The Global Sociology Blog

One of the (many) things I like about sociology is that it deals with such a variety of topics. Take first names, for instance, as very clearly explored by Baptiste Coulmont in his book, Sociologie des Prénoms. I was reminded of Coulmont’s book today because of this article (blog post by Arthur Goldhammer, article here) stating [...]

From their latest album, Culture of Fear, the eponymous single (no video yet, so, the audio will have to do): 02_Culture_of_Fear

Zygmunt Bauman highlights two trends in the surveillance society: “One item, authored by Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker, informed of the spectacular rise in the number of drones reduced to the size of a dragonfly, or of a hummingbird comfortably perching on windowsills; both designed, in the juicy expression of Greg Parker, an aerospace engineer, [...]

When it comes to individually producing patriarchally-preferred outcomes (having boys), parents will use whatever means are at their disposal. If contraception and abortion are not available, you will have infanticides, deaths by neglect or abandonment. If abortions are available, then, female fetuses will be aborted. And if the technology is available, why not just change [...]

Via: The amount of compliance is amazing to me. So much for protecting user data.. As I’ve said before, the surveillance society is a public-private partnership.

All explained through three items, that have been extensively discussed on this blog. 1. The global casino, ruled by bankers and drug cartels: ” Juarez has imploded into a state of criminal anarchy – the cartels, acting like any corporation, have outsourced violence to gangs affiliated or unaffiliated with them, who compete for tenders with [...]

… Is the only possible explanation as to why all this does not trigger massive protest movement in favor of better social policies and more fair redistribution (as opposed to the current massive redistribution to the top). First off, something I have been posting about repeatedly. For all the cries of “socialist” redistribution, the real [...]

Embassytown is the second book I have read by China Miéville (the first one was the great The City And The City). Those who expect a fast-paced, action-packed space opera kinda of science-fiction will be deeply disappointed. Embassytown does have the basic ingredients of a science-fiction novel: humans on a alien planet whose inhabitants – [...]

Because I know you were all worried about them: Click here for a PDF of the image. As the article notes: “We are not all in this together. The UK economy is flat, the US is weak and the Greek debt crisis, according to some commentators, is threatening another Lehman Brothers-style meltdown. But a new [...]

Paging Todd Krohn, since we had that discussion before, is anyone surprised? “Over the past 15 years, the number of people held in all prisons in the United States has increased by 49.6 percent, while private prison populations have increased by 353.7 percent, according to recent federal statistics. Meanwhile, in 2010 alone, the Corrections Corporation [...]

From their new album, Pala, Hawaiian Air:

Amartya Sen speaks, we should listen: “Rearranging the eurozone now would have many problems, but difficult issues have to be intelligently discussed, rather than allowing Europe to drift in financial winds fed by narrow-minded thinking with a terrible track record. The process has to begin with some immediate restraining of the unopposed power of rating [...]

I recently reviewed Evgeny Morozov’s The Net Delusion, noting that the book is a thorough debunking of cyber-utopianism and Internet-centrism, defined as such: ““While cyber-utopianism stipulates what has to be done, Internet-centrism stipulates how it should be done. Internet-centrists like to answer every question about democratic change by first reframing it in terms of the [...]

Via the Guardian, do go check out this interactive map. Where refugees come from: Where they go: It is often assumed that refugees come from the periphery and migrate to the core. In reality, of the roughly 43 million refugees, 27 million are internally displaced persons (a rising number). And the number one place for [...]

(Via) This post from Richard Seymour is something I have been thinking about for a while regarding the importance of language as issue-framing: “The point is how “the taxpayer” is invoked here as a relevant political category. You’ll notice that, implicit in this is a suggestion that there are people who aren’t taxpayers. But public [...]