Social Sciences
-
Apple at 50: How Cupertino’s tech giant changed what technology feels like
When Apple unveiled the App Store in 2008 with 500 apps, it helped launch a new economy, said UC Santa Cruz lecturer Nolan Higdon, who studies the tech industry. Tech companies had struggled to make money from the internet after the dot-com bust, but the App Store and the iPhone’s booming popularity fueled an explosion…
-
How the K-shaped economy explains why it feels like we are in a recession
Some economists, like Pascal Michaillat at the University of California, Santa Cruz, pay special attention to labor market indicators to get a better sense of whether the economy has entered a recession. Michaillat said he looks at labor market data because this is the same data you’d want to use to look at whether we’re…
-
Misinformation swirls online following White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting
Nolan Higdon, a professor of political history and media education at UC Santa Cruz, says several factors have created this environment. He noted that the “media diet” from legacy journalism, independent media, and social media influencers often prioritizes content that appeals to a divisive nature.
-
Gas spikes and geopolitics: Why the ‘Lithium Valley’ dream is charging back to life
When UC Santa Cruz Professor of Sociology Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor published Charging Forward in late 2024, they envisioned a steady, policy-driven climb toward a green energy future. They didn’t account for a legislative “sledgehammer” followed by a global oil shock.
-
Fewer teens are applying for California’s nonbinary driver’s licenses
Phillip Hammack, a psychology professor and director of the Sexual & Gender Diversity Laboratory at UC Santa Cruz(opens in new tab), said these policy shifts may explain the decline in nonbinary identification among California teens.
-
Climate change is outpacing evolution. Scientists are using DNA to catch up
“It can be helpful, but it’s not a solution unto itself,” said Karen Holl, a distinguished professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “What should be prioritized is reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”
-
It’s America’s most famous bean club. Now it’s sending cease-and-desist letters to others
“These small farms always need new avenues of sales, because the basic problem that’s from time immemorial is that farmers plant, not knowing what their market will be,” said Julie Guthman, a UC Santa Cruz social sciences professor emerita who writes about the politics of food and agriculture.
-
Group seeking buffer zone for pesticides around schools
Joji Muramoto, a UC Santa Cruz associate professor who specializes in organic agriculture, said that it now accounts for 14% of the county’s strawberry crop, a sizable increase from the 1980s, at the dawn of the commercial organic agriculture movement. “Nobody believed organic strawberries possible in the 1980s,” he said.
-
Strawberry Fields Forever: How the Ecology Center turns strawberry season into a teaching moment
Influenced by his mentor, Steve Gliessman — who founded the UC Santa Cruz agroecology program in 1980 — Marks has developed berries grown without the use of toxic sprays or industrial inputs. The process involves careful planning, like planting nutrient-rich cover crops a year before and spreading compost to cultivate healthy soil and long-term sustainability.…
-
Trump’s SAVE Act, government shutdown and Iran war dominate weekend political news
Nolan Higdon, a political history professor at UC Santa Cruz, said the bill’s prospects are dim even among Republicans. “I don’t think a lot of Republicans will say it publicly, but I don’t think they’re too excited about it,” Higdon said, adding that provisions targeting mail-in voting could hurt the GOP’s own voters. “This would…
-
California’s $20 fast food wage yields higher prices, fewer jobs, more automation
On Wednesday, University of California – Santa Cruz released a real world appraisal of how the $20 mandate has affected owners and employees of fast food franchises. Stephen Owen, an economics lecturer, and a team of undergraduate helpers visited and studied more than 100 outlets in Santa Cruz and the Central Valley and came away with data…
-
Detrás de la ‘ensalada del mundo’: la dura realidad de los trabajadores del Valle de Salinas
El informe es resultado de una colaboración de cinco años entre el Instituto para la Transformación Social de la Universidad de California en Santa Cruz y el Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indígena Oaxaqueño (CBDIO).