The Global Sociology Blog

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A while back, Historiann recommended Paul Offit‘s book, Autism False Prophets – Bad Science, Risky Medicine and The Search for A Cure. I agree with her assessment: this is a phenomenal book. He should be the one invited on Oprah or Larry King or any other peddler of unfounded woo instead of the usual crackpots [...]

In comments to another post, Naadir Jewa pointed my attention to the Report on Social Determinants of Health published by the World Health Organization . Digging through it, I extracted two illustrations that make a good case for social determination of health and poverty as well as the impact of public policy. First, as Naadir [...]

The fact that the US does not use the metric system is the one thing that confused me the most when I moved here from France. And so, coming from the French Riviera, living in Connecticut, I would listen to the weather forecast 8 inches of snow and not realize it would be bad. Still, [...]

Over at the great Economic Sociology blog, Brooke Harrington has a very interesting post comparing the unfolding of the current economic crisis with the advent of the AIDS epidemic. The Plague « Economic Sociology via kwout More specifically, Doctor Harrington is concerned here with social epidemiology: the social processes and factors that facilitate (or slow [...]

Via New Soc Prof (who should be working on her geographical literacy! ): Lloyd Ohlin, at 90; taught criminal law at Harvard – The Boston Globe via kwout as New Soc Prof writes, Lloyd Ohlin « New Soc Prof’s Weblog via kwout Indeed, Cloward and Ohlin’s approach, often called "opportunity theory", refers to the fact [...]

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | How ‘gay’ became children’s insult of choice via kwout Of course, none of this has anything to do with gender socialization into norms of appropriate behavior for boys and how feminizing is an insult. And for those who thinks that words are just that and do not correlate [...]

Eclectica via kwout

I am sure someone has already compared Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel‘s Economic Gangsters – Corruption, Violence, and The Poverty of Nations (website) to Freakanomics (the comparison is made more obvious with Steven Levitt’s blurb on the back cover). Economic Gangsters (EG) clearly belongs to the same class of books of economic vulgarization (in the [...]

Do something about this without the stupid conditions (marriage for single mothers, workfare, etc.): You can even cheat and look at what other developed countries have done to sustain low levels of child poverty. Johnson’s War on Poverty cut poverty rates roughly by half, so let’s set that a baseline  you try to get to [...]

Especially this paragraph: 2009: New year’s resolutions (the sociological edition!) at Larvatus Prodeo via kwout I disagree with the parallel between Merleau-Ponty’s dispositions towards the world with Bourdieu’s habitus. I think a more relevant comparison here is Alfred Schütz’s concepts of natural attitude and common sense atittude toward the lifeworld. Let me explain. Bourdieu’s concept [...]

Via Helen Wheels, meet the leading figures of the Transnational Capitalist Class (click on the image for a much bigger version)