The Global Sociology Blog

I agree with number one, I am not so sure about the others (Pinocchio at nunber 44?? Really? And I confess to never getting, and being bored by Antonioni)

Roger Ebert’s Journal: Archives via kwout

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A great woman, not a perfect one, but who is?

Ex-Philippines president Corazon Aquino dies | World news | The Guardian via kwout

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Last Summer, I wrote a two-part review of Manfred Steger’s book, The Rise of The Global Imaginary, truly one of the best books I have read in the past years.
In the latest issue of Global-E,  Steger revisits the relevance of the concept:

The Rise of the Global Imaginary and the Persistence of Ideology « global-e: a [...]

No one does readable data analysis of inequalities and stratification better than Lane Kenworthy. In the latest issue of Contexts (with a nice new design), he explores and debunks some common tax myths. The whole article is worth reading (in addition to his books, Egalitarian Capitalism and Jobs With Equality). For instance, here is what [...]

War and genocide expert Martin Shaw describes some of the features of the new western way of war: its genocidal potential:

Afghanistan and Iraq: western wars, genocidal risks | open Democracy News Analysis via kwout

It is indeed a feature of new wars that civilians become major (if not deliberately principal) targets of the various combatants, especially [...]

BBC NEWS | Africa | Tackling South Africa’s rape epidemic via kwout

I have already blogged about the epidemic of sexual violence in South Africa. Corrective rapes, the raping of lesbian women to put them back on the "right" track, are a subset of that and reflect hegemonic masculinity in that they involve a woman’s [...]

Over at the Social Europe Journal, Henning Meyer states what should be obvious to everyone, based on his reading of Paul Krugman and William Buiter on health care:

Private or Public? – The Future of Health Care Provision: Social Europe Journal via kwout

So simple, isn’t it? You get cancer, you’re covered. You want liposuction or penis-extension [...]

The New Statesman has a great article on Amartya Sen’s ideas related to (but not mentioned there although obviously in the background) of failure of entitlement. It is fairly long but worth the time.

New Statesman – The New Statesman Profile: Amartya Sen via kwout

As they say, read the whole thing.

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Someone just HAD to produce a remake and I totally want to see it:

Compare to the original:

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The topic of this post started when I read this column by Will Hutton in the Guardian:

Our laboratories and colleges ought to define Britain, not our greed | Comment is free | The Observer via kwout

Hutton argues that in the past decades, financial professionals and their activities have been valued to the detriment of [...]

Ha-Joon Chang (2008), Bad Samaritans – The Guilty Secrets of Rich Nations & The Threat to Global Prosperity, London: Random House, pp. 193-4.

"Culture-based explanations for economic development have usually been little more than ex post facto justifications based on a 20/20 hindsight vision. So, in the early days of capitalism, when most economically successful countries [...]

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I am shamelessly using the title of a truly great book of social philosophy because it seems relevant to Amartya Sen’s forthcoming book, The Idea of Justice. The book will be out in September here, but there is an article on it in the Independent (h/t Mark Bahnisch).

The thinker: Inside the mind of prized intellectual [...]

A Very Public Sociologist: V is Back via kwout

They brought hope and change! They get devotion. A few protestors are ignored. In the end, people get screwed… Does that remind everyone of something?

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"This is the World We Live In", one of my favorite tunes of their latest album, Day and Age:

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