The VSI podcast season three: ageing, Pakistan, slang, psychopathy, and more
Listen to season three of The VSI Podcast for concise and original introductions to a selection of our VSI titles from the authors themselves.
The color line: race and education in the United States [podcast]
Black History Month celebrates the achievements of a globally marginalized community still fighting for equal representation and opportunity in all areas of life. This includes education. In 1954, the United States’ Supreme Court ruled “separate but equal” unconstitutional for American public schools in ‘Brown v. Board of Education’. While this ruling has been celebrated as a pivotal victory for civil rights, it has not endured without challenge.
How research abstracts succeed and fail
The abstract of a research article has a simple remit: to faithfully summarize the reported research. After the title, it’s the most read section of the article. Crucially, it makes the case to the reader for reading the article in full. Alas, not all abstracts succeed.
Police-free schools: the new frontier in ending the school-to-prison pipeline
There is no research-based evidence that demonstrates that police improve safety in schools. As opposed to promoting safety, school police target students of color and those with disabilities, which starts them on the road to prison.
Why depth interviewing is essential to understanding individuals and institutions
Once assumed to be a core research tool, many of today’s researchers have cast a skeptical eye on depth interviewing. These critiques reflect a fundamental misunderstanding about what depth interviews can accomplish.
New pathways through later life: redesigning later life work and retirement
In March of 2020, for many Americans and older workers especially, what it meant to go to work changed in an instant. As some workers moved their offices into their homes, others had to go to work and face significant risks to their health each day.
From immigrants to Americans: race and assimilation during the Great Migration
In recent decades, immigration has reshaped the demographic profile of many Western countries. The economic and political effects of immigration-induced diversity have been investigated by a growing number of studies across the social sciences.
Elderspeak: the language of ageism in healthcare
Elderspeak or baby talk to older adults is frequent in the healthcare context. Although elderspeak is typically well-intentioned it arises from a place of implicit ageism and can have negative consequences for older adults, particularly those with dementia.
The Census and entitled resentment
From a psychological perspective, entitlement refers to one’s sense of deservingness. Entitled people believe they deserve more than others. For entitled white people, the latest Census data triggers panic at being replaced by those who have historically been on the margins.
SHAPE and societal recovery from crises
The SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy) initiative advocates for the value of the social sciences, humanities, and arts subject areas in helping us to understand the world in which we live and find solutions to global issues. As societies around the world respond to the immediate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, research from SHAPE disciplines has the potential to illuminate how societies process and recover from various social crises.
From the rise to the maturation of the platform economy
Today, digital platform firms are among the most valuable and powerful firms in the world. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the movement of social and economic activity online, embedding platforms further into our lives.
Let’s raise our taxes! Infrastructure and the American character
If the infrastructure—roads, rails, water, and sewer lines—is the foundation of our economy, we are living on ruins and on borrowed time. The fragility of our infrastructure symbolizes the failure of a national ideology that has submerged public welfare under an ocean of private interests.
Beyond history and identity: what else can we learn from the past?
History is important to collective identity in the same way that memory is important to our sense of ourselves. It is difficult to explain who we are without reference to our past: place and date of birth, class background, education, and so on. A shared history can, by the same token, give us a shared identity—to be a Manchester United fan is to have a particular relationship to the Munich air disaster, the Busby babes, George Best, Eric Cantona, and so on.
Can children’s rights be the scaffold for love in the care system?
A human rights approach places children’s dignity (and their voice) at the heart of the care system. Ensuring that carers and professionals engage with children in a meaningful way is the cornerstone for a system based on ethics of care and children’s rights.
Cybervetting in hiring: the hunt for moral performances
In roughly 7 out of 10 workplaces in the US, HR professionals use cybervetting to get to “know a person” beyond information provided on a resume. But what are cybervetters really attempting to learn, what inferences do they make, and what does any of this have to do with how a candidate will perform on the job?
Fading signs of son preference
Son preference is a phenomenon that has strong historical roots in many western and non-western cultures. The positions of men and women in modern societies are becoming more aligned. In this context, it is natural to ask whether son preference is yet another social phenomenon that is losing its historical ground. Could it even be that in some domains of life such preference is already a thing of the past?