Society

The southern gap

In the American South, an oligarchy of planters enriched itself through slavery. Pervasive underdevelopment is their legacy

Keri Leigh Merritt

The golden fuel

Asia’s rise to economic power and food security has been powered not by rice but by American maize, the ultimate flex-crop

Peter A Coclanis

A fairly fed world

Last year, 200 million children did not get enough to eat, yet it would be cheap and easy for the world to feed them all

Sharman Apt Russell

Toward a feminist criminal law

Mass incarceration means police and prisons are not simple allies for feminists who want a more just world

Aya Gruber

After slavery

Abolition in Africa brought longed-for freedoms, but also political turmoil, economic collapse and rising enslavement

Toby Green

The tyranny of work

Jobs have become, for so many, a relentless, unsatisfying toil. Why then does the work ethic still hold so much sway?

Jamie McCallum

Sociology’s race problem

Urban ethnographers do more harm than good in speaking for Black communities. They see only suffering, not diversity or joy

Robyn Autry

Kerala’s skilled hand-weavers struggle to survive the rising tides of modernity

12 minutes

The billionaire curse

Philanthropy is vital – but its mechanisms are as intricate and troubling as the baroque structures of high finance

Katharyne Mitchell

What economics look like in resource-rich yet poverty-stricken Madagascar

5 minutes

‘I know it looks barbaric.’ Can a fight club curb street violence?

9 minutes

How the poor became blessed

Greco-Roman gods had no interest in the poor nor was organised charity a religious duty. How was Christianity different?

Pieter van der Horst

Like the chemical process of osmosis, migration is unstoppable

Robert A Burton

African art in Western museums: it’s patrimony not heritage

Charlotte Joy

Engines of democracy

Society will be much improved by loosening the stranglehold of top universities on the education of elites. But how?

Jennifer M Morton

After the storm

Few things tell us more about the nature of state sovereignty, and the threats to it, than the politics of disaster relief

Saptarishi Bandopadhyay

In Silicon Valley’s shadow, a boy bids farewell to the trailer community that’s been home

12 minutes

Why won’t the US Supreme Court do anything about racism?

Tonja Jacobi & Ross Berlin

At home with the homeless

Is a home made of bricks and mortar or hopes and dreams? Dispatches from among the rough sleepers on the streets of Paris

Johannes Lenhard

What really helps the poor?

It’s difficult to test whether poverty relief actually works. Do randomised controlled trials provide a scientific measure?

Stephanie Wykstra