Animal Rights and 'Making a Killing'

In Making a Killing: The Political Economy of of Animal Rights, author and St. Lawrence University sociology professor Robert J. Torres challenges conventional anti-capitalist thinking and convincingly advocates for the abolition of animals in industry - and on the dinner plate.

Why Truth Doesn't Always Win

Having escaped from war-torn Bosnia as a child, Sanja Jagesic knows about the frailty of justice in a harsh world. As a 21-year-old sociology student at Wellesley College, Sanja now immerses herself in research to explain why truth doesn't always win in a contest of ideas. Her work suggests that status and prestige affect knowledge proudction, and it has caught the attention of leaders in the field.

Study on Islam Earns ASA Award

For many westerners, Islamic law (the shari'a) is often associated with repressive regimes. But a DePauw University sociologist has co-authored a study that finds Islamic orthodoxy - measured as the desire to implement the shari'a - is associated in every country with support for such economic reforms as increasing the responsibility of government for the poor, reducing income inequality, and increasing government ownership of businesses and industries." For that study, Nancy J. Davis is the co-recipient of the 2007 Distinguished Article Award from the American Sociological Association's Sociology of Religion section.

Bosnians Betrayed by World Court

The World Court recently ruled that Serbia could not be held responsible for genocide in the Bosnian community of Srebrenica, even though the court itself had concluded that genocide had occurred in Srebrenica in 1995 during a series of wars waged by former Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic against Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia. In a paper delivered recently at an international conference in Sarajevo, Wittenberg Professor of Sociology Keith Doubt called the ruling "disheartening" and said it "consummates a long history of betrayal that the people of Bosnia have suffered."