Category: Opinion

Class & Stratification / History of Sociology / Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Health & Illness

Distance as a social vocation

In this article, I explore the habitus of social distancing to critically engage with the different human conditions that grips us amidst the coronavirus pandemic. I also briefly discuss different kinds of distances we practice in our everyday life before I go on to show how distance is turned into a vocation upon which our survival and hope rests.  The foundation of society is also based on distance as much as it is on closeness. Distances complete us. Let me take you...

Opinion / Sociology of Health & Illness

The Sociology of Medical Guidelines

Allen Frances, M.D, is an American psychiatrist who chaired the DSM-IV taskforce, and later criticized the DSM-5 and American psychiatry for their roles in manufacturing mental illnesses and the epidemic of overdiagnosis. In this blog post he makes a well-founded plea for sociologic contributions to medicine. Before the Flexner report in 1909, medical education and practice in America were chaotic and of low quality. After the report, both were quickly and dramatically reformed in ways that seemed completely wonderful at...

Opinion / Sociology of Health & Illness

‘If there were doctors who could understand our problems, I would already be better’: dissatisfactory health care and marginalisation in superdiverse neighbourhoods

In the 2007 film, originally entitled ‘Allotment’, the inimitable Omid Djalili plays a refugee doctor called Ali who consults in his allotment shed. Ali reviews the numerous medications taken by allotmenteer Charlie (played by John Henshaw). Ali indicates one packet of pills: ‘This one here is for women problems! Do you have women problems?’ Charlie looks annoyed, puzzled and then embarrassed. Why is Charlie taking drugs for a gynecological condition? Given Charlie’s dislike of visiting the health centre, his wife...

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

Money, markets and trade caused coronavirus pandemic

In recent weeks, the microscopic bundle of genes and proteins that comprises the Covid-19 coronavirus has been ascribed almost miraculous powers to infect huge and growing numbers of human bodies.  The media coverage of the outbreak  has ensured that few are unaware of the respiratory tract symptoms that the infection produces: symptoms that – in the case of the most vulnerable – can kill. However, this account has largely sidelined the social, economic and political environment that has contributed to...

Opinion / Sociology of Children / Sociology of Health & Illness

The lack of common sense in disorder thinking

Disorder thinking has been popular and dominant in recent decennia, with a rising number of behaviors and emotions being medicalized into a psychiatric disease. More people today than ever before in history are being diagnosed and treated for ever lighter quirks, drawing professional attention away from those who need treatment most. One recent example of medicalizing a problem that someone might have is Misophonia. Misophonia In 2013, a research group led by the Chair of the Dutch Psychiatry Association introduced...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Social Identity / Sociology of Health & Illness

‘Women of my age tend to drink’: Understanding how older Australian and Danish women negotiate the pleasures and risks of their alcohol use

When we think of risky drinking, typically we think of young people ‘binge drinking’, passing out on the footpath and generally looking a bit ‘messy’. The media reinforces the notion that drinking is primarily a problem among young people by regularly circulating stories and images of young people being drunk in public and causing problems either to themselves or bystanders. This emphasis on young people’s drinking is not surprising, particularly since they are more likely to drink in public places,...

Opinion / Science & Technology / Sociology of Health & Illness

“If it’s not on Strava it doesn’t matter”. The collective shaping of running via self-tracking social interactions

“If it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen”, I have often been told as I explain my research to runners and cyclists familiar with the social fitness platform. Self-tracking has become an everyday activity, and not just for athletes (and ‘wannabe’ athletes). Wearable devices for self-tracking of sleep, food intake, physical activity and even sex are readily available, and smart phones gather data on steps, heart rate and sleep without you even knowing. The ethics and power issues associated with...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Upholding Equity Across Different Campuses

In the past decade the United States has witnessed an influx of conversations regarding sexual assault on college campuses. Cases like Brock Turner and Chanel Miller or Emma Sulkowicz became national examples of the prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses as well as universities’ failures to protect survivors and seek justice. While there is much work left to be done, there seems to be a more concrete understanding of the frequency of sexual assault and the injustice done…

Opinion / Sociology of Children / Sociology of Health & Illness

ADHD and brain anatomy: First do no harm!

