Author: admin

Class & Stratification / Gender & Sexuality / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Identity / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Bulletproof Coffee (and the Spirit of Contemporary Capitalism)

At a health food café in central London, I recently drank my first ‘Bulletproof Coffee,’  a surprisingly ingestible blend of espresso, butter and coconut oil which has a texture not dissimilar to yak butter tea. To be precise, Bulletproof® Coffee ought to be made with a blend of grass-fed butter, Upgraded™ coconut oil (from upgradedself.com) and low-toxin Bulletproof® Upgraded™ Coffee Beans. And it is indeed no coincidence that Bulletproof Coffee tastes a little like yak butter tea. Dave Asprey, the...

Opinion

"Deserving students" getting free tuition since 1955

Last Friday, President Obama announced a proposal for tuition-free community college.  IF Obama’s plan is implemented it could save a full-time community college student an average of $3800 per year.  Students are required to “make steady progress” toward completing their program by registering at least part-time each semester and maintain a 2.5 GPA.  The federal government will split the costs with states by covering three quarters of tuition while the state picks up the remaining quarter.  If Obama’s plan is...

Opinion

North Korea: Good news for people who like bad news

Name the first famous Korean that comes into your head. Unless you’re (a) Korean, (b) majoring in East-Asian studies or (c) showing off, you’ll probably say Kim Jong-Eun, the western media’s favourite Evil Dictator. Kim, like his father, makes it oh-so-easy for stories about him to quickly become clickbait. The dynastic backstory, brutal haircut, penchant for Dr. Evil-style Maoist tunics, countless silly titles, affection for basketball, Dennis Rodman and overeating – add in the very real nuclear ambitions, the forced labour...

Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Organizations & Work

CONAIE Headquarters to be Shut Down: Indigenous Peoples of Ecuador Request International Support

Yesterday, in Quito, Ecuador, hundreds of Indigenous people from around the country, including those from the Amazon, the Sierra and the Coast, gathered outside the offices of CONAIE (the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador), in the north of the city, to continue the fight against a government plan to close the organisation’s headquarters. CONAIE is among the largest and longest standing Indigenous organisations in Ecuador, and its work focuses on defending the rights, territories, culture and lives of millions of...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture

Most "Insert List Here" of 2014: Ratings and hierarchies

Happy new year! I hope that this year finds you with accepted publications, good grades, and time for sleep. Each year, starting mid-December, begins the season for “ratings” and lists of the “best” and the”worst” moments, outfits, songs, movies, actors, or whatever you can put in a list of the previous year. As my Facebook feed quickly turns from photos and status updates to comical BuzzFeed lists, I came across one interesting list this year that I had not seen...

Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

The Ghost of Christmas Pressed for Time

  In Payback, her reaction to the debt-fuelled financial crisis of 2007-08, Margaret Atwood rewrites Dickens’ Christmas Carol for the present day. She invites us to join ‘Scrooge Nouveau’ in his Tuscan villa, as he is visited by the Spirit of Earth Day Future. Scrooge Nouveau is confronted by two possible futures – one of ecological harmony and regular debt jubilees, the other unfolding in a lifeless desert where he sees himself fighting with other hungry survivors over the corpse...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change

What’s the true meaning of the 1914 Christmas Truce?

Since August in the UK we’ve been commemorating the outbreak of WW1. The various reasons for this memorialising overlap, but they can reflect an individual’s political Weltanschauung and attitudes to the Great War. For some, the 800,000+ Tommies who died sacrificed themselves in a heroic struggle against the forces of militaristic totalitarianism represented by Germany. While for others, the WW1 represents plutocrats sending young men to their deaths while many industrialists and manufacturers profited from Britain’s war economy only to...

Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Festivus for the rest of us

For the second year, Florida hosts a variety of religious displays in the rotunda of the state capitol.  This year, for the first time, the Satanic Temple erected their seasonal exhibition of an angel falling from Heaven into a fiery pit.  The Sataic Temple presentation complements a Christian nativity scene as well as other anti-religion and atheist displays with seasonal depictions including a “Festivus” pole constructed from Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans and a Flying Spaghetti Monster with the sign that says, “A...

