Sociology
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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.
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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.
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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).
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‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI
Megan McNamara, who teaches sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz and created a guide for faculty across disciplines to deal with AI-related academic misconduct, noted that “cultural” differences in the humanities versus Stem disciplines, or in qualitative social sciences versus quantitative ones, tend to shape faculty members’ responses to students’ use of AI.
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What one company’s shift towards data centers says about Imperial County’s lithium industry
Chris Benner, a professor of sociology and environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz, comments on challenges to Imperial County’s emerging lithium industry.
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How Trump administration science cuts muffled one NIH institute
Jennifer Reardon, a professor of sociology and the founding director of the Science and Justice Research Center, has studied how dangerous ideas from eugenics can easily resurge. “It didn’t just go away; genomics has inherited that,” she said. “And so, if you take the thin structures we created to try to mitigate against that, and…
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Kids are missing out on one of their best chances at learning
During play, kids learn “how to collaborate, how to communicate, how to resolve conflict,” said Rebecca London, a sociology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has worked on recess research.
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H-2A Visas Are Not The Solution to Trump’s Mass Deportation of Farmworkers
Rosa Maria Navarro, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology, wrote an opinion article for Time Magazine about farm labor issues and U.S. immigration policy.
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What Santa Cruz voters should know about Measures B and C
Steve McKay, a UC Santa Cruz sociology professor who has researched the city’s housing affordability problem, believes Measure C would help address this issue—in part, by signaling to the state that Santa Cruz is taking real steps to solve its housing crisis.
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Recess Can Boost Student Learning. 9 Ways to Make It Matter
As Rebecca London, a community-engagement researcher and professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, points out, “You can’t just throw 400 kids out on a play yard for 20 minutes with a couple of balls and expect it to go well.”
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Getting Recess Right: A Researcher Shares Best Practices
Community-engaged researcher and professor of sociology Rebecca London recently spoke to Education Week about the role of recess. She addressed both best practices for recess—like how to structure it and when to schedule it—as well as the big-picture ramifications
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In high-cost Santa Cruz County, a generation of young workers increasingly turns to unions
Young local workers once viewed service jobs as temporary steppingstones. Now, more than 80% told UC Santa Cruz researchers that they are open to unionizing, motivated by both economic pressures and a broader vision of workplace democracy.