The Global Sociology Blog

Just not for mere mortals. The winners and losers are clear. Item 1: Also, from the always reliable David Cay Johnston: “The data showed an alarming drop in the number of taxpayers reporting any earnings from a job — down by nearly 4.2 million from 2007 — meaning every 33rd household that had work in [...]

A very smart video narrated by Richard Heinberg:

(Via David Sirota) Funny how higher taxes on the wealthy correlate with higher growth and vice-versa:

That the shock therapy imposed on Greece, along with the massive austerity would cause 1. Increase in poverty and homelessness: “A vine grows above the yellow painted walls and green woodwork where men and women gather. They are the homeless people of Athens. Sitting among them are Petros Papadopolous and Leonidas Samios, but the stories [...]

This editorial from Le Monde finally calls it what it is: there is no prison overcrowding problem, there is people over-incarcerating problem. And this is not because criminality has increased but rather because the criminal justice system sends more people to prison for activities that did not use to carry prison sentences and for less [...]

An excellent video from Al Jazeera, how the US got a stratification system worthy of semi-peripheral countries:

This article by Rachel Sherman (whose excellent book I reviewed here) is your must-read of the day. Remember that Sherman engaged in some participant observation in a couple of luxury hotels and focused on strategies through which employees dealt with the system of extreme inequalities. In typical Goffmanian fashion, in luxury hotels, you have the [...]

It just so happens that as I mentioned Foxconn in my previous post, that company popped up in The Precariat: “Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer, epitomises the connivance of multinationals in the abuses in the industrial parks that have sprung up in China. A subsidiary of Taiwan’s Hon PHai [Thanks, Jonathan] Precision Industry Company, [...]

So, I saw this commercial on TV today: Funny, huh? Actually, not so much: “The electronics manufacturer Foxconn has been accused of treating its workers like machines as they toil on assembly lines, particularly after a spate of suicides among its Chinese employees in recent years. Now the company, best known for producing iPhones and [...]

With apologies to Erving Goffman for liberties taken with his now-classic essay. But seriously, if you have been paying attention to the debt ceiling “crisis of the past few weeks, this will resonate: “In cases of criminal fraud, victims find they must suddenly adapt themselves to the loss of sources of security and status which [...]