The Global Sociology Blog

Because, seriously, last November: “Pressure mounted Thursday for the Irish government to draft a law spelling out when life-saving abortions can be performed – a demand that came after a pregnant woman who was denied an abortion died. Activists protested Thursday night in Belfast a day after thousands rallied in London, Dublin, Cork and Galway [...]

This: Social capital, strength of weak ties and all that stuff.

I see a few people have gotten upset over the publication of gun ownership data in this newspaper. I don’t see what the upset is all about. After all, this is the age of big data. There are data about us all over the place, about our cars, insurance, salary, etc. So, why not guns? [...]

It is in its fifth chapter that Stanley Aronowitz‘s Taking It Big – C. Wright Mills and The Making of Political Intellectuals deals with the power elite. The power elite seems an obvious concept and reality to many of us but maybe we forget how against-the-grain the idea was when Mills put it on the sociological table: [...]

Well, this certainly has been very interesting.  Two blog posts have brought in a lot more traffic than what this humble blog (and not so humble blogger) is used to. I am sure this will die out when I resume less stuff-from-the-news items. This is the first time I had to close comments because of [...]

First of all, that previous post on this really got some attention. Geez. Quite a bit of pro-gun trolling too. Anyhoo, one thing comments made was that I did not provide the sources of my data. That one was correct. I forgot, so here it is (and more stuff here). And it has a few interactive [...]

Having examined the weakest component of the power elite in the third chapter, in Stanley Aronowitz‘s Taking It Big – C. Wright Mills and The Making of Political Intellectuals, in chapter 4, the focus is on another major work of Mills’s: White Collar – The American Middle Classes, considered the second volume of his social structure [...]

This is awesome. I have yet to watch Season 3, which I am saving for a long transatlantic flight, but I love this graphic representation of killing in the Walking Dead.

This obvious set of facts: See the differences? See the statistically significant correlation between homicide by firearms and ownership of firearms? See the massive difference between the United States and other developed countries? Now, since yesterday, we have heard a whole bunch of rationalizations as to why this has nothing to do with guns. So, [...]

To this humble single-authored blog, with a friggin’ Doctor Who cake:

It is with the third chapter of Stanley Aronowitz‘s Taking It Big – C. Wright Mills and The Making of Political Intellectuals, that things get more sociological and critical. This chapter is largely dedicated to Mills’s The New Men of Power – America’s Labor Leaders, published in 1948. “The New Men of Power is not a [...]

Via Dangerous Minds, this great series of photos of abandoned Detroit school, then and now: Go check out the whole series.

Someone is after my heart. Queen has long been one of my favorite bands, and now, someone has visualized and organized their songs by themes: Now, if you are as big a fan as I am, you know that there were indeed four visions as each member of the band had his own specific composition [...]

I have blogged before about the highly patriarchal practice of bride-kidnapping, especially in Kyrgyzstan, but here is a reminder from Al-Jazeera English. Part 1: Part 2: The government of Kyrgyzstan has decided to toughen the penalties for the practice and guess which excuse is trotted out to protest the change? Of course: tradition. “Kyrgyzstan’s parliament is [...]

In the British press, headlines were all over their new census and especially the decline in established religions, a development similar to what is happening in the US. In this context, it is interesting to read headlines like these: “No longer the default religion: is being a Christian now a political statement?” And in the [...]