Sociology in My Neighborhood Blog celebrates its first anniversary and 20,000 hits

Mason's Sociology and Anthropology Department is well known for its public sociology and public anthropology. Professor Bockman's blog Sociology in My Neighborhood: DC Ward 6 is just part of this innovative work. A little over a year ago, Professor Bockman began her blog because she thought that discussions about gentrification, race, and class in her Capitol Hill neighborhood could benefit from the decades of research conducted by sociologists. "Sociologists built their profession by studying cities and continue to do some of the most exciting, cutting-edge work in this area," writes Professor Bockman. Her blog has received over 20,000 hits in the past year and has followers in DC -- including those at the Greater Greater Washington blog and at the Washington City Paper's Housing Complex blog -- and far beyond DC. "Just today, I had hits from Russia, Brazil, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom," observes Professor Bockman. Her current students are studying their own neighborhoods across Virginia and worldwide.

Professor Bockman works with an exciting group of urban studies colleagues in SOAN, including Tony Samara who examines urban governance around the world and the Right to the City Movement, Amy Best who works on urban food movements, John Dale who has studied gentrification, and Katie Kerstetter who studies urban education and housing cooperatives. Global urban studies are just one part of the exciting public sociology and public anthropology happening in the Sociology and Anthropology Department.