In recent decades, authenticity has become an American obsession. It animates thirty years' worth of reality TV programming and fuels the explosive virality of one hot social media app after another. It characterizes Donald Trump's willful disregard for political correctness (and proofreading) and inspires multinationa

In Hospital Land USA: Sociological Adventures in Medicalization (Routledge, 2016), Wendy Simonds analyzes the wide-reaching powers of medicalization: the dynamic processes by which medical authorities, institutions, and ideologies impact our everyday experiences, culture, and social life. Simonds documents her own Hosp

Global Agenda for Social Justice 2 (Policy Press, 2022) provides accessible insights into some of the world’s most pressing social problems and proposes practicable international public policy responses to those problems. Written by a highly respected team of authors brought together by the Society for the Study of Soc

Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest (Lexington Books, 2022) explores an annual interstate tug-of-war between two small towns along the Mississippi River. In this book, Johnston examines how media shapes place and identity of people at this festival. In writing this book, he conducted analy

As the US contends with issues of populism and de-democratization, this timely study considers the impacts of digital technologies on the country’s politics and society. In Algorithms and the End of Politics: How Technology Shapes 21st-Century American Life (Bristol University Press, 2021), Dr. Scott Timcke provides a