Latest articles from sociology lens

Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Festivus for the rest of us

For the second year, Florida hosts a variety of religious displays in the rotunda of the state capitol.  This year, for the first time, the Satanic Temple erected their seasonal exhibition of an angel falling from Heaven into a fiery pit.  The Sataic Temple presentation complements a Christian nativity scene as well as other anti-religion and atheist displays with seasonal depictions including a “Festivus” pole constructed from Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans and a Flying Spaghetti Monster with the sign that says, “A...

Opinion

‘Is There Anything Else I Can Help You With?’ Call Centres, and Christmas on Minimum Wage

  Casual work and debt According to a recent report by TUC, one in twelve people in Britain are in precarious employment with figures rising by 61.8% for men and 35.6% for women since 2008. That means that 1 in 12 people are living a life of economic insecurity, and, at this time of year, it also means that thousands of parents or grandparents will be uncertain if they can afford to buy gifts for their families at Christmas. Yet...

Opinion / Peace, War & Social Conflict

Eating the World

  Christmas comes every year, and every year, much like a snowball rolling down a mountain in er…Lapland, it accumulates new ‘traditions’. New additions in recent years include Christmas jumpers, Black Friday, and songs from X Factor going to Number One. Great. Go back further and see that Christmas trees, Santa Claus, crackers, Saint Nicholas, Christmas carols and even the nativity story have all been tacked onto what was originally the pagan festival of the winter solstice, the shortest day...

Gender & Sexuality

Putting the “Homo” in the Organization: Making the Case for Expanding Concepts of Normativity (Part 1)

It is that time of year when theses, dissertations, and proposals are being prepared for defense. My thesis intends to examine the scripting of a normative student identity with special attention to sexuality in study abroad orientation programs. Only, when it came to prepare my literature review, it came as a shock to me that there is little discussion of homonormativity in education, let alone a conceptualization of homonormativity and organizations more generally. In a world where non-heterosexual identified individuals...

Opinion

Crypto-Redemption

Yup. It’s ‘Doge Keynes’.  Paul Stoller – perhaps best known for his pioneering work on the ‘anthropology of the senses‘ – suggested last month in a blog for the Huffington Post that the ‘unprecedented prosperity that human activity has generated has ironically resulted in widespread misery in the world.’ Stoller calls upon anthropologists to shift ‘from passive to active voice,’ claiming that they are uniquely positioned to challenge what I like to refer to as the two-pronged politics of idiocy,...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology Compass Issues / Sociology of Culture

Cancer is Not a Pink Ribbon (part 1)

As a belated nod to ‘Breast Cancer Awareness Month’ (October, in the USA), and the plethora of pink, breast-cancer-sponsored items now on sale,  I want to talk about the rise of the pink ribbon campaign and the concept of ‘pinkwashing’. Breast cancer and the pink ribbon campaign is probably one of the biggest success stories, in terms of its ability to raise awareness and ultimately, save lives. Breast cancer activism started in the 1980’s, in part as a reaction to...

Class & Stratification / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change

Legacies of The War on Poverty: A chat with Jill Quadagno on the 20th anniversary of The Color of Welfare

In 1994 Jill Quadagno published The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty.  To celebrate the 20th anniversary of this highly influential text, Dr. Quadagno did a series of media interviews two days.  She also graciously sat down with me for an informal chat about what she believes to be the lasting outcome of The War on Poverty.

Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

It's Time to Discuss: Race, Police Misconduct, and Social Change

  I have been reading the most recent posts on Sociology Lens and I was surprised to see that there has not been a post on the recent grand jury decision in not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. For weeks, a large portion of news coverage has been on the death of the unarmed 18-year-old black teen. Then Wednesday, a grand jury declined to indict another white police officer,...

Opinion

Alive Inside: How music can help fight dementia.

What’s your favourite song? Everyone has one. Or maybe, if you’re like me, you have about twenty. Those particular songs, our desert island discs, are powerful. They connect with us at a deep level and can arouse a variety of emotions: nostalgia, empowerment, wistfulness, sadness, ecstasy, maybe even a combination of these. But the potential of music – and particularly our favourite music, goes further than this. The forthcoming documentary ‘Alive Inside’, currently doing the rounds of the film festivals,...

Opinion

Yes, Criticising Russell Brand for Supporting the New Era Estate is Snide, and if He is a Hypocrite, We All Are

To ask a person how much their apartment is worth (as Channel 4 reporter, Paraic O’Brien, did to Russell Brand yesterday), or how much they pay in rent when they are attending a march in solidarity with less fortunate and more marginalized people is manipulative and dishonest, and, yes, it does make you a ‘snide’. It was an attempt to surreptitiously undermine the actions of Brand and paint him as a hypocrite simply because he happens to be richer than...

Sociology of Culture

How RAD is Cultural Appropriation?: Color Run Capitalizing Indian Culture

Recently, I ran a 5k called “Color Me Rad” with a group of friends from my department as a chance to just enjoy the southwest Virginia fall and not work for once. I was excited to participate in this race especially because unlike other races that I’ve run, this seemed like I would enjoy myself in a cultural event that I’ve always wanted to experience. As I got to the race, however, I couldn’t help but think sociologically about the...

Opinion

Dam-nation, Dissent and Cognitive Dissonance

I just got back from IDFA, the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam, where I volunteered in the running of this annual two-week event, in exchange for the chance to gorge myself on a host of documentary films, gratis. Lots of different subject matters were covered: graffiti artists in Brazil, al-Shabab militants in Somalia, music therapists in the United States, arms dealers in India, fracking in South Africa, loads of stuff. Not only were most of the films extremely watchable...

Opinion

Happy Black Friday

Perhaps it is because I was not in the UK for much of last year, but Black Friday came as something of a shock. Stepping out of my flat on yesterday’s bright November morning, I came across the above signboard, positioned on Croydon’s High Street by inveterate tax avoiders Vodafone. My initial reaction was one of sincere befuddlement – not because I hadn’t heard the term Black Friday before, for I had. Except, the Black Friday I thought I knew...

Opinion

Introducing the Facet Methodology

(An alternative to mixed methods especially within the sociology of digital technology) Mixed methods in practice usually involves using quantitative and qualitative methods to allow researchers to cross-reference corroborating sources of data as they add layers of credibility to their studies (Creswell 2003). Mason’s facet methodology (Mason 2011) is an alternative to this “methods-driven integration or triangulation” of data that can characterise mixed methods “where methods and their products are fitted together in a predetermined or hierarchical way” (p84). The...

Teaching & Learning Guide / Video Resources

Teaching Active Shooter Preparation

There was a shooting on my campus.  A lone gunman entered the first floor of the library last week in the middle of the night and started randomly shooting.  Three students were injured and hundreds more hid in the stacks while campus police ended the attack by killing the shooter.  As a sociologist, I know too well how our culture has a way of pushing people to the point of breaking,

Opinion

Blackface, Drag and Moonshine: Latacunga’s Mama Negra Festival

I remember a piece by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show from a few years ago where he asks his Senior Black Correspondent (Larry Wilmore): ‘Is blackface ever ok?’ the correspondent responds ‘No!’ and gets up to leave. When he is asked for a longer answer Wilmore says ‘Noooooooo!’. Then, when pushed further he states that ‘Blackface is part of a long history of mocking and dehumanizing black people while appropriating our culture. Here is when blackface is ok, when...