Opinion

‘Is There Anything Else I Can Help You With?’ Call Centres, and Christmas on Minimum Wage

  Casual work and debt According to a recent report by TUC, one in twelve people in Britain are in precarious employment with figures rising by 61.8% for men and 35.6% for women since 2008. That means that 1 in 12 people are living a life of economic insecurity, and, at this time of year, it also means that thousands of parents or grandparents will be uncertain if they can afford to buy gifts for their families at Christmas. Yet...

Opinion / Peace, War & Social Conflict

Eating the World

  Christmas comes every year, and every year, much like a snowball rolling down a mountain in er…Lapland, it accumulates new ‘traditions’. New additions in recent years include Christmas jumpers, Black Friday, and songs from X Factor going to Number One. Great. Go back further and see that Christmas trees, Santa Claus, crackers, Saint Nicholas, Christmas carols and even the nativity story have all been tacked onto what was originally the pagan festival of the winter solstice, the shortest day...

Gender & Sexuality

Putting the “Homo” in the Organization: Making the Case for Expanding Concepts of Normativity (Part 1)

It is that time of year when theses, dissertations, and proposals are being prepared for defense. My thesis intends to examine the scripting of a normative student identity with special attention to sexuality in study abroad orientation programs. Only, when it came to prepare my literature review, it came as a shock to me that there is little discussion of homonormativity in education, let alone a conceptualization of homonormativity and organizations more generally. In a world where non-heterosexual identified individuals...

Opinion

Crypto-Redemption

Yup. It’s ‘Doge Keynes’.  Paul Stoller – perhaps best known for his pioneering work on the ‘anthropology of the senses‘ – suggested last month in a blog for the Huffington Post that the ‘unprecedented prosperity that human activity has generated has ironically resulted in widespread misery in the world.’ Stoller calls upon anthropologists to shift ‘from passive to active voice,’ claiming that they are uniquely positioned to challenge what I like to refer to as the two-pronged politics of idiocy,...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology Compass Issues / Sociology of Culture

Cancer is Not a Pink Ribbon (part 1)

As a belated nod to ‘Breast Cancer Awareness Month’ (October, in the USA), and the plethora of pink, breast-cancer-sponsored items now on sale,  I want to talk about the rise of the pink ribbon campaign and the concept of ‘pinkwashing’. Breast cancer and the pink ribbon campaign is probably one of the biggest success stories, in terms of its ability to raise awareness and ultimately, save lives. Breast cancer activism started in the 1980’s, in part as a reaction to...

Class & Stratification / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change

Legacies of The War on Poverty: A chat with Jill Quadagno on the 20th anniversary of The Color of Welfare

In 1994 Jill Quadagno published The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty.  To celebrate the 20th anniversary of this highly influential text, Dr. Quadagno did a series of media interviews two days.  She also graciously sat down with me for an informal chat about what she believes to be the lasting outcome of The War on Poverty.

Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

It's Time to Discuss: Race, Police Misconduct, and Social Change

  I have been reading the most recent posts on Sociology Lens and I was surprised to see that there has not been a post on the recent grand jury decision in not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. For weeks, a large portion of news coverage has been on the death of the unarmed 18-year-old black teen. Then Wednesday, a grand jury declined to indict another white police officer,...

Opinion

Alive Inside: How music can help fight dementia.

What’s your favourite song? Everyone has one. Or maybe, if you’re like me, you have about twenty. Those particular songs, our desert island discs, are powerful. They connect with us at a deep level and can arouse a variety of emotions: nostalgia, empowerment, wistfulness, sadness, ecstasy, maybe even a combination of these. But the potential of music – and particularly our favourite music, goes further than this. The forthcoming documentary ‘Alive Inside’, currently doing the rounds of the film festivals,...