The Global Sociology Blog

I have already mentioned repeatedly that I am a huge fan of science-fiction, which I see as not separate from sociology. Said it before, say it again: good science-fiction is good sociology. So, it seems to me that fans of science-fiction should rejoice because there have recently been quite a few good scifi movies (in [...]

Well… It should not rocket science for the administration or Congress to figure it out. So, the only conclusion is that this is how they want thing to be. The closing act of the shock doctrine. The triumph of neoliberalism.

Two items seem to me to be related. First, on Le Monde’s financial blog, Demystifier La Finance, George Ugeux reviews the compensation of American CEOs over the past ten years and notes the absence of correlation between compensation (astronomical) and performance (variable, from very profitable in the case of Steve Jobs, to abysmal in the [...]

Without mentioning it: “Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?” And no Wittgenstein mentioned either, or all the work done by a lot of people on this very [...]

One of the things I tend to emphasize in my patriarchy posts is the idea that patriarchy is about control of women’s bodies at different levels of society and culture. There are multiple dimensions of patriarchal control at work on a global basis. Despite the cultural differences, it is a global pattern. For instance, patriarchal [...]

On things he appreciates and/or loves: “Structure. Agency is for psychologists, economists, and suckers. Give me structure any day.” A-freakin’-men!

In totally unsurprising news… “Britons are not getting the broadband services they are being sold, suggests a government report. Ofcom’s analysis of broadband speeds in the UK shows that, for some services, 97% of consumers do not get the advertised speed. It also shows a growing gap between the claims ISPs make for broadband and [...]

I confess to knowing next to nothing about Americans’ favorite sports, football, basketball and baseball but I had heard of Dave Zirin thanks to the Grumpy Sociologist. I had read a few columns from him and enjoyed his writing. So, I decided to read Bad Sports – How Owners Are Ruining The Games We Love. [...]

I am not done going through this but it is a must-read: the leaked Afghan War Logs, leaked to the Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel by Wikileaks. Beyond a detailed account of how war is waged in Afghanistan, they perfectly illustrate the logics of new wars. In the Guardian: Afghanistan: The war [...]

(Via Atheist Media Blog) And yes, it is patriarchal practice even when i involves only women. It is part of all these cultural practices one finds in many parts of the world where bodily modification and mutilations are used to “protect” (i.e. control) women from sex and pregnancy. This is very similar to FGM. One [...]

This is a pattern I had not noticed but now, I see it in A LOT of movies (even Up) but isn’t it mostly an American phenomenon? “10 years ago, comic writer Gail Simone coined the phrase “women in refrigerators” to draw attention to the number of wives and girlfriends that die to aid male [...]

Scary and unsustainable… who came up with something like this. Don’t tell me it’s an effective and efficient way of organizing a system:

I recognize I’m stepping on The Grumpy Sociologist‘s turf, but I found this connection between extreme masculinity, extreme religion and extreme violence both unsurprising and horrifying: “One of the most astonishing religious stories on the web at the moment comes from Mexico, where a particularly brutal and feared drug gang, La Familia Michoacana, has been [...]

Picking up from where he left off in the first part of the interview, Erik Olin Wright, in this second part, focuses more on social transformations per se. More specifically, he distinguishes between three types of social transformations: Ruptural transformations – “smash the capitalist state” – are radical departures through political confrontation such as revolutionary [...]

Here is another example that makes my blood boil: when newspapers suddenly discover something that sociological has long established. Here are a few notes I jotted down during an ASA plenary session in 2008: “Bottom line: the current immigration situation is absurd: the backlog at the INS, the stupid wall, the militarization of the border, [...]