ADHD is kind of like a cancer disease but you’re not going to die from it Sylvia, US, on medication, age 11 This quote originates from Ilina Singh’s groundbreaking VOICES study that interviews children about ADHD and medication. Sylvia’s account of ADHD is one of a physical and serious disease like cancer -although not lethal. However, ADHD is not a disease like cancer, but a concept from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), currently in its fifth...

Opinion / Sociology of Health & Illness

Ethnicity in Dementia Research: Are Social Scientists Complicit in Neuropsychiatric Imperialism?

During the early-21st century, social dementia research has experienced something of an ethnic turn. This trajectory is rooted in 1990s psychosocial accounts of dementia that newly championed the perspectives of people with dementia, and the subsequent realisation that these early perspectives were rather white. In response, researchers have increasingly sought to access the dementias of minority ethnicity groups living in high-income countries. Unfortunately, rather than meaningfully engaging with a greater diversity of dementias, much of this movement toward minority ethnicity...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Social Welfare

What are women’s experiences like during and after disasters?

Although gaining attention, gender remains under-researched in disaster risk reduction protocols and response and recovery efforts. Many research gaps are due to sexist biases and a lack of inclusion of women’s experiences1. In fact, much early social science research was blind to gender and used men as the default for analysis2. Since then, the effects of gender stratification and women’s experiences have slowly been integrated into disaster research and social vulnerability analyses3. It is important to continue gender-based research to...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology

Gender, Political Change, and the Macro-Social

It is clear that there is a reciprocal relationship between politics and our social world; while political action acts on our social environment, social phenomena equally shape our political landscape. In this vein, there has been a growing acknowledgment that social facts, like gender, deeply influence who rises to political power as well as the policies they are able to enact.  For example, over the past two years our country has frequently discussed how masculinity contributed to the rise of...

Feminist Theory / Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Research Brief / Sociology of Health & Illness / Sociology of Organizations & Work / Sociology of the Family

Pregnancy and childbirth in prison

“I’ve got baggy tops, so I just always have to hide my bump, and like most people couldn’t recognise that I’m pregnant, so that’s a good thing”. With a prison population of approximately 9000 women in England, it is estimated that approximately 600 pregnancies and 100 births occur annually.  Despite there being an extensive literature on the sociology of reproduction, pregnancy and childbirth, there has been scarce qualitative research looking specifically at pregnant prisoners. Our recently published open access paper:...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Sociology of Health & Illness / Sociology of Media & Communication

Vaccine frictions – one rationality does not fit all

This blog piece highlights some points of my on-going multi-sited research project on HPV vaccination in Finland. The findings presented are based on my open access research article, What kind of ‘a girls’ thing’?, published in Sociology of Health and Illness. When you are vaccinated, you get protection against the cancer‐causing HP virus. On the front page of the Finnish HPV vaccination campaign site. That vaccine protects from papillomavirus (not directly even from cervical cancer), which is very effectively prevented...

Opinion / Rural Sociology

Doing Art in the Countryside, Doing Rural Sociology with Art

Over the last couple of years, my explorations of ‘art in the countryside’, usually end up questioning and debating what ‘art’ is and what ‘rural’ is; what is their function, and what it might mean to bring these two systems of knowledge, of practice and experience together? There seems to be an ongoing curiosity of how contemporary art might intersect with debates about rurality both in rural sociology circles and in contemporary art practice. Indeed, we have seen a great...

Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies

Localised Far Right Mobilisation in Timişoara, Romania

Figure 1: Timişoara’s Piaţa Traian is a contested area for the poor Roma access into architectural heritage buildings. Photo: Remus Creţan, 2019 The social, political and economic upheaval in Eastern Europe following the removal of the communist regimes that dominated region in 1989 has had lasting effects. The prospect of membership of the European Union opened the possibility of new opportunities and access to resources, enabling them to weather much of the transitional instability. Requirements for increased transparency and accountability...