2021 Publications

Learn about the latest books, journal articles, and reports of BU social scientists here.

The Center’s mission is to promote the work of Boston University’s social science faculty and our affiliates. If you have or know of someone who has a new publication, please email us at ciss@bu.edu.

2021 Publications

Stephen Kalberg (Professor Emeritus, CAS/Sociology) Max Weber’s Sociology of Civilizations: A Reconstruction(Routledge, July 2021) Kalberg examines civilizations through the broad lens articulated by the works of Max Weber. This volume reconstructs Weber’s sociology in a manner that provides clear guidelines to researchers seeking to investigate civilizations systematically.

Merav Shohet (CAS/Sociology & CISS Affiliate) Silence and Sacrifice (University of California Press, April 2021) In this book, Shohet evaluates the role of sacrifice in keeping families together in turbulent times (war, political and economic upheaval, etc.). Drawing on decades of research in Vietnam, Shohet discusses the role of female domestic sacrifices and their silent suffering help to forge a sense on continuity ion the face of change and trauma.

Jonathan Mijs (CAS/Sociology & CISS Affiliate) Belief Change in Times of Crisis: Providing Facts about COVID-19-Induced Inequalities Closes the Partisan Divide but Fuels Intra-partisan Polarization about Inequality (Social Science Research, December 2021) Mijs and co-authors ask whether the stress of COVID-19 has made people responsive to information about inequality, even if that entails crossing ideological divides. They conclude that disagreement over inequality may be rooted not in fundamentally incompatible worldviews but in different perceptions of how things are.

BU Sociology faculty and graduate students are the creative force behind Accounts,  the quarterly newsletter of the Economic Sociology section of the American Sociological Association. In the Fall  2021 issue, read interviews with Professor Alya Guseva, articles by graduate students Elif Birced, Ya-Ching Huang, Meghann Lucy, and Gokhan Mulayim. Professor Ashley Mears is the section’s chair-elect and Professor Neha Gondal is Secretary-Treasurer.

Andrew Stokes (SPH/Global Health& CISS Affiliate) Mortality Following Workplace Injury: Quantitative Bias Analysis (Annals of Epidemiology, December 2021) Stokes and collaborators find that work place injuries predict mortality risk, although these effects are partially accounted for by risk factors including smoking and obesity. The results underscore the importance of adjusting for confounds to isolate the distinctive effects of injury.

Curtis Runnels (CAS/Archaeology) The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere (Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, Nov 2021) Runnels and co-author reviews Paulette F. C. Steeves’s book The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere, arguing that it should be required reading for all archeologists. Steve’s book looks at how archeological conceptualizations surrounding when humans moved to the Americas has led to indigenous erasure.

Abigail Sullivan (CAS/Earth & Environment & CISS Affiliate) Collective Action for Changing Forests: A Spatial, Social-ecological Approach to Assessing Participation in Invasive Plant Management (Global Environmental Change, November 2021) The work of Sullivan and co-author Abigail York highlights the importance of considering social and biophysical factors across space and time to inform the design of institutions that will be effective in addressing collection action problems tied to environmental change.

Jessica Simes (CAS/Sociology & CISS Affiliate) The Population Prevalence of Solitary Confinement (Science Advances, November 26, 2021) Simes and her co-authors find that 11% of all black men in Pennsylvania, born 1986 to 1989, were incarcerated in solitary confinement by age 32. Their work suggests that harsh conditions of U.S. incarceration have population-level effects on black men’s well-being.

Steven Sandage (STH/Psychology of Religion and Theology & CISS Affiliate) Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapies in Real-World Clinical Practice: Synthesizing the Literature to Identify Best Practices and Future Research Directions (Psychotherapy, November 29, 2021) Sandage and his co-authors provide a comprehensive review of the practice-based evidence for spiritually integrated psychotherapy (SIP) is necessary in order to catalyze research and training in this important diversity area.

Steven Sandage (STH/Psychology of Religion and Theology & CISS Affiliate) Religious Diversity and Well-Being in Positive Psychology: Implications for Clinical Practice (Counseling Psychology Quarterly, November 23, 2021) Sandage and his co-authors assert that greater attention ought to be paid to more particular understandings of well-being, especially those emerging from religious traditions, and highlight ways to merge religious and clinical approaches in psychotherapeutic contexts.

Max Greenberg (CAS/Sociology & CISS Affiliate) Other Statistical Lives (International Journal of Health Research and Public Health, October 2021) Greenberg draws on ethnographic and interview data collected in interpersonal violence prevention programs. He theorizes three “other lives” of statistically produced risk factors: the past lives of risk factors as quantifiable lived experience, the professional lives of risk as a practical vocabulary shaping social interactions, and the missing lives of risk as a meaningful social category for those marked as at risk. Greenberg considers how understanding these other lives of statistical risk can help public health scholars better understand barriers to social equity.

Japonica Brown-Saracino (CAS/Sociology & CISS Affiliate) Changing Social Context and Queer Recruitment Panics (Contexts, Summer 2021) Brown-Saracino and co-authors explore the parallels between how Americans identify their gender and sexuality, and how we define these same identities.

