Category: Political & Economic Sociology

Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies

Fearmongering, Racism, Border Control, and Swine Flu

  “No contact anywhere with an illegal alien!”    “This disgusting blight is because MEXICANS ARE PIGS!”  “It would be easy to bring an altered virus into Mexico, put it in the general population, and have them march across the border.”  These and many other quotes made by individuals in connection  to the recent outbreak of swine flu are reported by Brian Alexander of MSNBC.Com in an article he wrote which posted on Friday.  Alexander argues that the fearmongering and blame have been ever present from everyday citizens blogging...

Class & Stratification / Gender & Sexuality / Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Contentious Data: Hate Crimes and Resistance to the Matthew Sheperd Act

by NickieWild Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the “Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act,” also known as the Matthew Shepard Act. Named after a college student who was robbed, tortured, and killed in Wyoming in 1998, it is believed that he was targeted because he was gay. The legislation will enhance Justice Department powers to investigate violent crimes where the victim may have been chosen due to actual or perceived race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion,...

Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

The Marketing of Democracy

The Republican National Party is having what some may call an identity crisis.  Since the 2008 Presidential election campaigns, RNC strategists have been concerned with the direction, message, image, and marketing of their positions.  CNN reported on efforts at ‘re-branding’ the Republican image (see article below) through conferences and meetings among current and former Republican leaders.  Though is by no means a right-of-center-only phenomena, these attempts at marketing a political position are extremely worrying and mark the widening distance between...

Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

What to Wear Today?

 by ishein1 Teenagers, especially during the years of economic prosperity, consistently cast their consumer vote at various clothing retail stores.  Marketers respond by relentlessly attempting to woo this coveted demographic.  Various stores, even ones owned by the same corporation, create varying images in order to create a perspective of “cool”.  “Coolness,” they believe, will induce the most profit.  In schools around the country teenagers define themselves by what they are wearing.  Brand names are signifiers that display identity.  An individual’s...

Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Pirates, Terrorists, and Asymmetric Power

by christinablunt On Wednesday, April 8, a U.S. container ship, the Maersk Alabama, was commandeered by a group of Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean. The Maersk Alabama was quickly recovered but the captain, Richard Phillips, was held hostage by four of the pirates on a lifeboat for several days. Negotiations were conducted between the marauders and the American destroyer, the U.S.S. Bainbridge. On April 12, acting with President Obama’s authorization and the belief that Captain Phillips was in imminent...

Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Consuming in a Recession

by bmckernan While at the start of the economic downturn many media outlets were claiming the video game industry to be “recession proof,” recent sales figures seem to indicate that even an industry often characterized as “escapist” seems not to be fully impervious to financial realities. A recent article in the New York Times reports that sales figures for the game industry were down in March from the previous year, leading the article to conclude that the economic downturn may...

Class & Stratification / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

George Ritzer Guest Post: Are Today’s Globalized Cathedrals of Consumption Tomorrow’s Global Dinosaurs?

By: George Ritzer Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland A decade ago I wrote a book dealing with what I called the “cathedrals of consumption”. These are consumption settings that had, in the main, come into existence in the United States in the post-WWII era. Of particular interest were the most grandiose of these consumption settings including major indoor shopping malls, mega-malls (e.g. Mall of America), theme parks (especially Disneyland and Disney World), cruise ships, and above all the themed...

Gender & Sexuality / Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Culture

Asian Values and Women's Rights

by christinablunt Last week, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in a move to bolster support in the upcoming presidential elections, signed a law which stipulated that, “Unless the wife is ill, the wife is bound to give a positive response to the sexual desires of her husband.” Human rights groups are calling foul play. To say nothing of the fact that a woman’s rights are being used as a tool of negotiation, the UN is arguing the new law essentially legalizes...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Media & Communication

Visual Culture according to the Police

by kiddingthecity It sounds more and more likely that the Police have something to do with the death of a newsagent at the rally in the City of London. Many witnesses have come forward and most importantly there is The Picture: the evidence, the forensic clue, the probatio, the real stuff judges love and on which the surveillance culture of the streets in this country has been built upon. Mr Tomlinson is on the floor, surrounded by police officers, his...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change

Capitalism's Meltdown and the Body (III)

by kiddingthecity The financial system is ‘ill’, capitalism is on the verge of ‘collapsing’, a drastic ‘cure’ has to be found quickly, ‘toxic’ funds need to be ‘eradicated’, and so on. Terms from the vocabulary of medicine and biology have been largely used to describe the systemic crisis of the latest capital, often comparing it to the body in pain. Probably, in an attempt to localize and make more understandable the phantasmagoria of the trillions to Mr. and Mrs. Smiths,...

Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Rehabilitation: The Cheaper Option?

by paulabowles A recent discussion between Erwin James and Jonathon Aitken draws attention once more to the apparent incompatibility between prison and rehabilitation. As both James and Aitken are former prisoners, it is perhaps understandable that they have strong feelings about imprisonment. During their discussion James and Aitken touch on issues of honesty, recidivism, education as well as the cost of imprisonment. At the heart of their discussion is the realisation that even in the twenty first century it would...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Authentic Reproduction

by ishein1 It was only a few weeks ago when I saw an Olive Garden Restaurant advertisement depicting its culinary school in Tuscany.  It utilized this image to support its claim that the restaurant provides an authentic Italian dining experience.  Wary of the veracity of this advertisement’s culinary school postulations, I researched the said school.  As it turns out, the Olive Garden did indeed open a culinary school in Tuscany.  This is an attempt by the Olive Garden to put...

Political & Economic Sociology / Science & Technology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

britannica is putting customers to work

by nathan jurgenson The very idea of Wikipedia -the open-source encyclopedia that anyone with an internet connection can edit- has sparked many discussions about knowledge construction, such as the politics behind truth, the social construction of knowledge, the tyranny of epistemic expertism or populism, and so on. In these discussions, the Encyclopedia Britannica is often posed as the antithesis to Wikipedia. So it came as big news earlier this year that the Encyclopedia Britannica, the model of old-school expertism, is...

Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Commodification of Life's Necessities

By rbobbitt Considered to be one of the driest regions in the world, Quillagua, Chile sees very little rainfall and depends heavily on the local river to provide the sustenance needed in order to survive. However, this has drastically changed due to the privatization of water by local mining companies, private businesses, and large agribusinesses. This has left but a trickle of water for residents to use, with what is left over being heavily polluted. Entire towns are being left without water,...

Class & Stratification / Gender & Sexuality / Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Culture

Global Justice

By rbobbitt   A recent report from the British medical journal The Lancet reports that over 100,000 women died in fires in India in a single year (see New York Times article). These fires stem from a serious domestic abuse issues in India in which women are doused in gasoline and set ablaze, their deaths blamed on “kitchen accidents.” Domestic abuse as become a major problem in the country, as women are often killed over dowry disputes, with no repercussions sought...

Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Psychology & Lifecourse

"British jobs for British workers"

by socanonymous Negative immigrant sentiments seem to appear in public discourse during various times of national concern. Host attitudes toward immigrants seem to be concerned most with access to scarce economic resources and competition for jobs. It would seem logical then that during times of economic turbulence, attitudes toward immigrants would be on the rise. A study by the Institute for Public Policy Research found that contrary to popular belief, foreign migrant workers do not pose a harmful threat to...