The Global Sociology Blog

It will make your life easier (click on image for larger view): And while you’re at it, just read the whole thing every day, it’s a riot. Also, if you can, buy prints (I just did). They’re really cool and cheap. Cartoonists need support because their work is so easily exploited.

Via Calculated Risk, they update this chart every month. The news is not good:

I have to say that based on the title, I had high expectations for Andrei Markovits and Lars Rensmann‘s Gaming The World: How Sports are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture. Sadly, I was disappointed. Not that the book is all bad, no. It is interesting at times, but a bit tedious at others. But my [...]

I’m putting scare quote around “debate” because it is not a debate when one side is composed of totalitarian morons (the anti-gay marriage side, that is). Via Trixie Biltmore on Twitter (click on the image for a larger view). When you put the opposite arguments side by side, it is a no-brainer, or at least [...]

*Sigh*: private monopoly and captive customers (literally) = squeeze them for everything they’re worth… “Selon un rapport que la Cour des comptes vient de rendre public, des disparités de prix importantes subsistent depuis la dernière enquête datant de 2006, entre les produits vendus dans les cantines des prisons. Parmi les aliments choisis pour établir les [...]

The sociosphere gives us two good examples of analysis of usage of public spaces from a different perspective. First, we have Italian sociologist and fellow socblogger Agnese Vardanega, with a photo slideshow on the different ways in which public spaces and public benches can be structured to shape people’s behavior and the strategies of resistance [...]

Not really surprising, also by design (stagnant wages + gotta absorb all these productive increases and goods made in the periphery through debt + the ownership society): And I love this: ““Nobody knows what a sustainable household debt level is supposed to be,” says Mr. Ashworth. Perhaps we’ll return to the near-100 percent debt level [...]

Serving the rich is the wave of the future: “A masters degree is being launched this autumn in luxury retail management at the International University of Monaco. Instead of draughty flats and sociology, students will learn about private jets, yachts and upmarket brands including Gucci. [Is that supposed to be progress put in a funny [...]

I must confess that I was a bit worried when I started Cory Doctorow‘s For The Win. In my previous reviews of Doctorow’s books, I noted a pattern and I was worried I might find it again in this book. Fortunately, this was not the case. The subtitle of the book is “Online or offline, [...]

Historiann posted her rant this morning on this annoying New York Times article on plagiarism. So, I guess it’s my turn, as one who busts plagiarizers every term in every section I teach (the record is still as one student plagiarizing FOUR times in my course and denying having done it every time). Says the [...]

From the Financial Times: “The slow economic strangulation of the Freemans and millions of other middle-class Americans started long before the Great Recession, which merely exacerbated the “personal recession” that ordinary Americans had been suffering for years. Dubbed “median wage stagnation” by economists, the annual incomes of the bottom 90 per cent of US families [...]

Posted before but reposted because it is relevant… No One is Innocent, Revolution.com For those of you who don’t speak French, the gist of the song is that revolutions and social movements take boots on the ground (see: Iran + Twitter = not much).