Social Sciences, Volume 5, Issue 4

This commentary discusses the evolving dynamics and the intergenerational “rifts” that often arise in gender and women’s studies classes. The first section outlines the rise of women’s studies programs in the 1970s and the “women-centered” approach m...

An attempt is made to study the social network site, Vahid Online, pseudonym of a leading Iranian activist who has the largest social media followership online. Vahid Online is Iran’s leading distributor of information about social and political news...

While scholars and journalists have focused important attention on the recent militarization of intensive policing and imprisonment policies in the United States, there is little reciprocal recognition of how militarized versions of these policies we...

Recent droughts in 2012 and 2013 have increased attention to water use issues in the United States. Cities, government agencies, and environmental nonprofit organizations use scientifically-framed messages to advocate for water conservation. In addit...

This article analyzes the intersection of gender, women’s activism, and political participation in Morocco in a socio-political approach. The emergence of women’s activism is an answer to the gender-based discrimination in the country. Women’s non-go...

Suburbs have demographically diversified in terms of race, yet little research has been done on household structures in suburbs. Using the 2011 American Housing Survey and 2009–2013 American Community Survey, this study investigates the distributions...

Despite a rapid rise in the public visibility of parents who are choosing to support their transgender and gender-diverse children in recent years, little is yet known about how these parents challenge the regulatory forces of hegemonic gender throug...

Peer-review workshops are commonly used in writing courses as a way for students to give their peers feedback as well as help their own writing. Most of the research on peer-review workshops focuses on workshops held in traditional in-person courses,...

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a significant public health problem. It is estimated that around 14,700 women affected by FGM live in Switzerland, primarily among women with a history of migration. Our qualitative research investigated the sexual...

Over the past several decades, over 100 countries have passed legislation banning commercial organ transplantation. What explains this rapid, global diffusion of laws? Based on qualitative data from in-depth interviews, historical analysis, and secon...

This study seeks to examine the influence of mothers’ schooling accomplishments on child mortality outcomes by exploiting the exogenous variability in schooling prompted by the 1997 universal primary education (UPE) policy in Uganda. The UPE policy,...

The Internet and social media afford individuals the opportunity to post their thoughts instantaneously and largely without filters. While this has tremendous democratic potential, it also raises questions about the quality of the discourse these tec...

The purpose of this paper is to challenge the dominant narrative of Christian service providers working for North Korean refugees’ welfare, and to articulate the perspectives of non-Christian aid recipients, especially North Korean refugees in China...

In the early twentieth century, the eugenics movement exercised considerable influence over domestic US public policy. Positive eugenics encouraged the reproduction of “fit” human specimens while negative eugenics attempted to reduce the reproduction...

A large body of existing research has consistently demonstrated that the use of social networking sites (SNS) by citizens in elections is positively related to different forms of both offline and online participation. The opposite argument, however,...

Banishment policies grant police the authority to formally ban individuals from entering public housing and arrest them for trespassing if they violate the ban. Despite its widespread use and the social consequences resulting from it, an empirical ev...

This article considers how countries differ in the opinions that citizens hold about the fairness of the social and educational system. From the literature, we derive a typology of four educational “regimes”, based on differences in educational syste...

Niche dating sites have become a popular trend in the online dating industry; yet, little is known about the specialization strategies these sites use to cater to their users’ needs. Moreover, previous research alludes to the idea that many of these...

Institutional change has a human face. This paper explores how a select group of women in China and India experienced economic and political turmoil and why they chose to become change agents. Through in-depth interviews with 40 women from NGOs, gove...

Despite its post-Soviet history, Azerbaijan is an under-investigated country in academic research—compared with the other former constituencies, such as the Baltic countries or Russia, of the USSR—and gender questions of the contemporary Azerbaijani...

Since 2009, more Mexicans have been leaving rather than coming to the USA; likewise, illegal immigration from Mexico has declined. Yet, immigration remains a hotly contested issue in the 2016 presidential election, with a seemingly marked increase in...

Facebook posts, YouTube videos, tweets and wooing political bloggers have become standard practice in marketing political campaigns. Research has demonstrated the effect of new media on a host of politically-related behavior, including political part...

In public discourse, and in the governance of online communities, young people are often denied agency. Children are frequently considered objects to protect, safeguard, and manage. Yet as children go online from very early ages, they develop emergen...

In recent years, Latin Americans marched the streets in a wave of protests that swept almost every country in the region. Yet few studies have assessed how Latin Americans support various forms of protest, and how new technologies affect attitudes to...

For local governments in city-regions, the term “dispositional immobility” can be applied in situations where the question of municipal restructuring becomes an arena for permanent public policy non-decisions. Disposition is here used to mean both th...

This paper discusses the exclusion of veterans with combat PTSD (CPTSD) from eligibility for the Purple Heart (PH). The main argument is that this exclusion is unjustified and that it strengthens the stigma attached to the traumatized veterans, with...

This study draws on a general theoretical framework comprising of a decision maker (a doctor), perceived moral intensity of the issue (breastfeeding substitute prescription), and the situational environment (hospital policy, pharma company promotions...

Over the last half-decade, there has been an explosion in the United States of lawsuits in which claims to religious liberty have been used to justify abridging the civil rights of women, LGBTQ people, and other minorities. This article surveys such...

Geosocial-networking smartphone applications utilize global positioning system (GPS) technologies to connect users based on their physical proximity. Many gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) have smartphones, and these new mobile...