Community-Supported Agriculture programs have become a popular model for providing consumers with direct economic engagement with independent local organic farms. The degree to which Community-Supported Agriculture members are unified in their identity and consumer interests, however, is unclear. One possibility is that mostly individual interests including supposed nutritional benefits, superior taste, and avoidance of synthetic pesticides motivate Community-Supported Agriculture members. Another is that they are motivated more by environmental and economic concerns at the collective level. Our study engages this debate by analyzing emergent themes in consumers' motivational narratives using interview data with 58 members of a Community-Supported Agriculture program in a large southwestern city in the United States. We find that Community-Supported Agriculture members are largely unified in their consumer orientation and pursue individualist and collectivist goals equally. In other words, Community-Supported Agriculture members are neither primarily altruistic nor egoistic consumers, but they approach their consumption as a holistic act. Specifically, they emphasize environmental issues and a commitment to sustainability through local organic consumption as a pathway to individual health. This suggests that an internally homogeneous, yet multidimensional, framework constitutes the motivational structure of local organic food consumption. We argue this framework aligns with an emerging eco-habitus exhibited in environmentally conscious market fields that translate into both collective and individual benefits.

Common concerns for many instructors of introductory college courses are that their students do not prepare for or attend class, are minimally engaged, and exhibit poor reading comprehension and writing skills. How can instructors respond to these challenges? Research finds that frequent testing improves the learning outcomes of students. Can it motivate better studying habits and expand their engagement with the class? This article assesses an experimental design comparing student perceptions and responses to low-stakes, daily written exams versus dispersed, high-stakes major exams in two introductory sociology classes. The objective of the experimental design was to test how daily exams incentivize compliance with assigned readings and class attendance as well as enhance students' experience and engagement within the class. My findings suggest that low-stakes frequent exams are a more effective method to generate these outcomes compared to infrequent high-stakes exams.

Is the market moral? Do different Protestant traditions have competing views of ''market society''? Despite the increasing diffusion of market logics in American society, scholars of religion have little empirical data on these questions. Employing discourse analysis of market-related topics in two prominent Christian periodicals over a twenty-year period, this paper compares evangelical and mainline Protestant evaluations of markets. We find that neither group views markets as redeeming, self-regulating, or value neutral, and both groups argue that markets require constraints. Evangelicals prioritize moral constraints on markets, while mainline Protestants prioritize governmental and democratic constraints. The degree of difference between the groups varies considerably by topic, however, depending on the degree of potential state intervention. We close by discussing our findings in light of recent debates over the relationship between religious conservatism and economic conservatism. We find that economic conservatism among evangelicals is driven at least as much by a commitment to collective voluntarism as by atomized individualism or free market ideology.

Newspaper readership has declined dramatically over the last few decades. Millennials and students of college age report reading a daily newspaper less frequently than any other generational cohort in America. However, credible newspapers continue to provide in-depth coverage and analysis of key contemporary issues that facilitate civic literacy and a sociological understanding of the world. This case study discusses an exploratory approach to integrating the newspaper into the college classroom as a way of connecting journalism with theoretical knowledge. In an Introductory Sociology course, I provided daily copies of The New York Times to students throughout the duration of a semester. Students worked in assigned groups, regularly read articles in the paper, and searched for stories related to a wide variety of sociological issues. As a final project, students wrote detailed summaries of several articles published throughout the semester and explained how they were connected with key sociological concepts studied in the class.  Nearly all students in the course reported that consistent readership over a 12-week period of the semester to be an effective learning activity that expanded their understanding and exposure to core sociological issues.