I recently took a break from my PhD to work as an ESL teacher in a summer school in Northern England. As well as making a welcome change from my studies to a very different working and living environment for a month, it also made me reflect on language and the linguistic hegemony which English continues to enjoy around the world. On the one hand, I’m slightly uncomfortable with the way which English has become the dominant world language, allowing...
So often we talk about being rational, making decisions based on established facts and existing knowledge, as if it is, and should be, the aim of all people at all times. Ways of being or knowing that sit outside of accepted knowledge can open a person up to being dismissed, discredited or ridiculed, particularly in the academic world. Anybody who knows me knows that I am a somewhat methodical and ‘rational’ person (most of the time). I love...
In 2008, I read a book by Adina Nack, Damaged Goods? Women Living With Incurable Sexually Transmitted Diseases. At the time I was blown away by a text that focused on the study of chronic, non-fatal sexually transmitted infections (STIs) at a time when the majority of research on gender and STIs focused on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States and abroad. Nack’s study examined the ways in which women diagnosed the issue of non-fatal, chronic, sexually transmitted infections...
This is a guest post from Guy Sanders. Guy is a freelance graphic artist living and working in London. He specialises in promotional design and branding for theatre and entertainment companies. He holds a BSc in Sociology and Political Science from the University of Bristol. Guy’s interests include cultural criticism and the deconstruction of nation making. He tweets @GuyJSanders Is The Sociology Finished Yet? I completed a BSc in Sociology and Political Science in 2011. What followed immediately was a period of...
There are now free tools available, such as Node XL, which, at unprecedented speeds and scales allow us access, harvest, and analyse the traces of people’s (often transgressive) thoughts, opinions and behaviours on Twitter. Since it combines the grand scale and generalisability of methods such as national surveys with the granularity and detail of close textual analysis, ethnography, or participant observation (Driscoll & Walker, 2014, p1746), Twitter analysis seemingly represents the holy grail of research methods. Existing research into misogyny...
There’s an interesting post at over on The Philosopher’s Eye, questioning whether Facebook’s recent ‘emotional contagion’ experiments really were so unethical. So, what do you think? Was manipulating the newsfeeds of a few hundred thousand Facebook users unethical, or just part and parcel of the standard user agreement? The Facebook Scandal that Wasn’t – By Udo Schuklenk
How well did you sleep last night? Or the night before? Feeling rested and ready? Nope, me either. While I find it no trouble at all to feed myself adequately, I’m in a constant struggle to provide myself with enough of that most basic resource, sleep. It sometimes feels like while my body and mind most certainly value sleep a lot, technology and modern social practices seem to have very little regard for it at all, and my body and...
Recently, one of my acquaintances sent me a link to a blog called “Women Against Feminism.” The site is a response to the “Who Needs Feminism” campaigns that emerged a few years ago. Now, anyone who has spoken with me for more than five minutes (or read anything I have written) probably has a clear understanding of my political position on feminism, equality, and human rights. I have spoken and written on the issue of feminism, post-feminism, and anti-feminism so...
Avid Sociology Lens readers (as I am sure you all are) will have already read Roger Tyler’s piece this week; “Digital Witness: Memory vs. Experience”. In it, he discusses his experiences of attending Glastonbury Festival and the summer solstice at Stonehenge, and how in both cases he felt showed examples of how obsessed we have become with the need to document and record our experiences as they are happening. Even as the fireworks go off or the sun comes up,...
I have recently had the double-privilege of going to Stonehenge to witness the sunrise on summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and then onto Glastonbury festival, to witness er… lots of live music and people dancing around in mud. I’ve been to Glastonbury many times before but Stonehenge was my first time. As you can see, I captured some of it on my camera-phone, and naturally I wasn’t the only one. The photo above prompted a friend of mine...
The following article By June Sekera gives an extensive account of how the concept of the “public good” has been undermined and redefined as a market failure. The introductory paragraph is below and the remainder of the article can be found at http://rwer.wordpress.com/2014/07/09/re-thinking-the-definition-of-public-goods/ Introduction A year ago last May, the Real World Economics Review blog published my post, “Why Aren’t We Talking About Public Goods?” In that article I argued that we need to revive and reframe the concept of...
After spending five weeks conducting ethnographic research in Nepal, I was ready to return to the United States and many of the luxuries of a developed nation. I knew that it would take time to adjust my sleep schedule. I also figured that it would take some time to return to the fast-paced life of New York. What I did not expect was the overall difficulty I would have returning to a developed country. The air conditioning is...
Football is England’s national sport. It’s played in every city, town and school in the country. The English Premier League is the richest league in the world. For millions of English fans who contribute this wealth, watching football either live or on TV is effectively a costly tax on their devotion to their club. Why then does England lose to smaller nations with fewer players and less money to invest in talent?
I am lucky, (if you can call it that, as I am fairly sure I can claim some credit for its creation) to spend most of my life surrounded by feminist men. I was raised by one, and have friends, lovers and colleagues who are very happy identifying as (male) feminists. They can deconstruct the patriarchy, discuss oppression and understand intersectionality. They constantly and consistently ‘check their privilege’. And maybe this is why a recent article; ‘20 tools for men...
Spain’s defeat this week in the World Cup sees the World and European champions knocked out and booked onto an early flight home, in the biggest upset of the tournament so far. A team of erstwhile heroes and well-known names like Casillas, Alonso and Torres left the pitch last night looking dejected and hollow after their defeat to Chile. Spanish daily ‘Marca’ ran a headline titled, simply ‘The End’, as Spanish fans around the world come to terms with...
Over the past few months, numerous publications have discussed – and mostly: dismissed – the trend to incorporate so-called trigger warnings into the college classroom and syllabus. Trigger warnings have become a standard practice for articles in feminist blogs and other online media that discuss incidences of violence, sexual assault and that may contain other potentially ‘triggering’ material, with the purpose of giving readers a way to opt-out of exposing themselves to said material. As some college professors have started...
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