Latest articles from sociology lens

Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology Compass Issues / Sociology of Media & Communication

Whistleblowing in the Wind: Channeling and Harnessing Collective Outrage

News continues to break revealing more incidents of U.S. government spying. Based on documents provided by Edward Snowden, we learn that targets of the NSA now include the phone calls, emails, and text messages of the presidents of Brazil and Mexico, and the internal communications system of news broadcaster Al Jazeera. The leaks have also brought to light that the U.S. has been hacking into foreign networks in order to place them under covert control through an effort dubbed “GENIE.”

Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Connecting the Dots: The Politics of Race in Big Time Football's 2013 Offseason

Football season is upon us, and there are plenty of reasons why this moment in big time football is very intriguing from a sociological perspective. More specifically, most of the major offseason storylines of both professional and collegiate football tell us much about the racial politics in big time football and the negotiations of race and sports in the media. Update: Johnny Manziel makes the cover of Time Magazine.

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

For the Love of the Game: Collective Memory and the Fight for Gender Equality in Sports

On September 20th, 1973 recent Wimbledon winner, 29-year-old Billie Jean King took on a 55-year-old former tennis champ, Bobby Riggs, in an exposition match dubbed “The Battle of the Sexes.” King dominated the court, winning straight sets (6-4, 6-3, 6-3) and marking a historically significant moment for female athletes, second wave feminists, and women’s history in general. ESPN’s recent exposé, suggesting the match was rigged has resulted in passionate responses from journalists, sports commentators, feminist scholars, and tennis fans across...

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

Fear and Data Hoarding in the U.S.A.: The Use of Big Data to Fight Crime

  Key components of New York Police Department’s controversial stop-and-frisk strategy were recently struck down by a Federal Judge for violating the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.  The controversy surrounding the stop-and-frisk program primarily focused on its racial profiling—over 85 percent of the 4.3 million people stopped since 2003 were minorities. This decision has received considerable attention; however, there was a second component of NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program that was also defeated that received less attention. As part of the stop-and-frisk program,...

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...

Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

"Where's my place in a music that's been taken by my race?": Macklemore and Authentic White Hip-Hop

In his 2005 song “White Privilege,” white hip-hop artist Macklemore asked, “Where’s my place in a music that’s been taken by my race?”.  In the same song he acknowledges that “white rappers’ albums really get the most spins” and that “hip-hop started off on a block [he’s] never been to, to counteract a struggle that [he’s] never been through.”  This seemingly self-aware critique of his own whiteness in the context of hip-hop dropped 7 years before Macklemore’s meteoric rise to...

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

Racially Profiling the Victims of Murder. Colorblindness, Racism and the Selective Silence on Race in the US and Germany

Germany is currently witnessing one of its most anticipated criminal cases in recent history, as Beate Zschäpe, the sole surviving member of the three-person white supremacist group National Socialist Underground (NSU), is being tried for membership in a terrorist cell and conspiracy to commit ten murders. In addition to highlighting the continued danger of white supremacist groups, this case and its handling by the police and the media not only speaks to the lingering racism in Germany but also to...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture

Does your life pass the Bechdel Test?

The Bechdel test is a simple but effective way of assessing the feminist qualities of a film, and how women are represented. The test was introduced by Alison Bechdel in 1985, in a comic strip called ‘The Rule’. The test asks three simple questions of a film: 1) Are there more than two (named) female characters in the film? 2) Do they interact with each other? 3) If they do, do they talk about something other than a man? If...

Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

American Public Libraries: A Forgotten Social Institution?

Last week, NPR ran a series on American public libraries.  The series immediately filled me with a sentimental wave of nostalgia.  One of my earliest memories is packing up my teddy bear and a sack lunch and driving to the Lincoln Township Public Library for their annual Teddy Bear Picnic.  I also remember taking a writing workshop at the library in second or third grade, which lead to my first publication, “Friends of the Sea.”  As an undergraduate, I spent...

Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture

Does the Web call time on our traditional ethical arrangements?

  Ethnography is a “particular method or sets of methods” which in its “characteristic form it involves the ethnographer participating, overtly or covertly, in people’s lives for an extended period of time; watching what happens, listening to what is said, asking questions — in fact, collecting whatever data are available to throw light on the issues that are the focus of the research” (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1983: 1). Ethnography therefore allows insight into the knowledge and meanings behind the composition...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Media & Communication

“We Can Prevent Rape by Telling Men Not to Commit It”: Men and Rape Prevention

  Last Spring, during a Colorado State Senate hearing on gun control, a rape survivor testified that she believed she could have prevented her victimization if she had been allowed by the state of Colorado to carry a concealed firearm.  A female state senator then rebuked her claims by citing statistics regarding defensive firearm use.  In response to the exchange in the Colorado State Senate, Fox News brought together Zerlina Maxwell, a writer and political analyst, and Gayle Trotter, senior...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change

Social Movements This Summer: Listen to the Echoes

Scholars of political protest continue to attempt translation of social movements that ostensibly took a new turn in the past few years. Inspired by the Arab Spring, this current wave of contention can be traced through the Indignados and other anti-austerity uprisings, and eventually into efforts to Occupy everywhere. These movements share some characteristics: they are less leader-led than many previous movements, and participants often call for democratization but lack a clear, unified set of demands. A common tactic is...

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...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Orange Is the New Black: Reviewing Cultural Beliefs Surrounding Gender Shame, Gender Expectations, Gender Non-Conformity, and the Presentation of Human Sexuality

**Spoiler alert: This post includes plot points from throughout the first season of “Orange Is the New Black.” On July 11th, Netflix released its newest original video-streaming series, Orange Is the New Black. Based on Piper Kerman’s memoir chronicling the 13 months of a 15 month sentence she severed at a minimum security prison in Danbury, Connecticut for money laundering and drug trafficking, Orange has had the highest first week ratings of any Netflix original series. The overarching plotline is...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture

Sexing Up the Sex Ed Classroom Revisited

About a year ago, I wrote my first post for Sociology Lens about the tensions over sex education in the United States. Specifically, I commented on Jessica Field’s Sociology Compass article, “Sexuality Education in the United States: Shared Cultural Ideas Across the Political Divide,” in which she argues that, regardless of political position on sex education, most participants in debates operate from a shared assumption about the dangers of adolescent sexuality. Following Fields, I called for a truly comprehensive form...

Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change

Dream Defenders Stand THEIR Ground

  On July 13th, George Zimmerman was found not guilty in the shooting of 17 year old Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman shot Martin during a scuffle—the details of which we will never truly know—and claimed that he had done so only in self-defense. The jury believed him; much of the viewing public did not. In the weeks since the verdict, the nation has been reeling. The shooting itself, the failure of the police department, the vigilantism encouraged by “Stand Your Ground”...