The Global Sociology Blog

Almost everyone in the soc blogosphere has been linking to a New York Times article talking about how bad the economy is for the academic labor market. Unfortunately, none of them exercised a bit of critical analysis. We have to rely on Marc Bousquet for that: Junk Analysis of Higher Ed by the NY Times [...]

The connections between the body and society seem to be of interest to French socbloggers Fred and Ben. Take this, for instance, referring to Nicolas Herpin‘s work on men’s height: La taille des hommes influence leur mise en couple – Fred & Ben sociobloguent via kwout For those who don’t read French, this refers to [...]

Brazil rocked by abortion for 9-year-old rape victim – Americas, World – The Independent via kwout Let me see if I get this straight: the Church has excommunicated the mother, the doctor, ignored the abuse of the little girl and lets the abuser off the hooks. And actually, the Church has not excommunicated the little [...]

I guess these billions of dollars are well spent: IRIN Middle East | Middle East | Iraq | IRAQ: Iraqi women suffering “silent emergency”, survey finds | Gender Issues Governance Health & Nutrition Conflict | News Item via kwout

Everybody has been linking to this video and how it makes people smile and generally produce some happiness and indeed, it’s hard not to get a goofy grin while watching it: What makes people happy? The making-of gives a few clues: Release / relief: that is, for a few minutes, people step outside of the [...]

Click here to sign the petition from Amnesty International: The situation there is extremely bad for girls: Sex attacks blight lives of Haitian girls | World news | The Observer via kwout

This article offers a good opportunity to re-visit Durkheim’s Suicide study: BBC NEWS | UK | Tamil family proud of son’s ‘sacrifice’ via kwout It is always one of the high points of teaching intro to sociology to introduce early on the power of sociological explanation through Durkheim’s Suicide. The case above is a  good [...]

[Yes, the first part of that title is a lame joke that only a few people will recognize. Those who don't don't need to know anyway... for their own sake.] One of the main benefits of blogging is when interesting people show up in the comments and add meaningful stuff to the post and/or the [...]

Some people can still afford purely selfish and extremely costly “vacations”: 35 millions de dollars pour voyager dans l’espace – Libération via kwout Any better illustration of global and national stratification?

I like this XKCD comic: Because it gives me the opportunity to revisit this post by Jay Livingston: Montclair SocioBlog: The Association via kwout

BBC NEWS | Business | Worldwide downturn ‘to hit women’ via kwout Add the depression version of trickle-down: BBC NEWS | Business | Worldwide downturn ‘to hit women’ via kwout

So, I get busy for a couple of days and everyone has already blogged about the cool stuff, including this via Susie:

I’m reading a whole bunch of interesting articles right now, so, by popular demand, here’s some more Some Grey Bloke stuff. Major racism takedown: On religion (with hilarious captions)

Robert Braun and Rens Vliegenthart, The Contentious Fans – The Impact of Repression, Media Coverage, Grievances and Aggressive Play on Supporters’ Violence, International Sociology, Vol. 23 (6), November 2008, pp. 796 – 919. This article is interesting but I would not recommend it for undergraduate students. The data and method section would fly over their [...]