial and ethnic landscape in ways that can open opportunities or introduce constraints to mobilizations around racial formation. Drawing on existing studies of Arab Americans, this paper highlights how Arab American racial formation has been galvanized during moments of racialized political shock. In the Arab American case, these moments have led to a call for recognition outside the category of white. I conclude by outlining ways forward in the study of Arab Americans, who have been overlooked in studies of race and ethnicity in the US.     

Urban markets and diversity: towards a research agenda

In this paper we advocate the study of local street markets to explore fundamental issues about the relationship between economy and society. This relationship evolves over time and we believe that it has been recast in an age of increasing cultural diversity and neo-liberal state regulatory structures. In street markets we can see how diversity and the nature of economic transactions become mutually constitutive. We argue that cultural diversity propels local markets, while everyday interactions in markets influence intercultural relationships. These complex processes are affected by the spatiality of markets and the regulatory environments within which they operate. We conclude by framing a research programme on street markets and discuss a number of methodological complications that would need to be addressed in this endeavour.     

Oh,you're racist? I've got a cure for that!

It has recently been discovered that the beta blocker drug, propranolol, can potentially reduce implicit racial bias among its users. By acting upon the affective conditions associated with implicit racial bias functioning at the non-conscious and pre-conscious levels, researchers have expressed excitement about the potential of propranolol and similar drugs to decrease implicit racial attitudes, and, thus, potentially decrease racism. This study and others like it not only provide indications of an affective component to modern-day racism, but, more importantly, an epistemological shift in the meaning of racism within academia from a social and cultural problem to a medical problem. In this article, we examine this shift in academic discourse towards a pathologization of racism and the implications of this on the sociological study of race and racism.     

In deep: the boom and bust of the coal mining industry through the eyes of Black Appalachians

This review discusses Gone Home by Karida Brown as a project about the boom and bust of the coal mining through the eyes of Black Appalachians. Attention is paid to how the boundary-making projects of Blacks in Harlan County, Kentucky were ultimately made against the backdrop of seismic structural changes that built and then ruined the coal industry. This boom–bust cycle is told through the eyes of second-generation coal miners – that is, the children of the coal miners who migrated from the Birmingham, Alabama region. These children experience their childhood in eastern Kentucky but then are shipped off to the North, West, and East because by the time they come of age, the coal industry is kneeling to mechanization technologies. Brown presents a compelling narrative that introduces a “new” story of the Deep South and the African American Great Migration, one well worth reading.     

‘We are all equals!’ Militarism,homogenization and ‘egalitarianism’ in nationalist state-building (1789–1945)

Cultural homogenization has accompanied many of the most destructive processes of mass displacement during the Twentieth century. Its goal has been to make polity and citizens ethnically and culturally ‘congruent’. This article questions the explanatory power of traditional accounts linking cultural homogenization with industrialization during state-building processes and the emergence of nationalism. It suggests that further attention must be paid to the role of the military as an essential institution in both of these processes. Finally, the ‘egalitarian’ rhetoric and legitimizing rationale underpinning both militarization and cultural homogenization is assessed as a most powerful nationalist tool for imposing new hierarchical structures.     

OBAMA AND THE BIRACIAL FACTOR: THE BATTLE FOR A NEW AMERICAN MAJORITY

Written from a “critical perspective”, four new sociologies of Israel have recently been published. This article critically reviews the strengths and weaknesses of these new books, as well as the “new orthodoxy” that they propose with regard to Israel's past and present.     

Revisiting the crossroads: returning to The Empire Strikes Back

This essay provides a critical reflection on the intellectual and political questions raised by The Empire Strikes Back. It argues that thirty years after the collection helped establish the politics of race at the centre of mainstream scholarly debate; these have now been pushed to the periphery of British sociology. The discussion begins by setting the book against its prevailing political economy, before commenting on the virtue and authenticity in its type of critical scholarship. The essay then moves to spotlight some of the ways in which the collection may be deemed both pioneering and limited, how we might recall the collection today.