The Science of Baby-Name Trends
What makes a name suddenly pop—and then die? Social scientists and historians have been puzzling over this for decades.
The Importance of Technological Change in Shaping Generational Perspectives
If we name each generation based on the technological conditions it experienced, generations may soon encompass only a few years apiece.
The Stonewall Riots Didn’t Start the Gay Rights Movement
Giving Stonewall too much credit misses the movement’s growing strength in the 1960s, sociologists note.
Why the French Revolution’s “Rational” Calendar Wasn’t
What ever happened to "the most radical attempt in modern history to challenge the Western standard temporal reference framework?"
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk has Reinvented Research
Online services like Amazon's "Mechanical Turk" have ushered in a golden age in survey research. But is it ethical for researchers to use them?
Queer Time: The Alternative to “Adulting”
What constitutes adulthood has never been self-evident or value-neutral. Queer lives follow their own temporal logic.
Why Pay the Costs of a Wedding for One?
Self-marriage may be, at least in some cases, a ritual reclaiming a sense of control when women may have felt they've lost it.
Why Stonewall?
The Stonewall riot in June, 1969 is generally remembered as be the beginning of the gay liberation movement. But there was precedent for the event.
The History of Outlawing Abortion in America
Abortion was first criminalized in the U.S. in the mid-19th century. A key argument was that too many white women were ending their pregnancies.
A Labor Day Look at the Future of Work
If computers endanger the hard-won gains of the labor movement, do we need a new way of addressing tech-driven income inequality?