Professor Van Ry

…The behaviors that usually get thrown into the black box of “irrationality” are sociology’s specialty. And that’s why it’s an especially useful discipline for dealing with the national public-health emergency we face. Insights from sociological theorists like Robert Merton and Erving Goffman can do more than explain the strange pandemic behavior we’ve seen in recent months: They can save lives….To sociologists, it’s pretty clear that one reason we’re not getting better traction on Covid-19 is neglect of what we call the “group level of analysis.” Pandemics are person-in-society problems: They kill because we are not lone individuals but live in groups. Continue reading.