The Global Sociology Blog

Well, not exactly, but close. See you all later. Time permitting, I might be posting stuff over at the Tumblr twin site where I usually post quick links.

Here again, individual discrimination (active, individual racism) is easy to spot and mostly socially unacceptable in most Western societies. However, harder to detect and more devastating in its social effects is institutional discrimination. Institutional discrimination is discrimination in results, that is, discrimination as result of a multitude of institutional practices engaged in by a variety [...]

Via Valquiria Farias, this amazing picture of Manuel Castells addressing the Spanish protestors: Jeans and polo are, by the way, the official attire of the sociologist.

Edition 2011 is out: 2011 Global Peace Index from Vision of Humanity on Vimeo. Enlightening.

Well, after OMD and Asia, The Cars make 2011 the year of their comeback with their album, Move Like This, and the single Sad Song:

Rebecca’s Skloot‘s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is not a sociology book but there is certainly a lot of sociology between the lines. The book is a (well-deserved) best-seller, so, most people know what it’s about. There are several narrative threads: (1) the one that inspired the title, that is, the life of Henrietta [...]

Now this is a great interactive graph combining a set of indicators on quality of life: OECD Better Life Initiative via kwout Each flower represents a country. Each petal is an indicator and the size of the petal reflects how well or how poorly each country is doing on the indicator. Health: OECD Better Life [...]

It is a neat rhetorical trick of the forced pregnancy lobby to label pro-choice groups as pro-abortion because it displaces the discussion that should be at the heart of this: women’s agency and choice over their own bodies, and all the emotional, psychological, medical and social issues related to the lack thereof. Actually, as the [...]

One of the things that those of us who teach undergraduate sociology try to get across to our students is the idea that social structures shape behavior. It may seem obvious to us but in a highly individualistic and puritanical culture, our students are more used to looking at behavior in psychological or moral terms. [...]

Via Mark Thomas, This seems to point to logical solutions, doesn’t it.

If you are a public policy wonk interested in development, Just Give Money to the Poor: The Development Revolution from the Global South by Joseph Hanlon, Armando Barrientos and David Hulme, is for you. This book argues for the value and effectiveness of cash transfer programs in order to alleviate poverty in the Global South [...]

Via my comrade-in-arms, Karl, over at Real Sociology, a very nice series of visuals based on the classical demographic exercise of reducing the world to 100 people (with more here), my favorites: Stratification: Education: Freedoms: Go check out the other ones.

Straight-splaining is to gay-straight conversations on sexual preference what man-splaining is to men-women conversations on gender. Just as man-splaining is men explaining to women how they behave, when they should think, which issues should be prioritized on gender topics, straigh-splaining consists of straight people telling LGBTs how they should be behave, what they should think [...]

I have been a big fan of William I. Robinson ever since I read his – ever-so dense but profound – A Theory of Global Capitalism (a book you should all read) – and in this Al-Jazeera column, he pursues a familiar line of thinking: that global capitalism leads to 21st century fascism: “I want [...]

This is what happens when there is no real liberal power to shape the discourse on social issues (so much for the liberal media) and when both major political parties share a pro-corporate agenda: I think we should borrow Virgil Hawkins formulation (stealth conflict / chosen conflict) and apply it to social issues. Some issues [...]