The Global Sociology Blog

Over at Social Science Space, Daniel Nehring reports his experience with academic neo-colonialism: “For there to be some sort of global sociology, in terms of general agreement about some fundamental aspects of social life, or in terms of a well-articulated network of sociologies that are culturally or nationally specific in some way, there would need [...]

Via The Guardian, a global comparison of health care spending as % of the GSP: No big surprise here. The US is in a class of its own, with 18% of the GSP going to health care spending. Having a practically all private, oligopolistic system not subject to anti-trust laws will do that. And that [...]

In Spanish, a very rich blog / site: There is also a Facebook page and a Twitter account for this blog, so update your blogroll, RSS feeds and other social media. It might help their grades!

In Evil, sociologist Michel Wieviorka aims to claim “evil” as a territory for sociological investigation. It is not hard to see why sociologists have stayed away from the topic. It is thorny one. And after all, Durkheim taught us all long ago to avoid just adopting common sense categorizations and running with them without examining [...]

“When New Labour started banging on about “lifting children out of poverty”, I knew in my heart that its “project” was a dud. Widespread deprivation – among the adults who have the children, not the children themselves – is a signal of a systemic failure, not an unfortunate by-product of an otherwise healthy economy. New Labour tried [...]

Here is another video demonstrating a great interactive visualization of global migration flows. I found it on Good, but the original is here and the actual visualization is here. As always, it’s better to watch it in full screen. The Visual Du Jour – Moving from SocProf on Vimeo. Youtube version here.

Really, I don’t. I understand what Zygmunt Bauman is trying to do here: “Of the surfing of infinitely vast internet expanses the members of Generation Y are indeed unequaled masters. And of “being connected”: they are the first generation in history measuring the number of friends (translated nowadays primarily as companions-in-connecting) in hundreds, if not [...]

Gosh I love this new Hard Fi album (especially because the previous one was so disappointing), so, here is another single from their Killer Sounds album, Fire in The House:

Now that everyone has had their fun with the new official French presidential portrait, here is my turn. I think, as always, one should keep an eye on SHiP (structure, history, and power) when considering social phenomena. Conveniently, Andre Gunthert has gathered all the official portraits of the Presidents of the Vth Republic. You can [...]

So we have heard before of virginity testing in parts of the Middle East as well as hymen restoration that happen for fear a woman or a girl, found to no longer be a virgin might be the victim of an honorable murder. In the same vein of degradation ceremony, meet the anal exams in [...]

As most of you probably remember, the first feature film to come out of Afghanistan after the US removed the Taliban from power was Osama, the story of a young girl, disguised as a boy by her mother and grandmother so the family (composed entirely of women) will not starve as none of them are [...]

[Since it is an interactive visual, I decided to have some fun with Camtasia rather than just take a few screen grabs... and yes, I really sound like that.] A quick overview of the annual OECD Better Life Index, a really neat data set on a variety of social indicators, summarized in a very visually [...]

The annual Global Peace Index for 2012: No big surprises here: Sudan, DRC, Yemen, Iran and Afghanistan “top” the list of least peaceful countries and Scandinavia still has the most peaceful countries, with Iceland as number 1, with the rest of Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand in the same category. I wonder what [...]

I know this is Todd Krohn‘s turf but the topic of the ways more and more conditions and behavior come to be defined or redefined as medical conditions to be treated through pharmacology is both sociologically a perfect case study in social construction and labeling but a scary display of the intersection of socially-induced pathologies then treated [...]

Literally! Truly a universal group dynamic…