Ana Villarreal (CAS/Sociology & CISS Affiliate) Domesticating Danger: Coping Codes and Symbolic Security amid Violent Organized Crime in Mexico (Sociological Theory, December 2021) The article draws on qualitative fieldwork conducted in the midst of a gruesome turf war in Monterrey, Mexico, to conceptualize coping in the face of danger.

Deborah Carr (CAS/Sociology & CISS Director) Physical Disability at Work: How Functional Limitation Affects Perceived Discrimination and Interpersonal Relationships in the Workplace (Journal of Health and Social Behavior, December 2021) Carr and co-author Eun Ha Namkung show the complex ways that physical disability affects workplace experiences including  perceived job discrimination, unequal workplace opportunities, and supervisor and coworker support.

David Glick (CAS/Political Science), Katherine Levine Einstein (CAS/Political Science & CISS Affiliate), and Maxwell Palmer (CAS/Political Science & CISS Affiliate) Building Back Back Better: 2021 Menino Survey of Mayors (Initiative on Cities, November 2021) The authors find that among long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, America’s mayors are most concerned with residents’ mental health and learning loss.

Nancy Ammerman (Professor Emerita, CAS/Sociology and Religion) Studying Lived Religion: Contexts and Practices (New York University Press, December 2021) Ammerman examines religious practices wherever they happen—both within religious spaces and in everyday life.

Steve Sandage (STH/Psychology of Religion and Theology & CISS Affiliate) Minority Stress & Mental Health for Sexual Minority Adults from Religious Families: the Role of Religious Coping(International Journal of Systemic Therapy, October 13, 2021) Sandage and colleagues explore how lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer adults use religious coping strategies for dealing with life’s stressors such as interpersonal rejection in family and religious settings.

Michele DeBiasse (Sargent College & CISS Affiliate) Letter to Editor: Let’s Design, Conduct, and Report Research with Diversity and Inclusion in Mind (Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, November 10, 2021) DeBiasse and colleagues call for the use of gender-inclusive language within manuscripts and engagement with diverse individuals in nutrition research.  Read the full text here.

Thomas Byrne (SSW & CISS Affiliate) Invited Commentary: Data Sources for Estimating Numbers of People Experiencing Homelessness in the United States—Strengths and Limitations (American Journal of Epidemiology, November 2021)  Byrne and colleagues weigh in on the strengths, limitations, and potential applications of data sources used to enumerate homelessness in the U.S.

Japonica Brown-Saracino (CAS/Sociology & CISS Affiliate) Unsettling Definitions of Qualitative Research (Qualitative Sociology, October 30, 2021) This essay encourages scholars to embrace collective uncertainty and debate about how to define qualitative research as one way toward critical conversations about the boundaries between different methods, as well as about the utility of the research categories on which we rely.

Christopher Robertson (LAW & SPH/Law and Health Law & CISS Affiliate) Are Vaccine Lotteries Worth the Money? (Economic Letters, December 2021) Robertson and co-authors find that 10 of the 12 statewide lotteries studied (i.e., all but Arkansas and California) generated a positive, statistically significant, and economically meaningful impact on vaccine uptake after thirty days. On average, the cost per marginal vaccination across these programs was approximately $55.

Andrew Stokes (SPH/Global Health & CISS Affiliate) Loneliness, Social Isolation, and All-Cause Mortality in the United States (SSM – Mental Health, December 2021) Social isolation and loneliness are both established risk factors for mortality; this novel study shows how the two conditions interact with each other.

Max Greenberg (CAS/Sociology & CISS Affiliate) Not Seeing Like a State: Mandated Reporting, State-Adjacent Actors and the Production of Illegible Subjects (Social Problems, November 2021) Drawing on ethnographic and interview data from violence prevention programs in Los Angeles high schools, the author examines the street-level enactment of third-party mandated reporting, which tasks state-adjacent actors with reporting when a student discloses harm.

Jessica Simes (CAS/Sociology & CISS Affiliate) Punishing Places: The Geography of Mass Imprisonment (University of California Press,  October 2021) Punishing Places applies a unique spatial analysis to mass incarceration in the United States. Dr. Simes demonstrates that our highest imprisonment rates are now in small cities, suburbs, and rural areas.

BU’s Global Policy Development Center Task Force on Climate, Development and the International Monetary Fund have released their inaugural strategy report in October 2021.

Joseph Harris (CAS/Sociology & CISS Affiliate) Universal Healthcare Does Not Look the Same Everywhere: Divergent Experiences with the Private Sector in Brazil and Thailand (Global Public Health, September 2021) In this article, the authors explore the changing landscape of the health sector in Brazil and Thailand before UHC reform and after. The article offers lessons for policymakers seeking to achieve and maintain robust UHC programs in other contexts.

Deborah Carr (CAS/Sociology & CISS Director) Physical Disability and Older Adults’ Perceived Food and Economic Insecurity During the COVID-19 Pandemic (Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, September 2021) Older adults with disabilities experienced heightened food insecurity during the pandemic due to both financial and logistical obstacles.