Category: Opinion

Opinion

Crisis (in reality, economic life and academia alike)

  In early March, I interviewed Nancy Fraser for the King’s Review. Fraser, professor at the New School specialising on critical theory and feminism, is currently writing three accounts of the recent (financial, global and specifically European) crisis. In the interview, she was ardently arguing for a more holistic understanding of crisis: we shouldn’t see the recent turmoil in finance as an isolated economic problem but as connected with ecological – climate change – and socio-reproductive issues, such as enduring...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion

"I'll have the extreme creampie MILF, please.": What can PornHub's research teach us about sex?

The pornography search engine PornHub, for reasons I can assume only they know, appear to have become sociologists. Using the collected data they have from their search engine that provides access to many free pornography sites, they have started a blog called ‘PornHub Insights’. This offers exactly what the name suggests – research and analysis directly from the ‘Pornhub team’, offering insights based on their data as to the numbers of viewers they have, how long they watch, and from...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion

Gender and the Quest to Close Unauthorized Health Clinics in Cameroon

  A recent segment on NPR’s Morning Edition commented on the government of Cameroon’s recent campaign to shut down unauthorized health clinics throughout the country.  In recent years hundreds of illegal clinics have opened across the nation, treating individuals who cannot access public health care for financial or geographic reasons. The short radio piece attempted to present contrasting voices.  The operator of an unauthorized clinic and the medical director of a major hospital in Douala each presented their side of...

Opinion

Fugue as Method: Concluding Thoughts on Interdisciplinary Work Within Contemporary Academia

  Stretto: “When the entry of the answer occurs before the subject is completed, overlapping with it” Oxford Dictionary of Music. Avery Gordon  introduces a unique musical device that is characteristic of fugal compositions in her discussion of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.  One of the accomplishments of the Mothers was their ability to give voice to the silenced by interrupting the dominating discourse of the state. During the 1970s, the state systematically massacred thousands of young men...

Feminist Theory / Gender & Sexuality / Opinion

Lesbians watching gay porn: fluid sexuality or a second wave hangover?

This post was borne out of a recent discussion with a good friend of mine, Harriet, who is a self-identified lesbian. (I include the phrase self-identified here deliberately: I realise her propensity to prefer the company and sex of woman does not categorise her as a lesbian, but it is a term she very comfortably uses herself). She was talking about going to a sex party, and I, in what I perceived to be ignorance, asked her what her interest...

Opinion

Fugue as Method: A Fughetta on Interdisciplinary Work Within Contemporary Academia

  Exposition – “The first statement of the subject by all the ‘voices’ in turn” Oxford Dictionary of Music. Exposition  Academia prepares graduate students to become experts in their fields.  Through this practice students become disciplined, learning the appropriate language, literature and methods that must become a part of their work.  Although this is a necessary part of the learning process, it creates brackets of knowledge, often related but isolated by area of study.  In this post, I will illustrate the...

Opinion

Farmer’s Markets are radical?

    Fall is here and farmer’s markets will soon be closing for the season. Realizing that I will be forced back into supermarkets for my sustenance I have been pondering what is it that makes farmer’s markets unique. My pondering led me to Jürgen Habermas’s ideas of a “representational culture” and the “public sphere”. I think the marketing of food within the conventional food system (i.e. in supermarkets) can be understood through the lens of a representational culture. That...

Opinion

When is a public space private? Informed consent and online research

  A vital element of the ethical discourse on human subject research is the process of informed consent. This recognizes the autonomy of research subjects by sharing the power of decision making with them. The informed consent process involves three components: relating the information to subjects; ensuring that subjects understand the information; and obtaining the voluntary agreement from subjects to participate. Researchers have the responsibility of determining what information should be divulged to subjects during the consent process.

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion

What can Harvard Business School tell us about gender in schools and business?

  In a recent Sociology Lens post, my colleague Markus Gerke discussed the so called ‘Boys-Crisis’ in Education, and provides an excellent critique of anti-feminist stances that point to boys apparent underachievement in education. As he argues, these stances so often fail to account for gendered practices that occur in schooling and education, and by utilising feminist education studies and masculinity studies, the differences between boys and girls achievement can be explained much more accurately. Rather than inherent ‘qualities’ existing...

History of Sociology / Opinion / Social Theory / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Development and Human Rights

In the last decade of the 20th century, development thinking shifted from a growth oriented model to the concept of human development as a process of enhancing human capabilities. This paradigmatic shift, articulated in the writings of Amartya Sen, moves beyond growth of income and captures the quality of growth in terms of social and human development and the meaningful participation of, and fair distribution of benefits for all concerned. The United Nations took up this approach with the Human...

Opinion

What is a HIPSTER?

  from https://seanwes.com/2012/hipster-designerd/ This week in a local Massachusetts newspaper a columnist made a list of demands to the influx of hipsters into his neighborhood. In the article the author attempts to reconcile with how his city is gentrifying and seems to be making something of a plea to the newcomers’ humanity. The article sparked my interest and had me asking, what is a hipster?

Opinion

Is the Web Breeding Ignorance?

In 1992, The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy called television “the drug of the nation” that was “breeding ignorance and feeding radiation”. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the http protocol that facilitated the World Wide Web, once called the Web a “liberal artefact” that, in the spirit of the European Enlightenment, has democratised information.  Has this vision been replaced in reality by a dysfunctional form of information anarchy that allows misinformation to flourish: has the Web become the new drug of...

Opinion

New Look at Gentrification

            On a recent visit home to Philadelphia, I was astonished to see how drastically some parts of the city have changed. I am especially amazed by Northern Liberties, a chic couple of blocks with hip bars, show venues, outdoor markets, along with a few art galleries and unique shops. I remember nine or ten years ago I used to go to a little music venue close by called the Fire. At that time, the...

Opinion

New AMA Blood Donation Recommendations

Last month, the American Medical Association (AMA) voted against the Federal Drug Administration’s (FDA) ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men. In 1983, the FDA initially banned blood from men who have sex with men because of the not yet understood nature of HIV and AIDS and the explosion of fear over transmission. At this time, the rates of HIV and AIDS were highest in the gay male population and the testing procedures for detecting the...

The roots of neoliberalism were planted by a classical political economy theory which advocated for markets (and thus people) to be completely liberated from any type of governmental interference

Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology

A Brief Examination of Neoliberalism and Its Consequences in sociology

Starting in the second half of the 20th century, neoliberalism became increasingly prominent as a form of governance in countries around the world (Peters 2001). Originally, the roots of neoliberalism were planted by a classical political economy theory which advocated for markets (and thus people) to be completely liberated from any type of governmental interference (Smith 2009). “Free” competition and “free” enterprise were promoted as manners in which economies should be allowed to grow. Martinez and García (2000) contend that...

Opinion

What's missing from the debate over higher education funding?

For many people, from the first-year students traipsing around campus in search of the correct lecture hall to the senior faculty preparing to teach courses for the nth time, the beginning of the academic year tends to be frantic and exciting time. This year, when back-to-school coincides with a heated Presidential race, education and politics are bound to mix. President Obama has made access to higher education – measured primarily by greater access to grants and student loans while trying...