Category: Opinion

Opinion / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Children / Sociology of Media & Communication

Where are future generations in newspaper coverage of climate change?

Climate change is accelerating – and will impact most on children and those yet to be born.  The failure to halt the relentless rise in global temperatures is an act of intergenerational injustice in which the UK is centrally implicated.  It is among the top national contributors to global fossil fuel emissions and, as the first industrialising country, has made the largest per person contribution to climate change.   While today’s children and tomorrow’s generations will be hardest hit, they...

Opinion / Peace, War & Social Conflict / Race & Ethnicity Studies

This Cannot Be White-washed

This essay introduces the latest issue of City & Community’s Symposium: “Eyes of a Storm: COVID-19, Systemic Racism, and Police Brutality.” I thank Dr. Alyasah Ali Sewell for coming up with the symposium title. There is free online access for the next month at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/15406040/2020/19/3. During the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, at least 675,000 people were infected in the United States and 500 million worldwide (Barry 2004). However, like today’s COVID-19 Pandemic, the infection rates were not evenly distributed across the...

Opinion / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Health & Illness

Race and Racism in the NHS

I was privileged to host a conversation with Tarek Younis and Andrew Smart as part of the BSA Medical Sociology Group virtual event on 10th September 2020, about their papers, published in Sociology of Health and Illness, and included in the journal’s virtual collection of papers on race and ethnicity. The collection and the conversation at the conference were inspired by recent calls for racial justice, provoked in part by the killing of George Floyd, just one of too many...

Opinion / Sociology of Children / Sociology of Health & Illness

Is ADHD diagnosis flawed? Younger children in a school year group are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD globally

In 2019, I was the lead author of a paper titled Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder late birthdate effect common in both high and low prescribing international jurisdictions: a systematic review. We reviewed 22 studies from 13 countries covering over 15 million children, and found that it is normal for the youngest children in a school-year-group to be diagnosed with and ‘medicated’ for ADHD at a much higher rate than their older classmates. This ADHD late birthdate effect was typically strongest...

Opinion / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Body-worn cameras do not have clear or consistent effects on most officer or citizen behaviors, but more evaluation is needed.

The last decade has been marked by the rapid adoption of body-worn cameras (BWCs) by the police and a growing body of evaluation research on the technology’s effects. Spurred on by high-profile officer-involved shooting incidents and protests, many citizens and community groups have supported the adoption of BWCs, hoping that this technology might deter police misconduct and increase police accountability and transparency as to their uses of force. Police agencies also argue that BWCs can keep citizens accountable, reduce frivolous...

Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Health & Illness

Populism, policy and pandemics

Across the globe there has been an upswing in populist right wing political parties in the past decade. This raises a number of particular challenges for the provision of health and social care. For example, witness the cross-country disparities in excess mortalities linked to COVID-19. If we look at countries with right wing populist leaders (e.g. USA, Brazil) compared to other countries (e.g. New Zealand). Much of this difference can be accounted for by the populist rejection of expertise and...

Class & Stratification / Opinion / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Doctors’ Orders – Sociology Lens Q&A

Can you give us some background information about the US medical residency system? The US medical residency system is peculiar in the sense that on any given year, there are consistently fewer prospective American MD medical student (USMD) applicants than there are available positions—by between 25 and 40%. This has been true since the about 1950s. So the country relies on international and osteopathic medical graduates (what I collectively call “non-USMDs”) to fill residency positions in fields like internal medicine,...

Applied Sociology / Class & Stratification / Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Identity

WHAT DOES BAKING TELL US ABOUT CLASS DURING COVID-19 IN INDIA?

In an unequal and diverse society like India, food has had deep associations with questions of identity, whether that of religion, caste, class, gender, ethnicity, or tribe. The recent COVID-19 crisis has highlighted some of these associations in a newer light, including the relationship between food and class. For most of the Indian middle-classes, the period of lockdown has been spent in experimenting with food as dishes like Dalgona coffee and banana bread became popular ‘quarantine recipes’. Food also became...

Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology

Stigma in a Polarized Society: The Case of Trump’s Family Separation Policy.

In June 2018 the United States’ news cycle was dominated by images of distraught children being separated from their anguished parents by uniformed Customs and Border Patrol officers. Although enforcement of the U.S.-Mexico border has long been condemned as draconian by human rights groups, the Trump administration’s move to a “zero-tolerance” border control policy resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of migrant children who were separated from their parents. The shift in enforcement drew much opprobrium, before the...

Opinion / Sociology of Health & Illness

Lonely patients’ ambivalent engagements with digital media

Feeling isolated or lonely is common among chronically ill people. They may suffer severe pain, have limited mobility, and/or experience stigmatisation—depending on the nature of their condition. Consequently, many will turn to digital technologies to make connections with others. In a recent Australian study on patients’ use of digital media, my colleagues and I found that our respondents often spontaneously mentioned during their interviews that they felt isolated or lonely and that the internet and social media provided valuable tools...

Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Culture

Elections Have Consequences: What Happened in 2016 and What May Happen in 2020

Almost four years, a pandemic, countless protests, and an impeachment later, it seems that the election of Donald Trump in 2016 has had more severe and deadly consequences than many had imagined. While his election over Hillary Clinton was difficult to imagine in itself – for pollsters, political operatives, and the general public alike – and took the entire world by surprise, it was even harder to project what life in the U.S. would be like for the subsequent four...

Opinion / Peace, War & Social Conflict / Political & Economic Sociology

Dismantling Distrust in Colombia’s Enduring Conflict

The conflict between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC – Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) and the Government of Colombia had a dramatic effect on the country, leading to over 200000 deaths and the displacement of seven million people since 1964. Forming with the stated intention to defend the rural poor, ensure fair resource distribution and overthrow the state, the FARC attracted support from elements of the community. Over time it became increasingly embedded in the licit and illicit...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion

Rain on the body: Bodies as mere objects

Bodies are inscribed with meaning in and through a web of social and power relations. Bodies are not neutral and object matter; rather, they (re)produce themselves when alone and when with others. The digital world can create bodies from afar and the offline world can do so, too. For example, one interacts with others online through digital platforms, such as Twitter or Facebook, shaping how the body is (un)seen and (un)heard; one can also interact with others offline, whereby a...

Geography and Sociology / Opinion / Sociology of Health & Illness

SARS-CoV-2: out of touch, out of breath

It is difficult to account for how the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is experienced, chiefly because there is no one universal experience to be identified. Exposure to the virus is unequal. The aptly called “White-Collar Quarantine” implies that the ability to shelter-in-place at home is still a relative privilege, from where the pandemic appears to be playing out as “an arm’s-length spectacle, experienced through a numbing drip feed of media updates on our national prognoses.” Amongst those at home, experiences of...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Organizations & Work

The Uneven Adjustment to Homeworking Among UK Sex Workers

The shift to homeworking under lockdown raises important concerns for those whose work involves physical and emotional connection, not least forms of work which have been undertaken in a shroud of secrecy. Here, I highlight the work of sex workers, in particular, who negotiate a sexual and emotional experience with clients through physical touch and emotional conversation. Of course, while some aspects of the experience can be – and are – undertaken remotely through online technologies in a burgeoning online...

Applied Sociology / Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Religion

Coronavirus reflections: Face masks, Islamic dress and colonial differentiation.

Like many countries across the world, France is currently negotiating the coronavirus pandemic and has recently begun to emerge from lockdown by circulating a slogan not dissimilar to the UK government ‘Sauvez des vies, restez prudent’ (Save lives, stay alert). What then is so notable about the French plan to tackle coronavirus and be free from lockdown? Aside from the bureaucratic plan developed in France, the significant and noteworthy method of returning to some sense of ‘normalcy’ is to mandate...