“Many US Blacks Moving to South, Reversing Trend” reads a recent headline from the New York Times. This article evokes more than a reversal of geographic mobility as it cites a “New South.” This article follows, an article from a few days earlier entitled, “Black and White and Married in the Deep South: A Shifting Image.” Based on 2010 Census data, these articles suggest an America where the reversal of racial migration flows and long-standing taboos may signal an end...
Bill Gates’ address to the National Governor’s Association last month was an ode to excellent teaching. Except that it wasn’t. What we have to do, Gates chirped (to the tune of former DC Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee), is “measure, develop, and reward excellent teaching…We have to identify great teachers, find out what makes them so effective, and transfer those skills to others.” But excellent teaching –as sociologists Lori Dance (2002) and Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot (1984) have shown through their research,...
In this edition of Authors in Focus, Sociology Compass author Sophia Nathenson discusses the utility of critical theory for understanding the doctor-patient relationship, as well as some of the broader issues in health care today. Listen to the informative interview by clicking HERE… And then read the article by clicking here
The threat of a nuclear crisis in Japan has summoned pro- and anti-nuclear power debaters to the streets (over 200,000 Germans across the country participated in anti-nuclear protests last week), and to online outlets (“nuclear power” showed up in over 76 millions websites last week, compared to 1.87 million websites during the same period last year). Several countries, including Germany and China, have suspended plans for nuclear power expansion. There is a striking amount of variation among countries in the...
Most states define “failing schools” as those with a certain percentage of students scoring below grade level on state tests. In other words, a failing school is a school with a large percentage of failing students. However, since no politician would define the problem as “failing children,” the debate centers around “who is failing these students and why is that failure concentrated in certain schools?”
In mid February 2011 The Guardian newspaper published an edited version of David Faulkner’s contribution to the United Kingdom’s Centre for Crime and Justice Studies’ report “Lessons for the Coalition” which was written in response to the first report of the National Preventative Mechanism – a new body set up under the optional protocol to the UN convention against torture. The National Preventative Mechanism’s report highlighted problem areas in the UK’s approach to mental health, resources, vulnerable groups such as...
To the left is a 1917 portrait of Thomas J. Watson, founder of IBM. A few weeks ago, IBM debuted its latest supercomputer, named after this giant of innovation (Watson), on the TV game-show Jeopardy! Though it seemed as though Watson was standing in between the two other competitors on the show, as Jeopardy! provided the computer with the same electronically-equipped podium as the other contestants, and even wrote “his” name on said podium, the brains behind this powerful supercomputer...
While social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have gained global notoriety for their influential stake in recent political movements, a recent article in the New York Times has shed light on another form of new media praxis that includes neither a “like” button nor a hashtag. The article, titled “Keeping Women Safe Through Social Networking,” brings attention to the success of an organization called Hollaback!, a project that, according to the website, “is a movement dedicated to ending...
In August 2010, The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), a self-described “independent, non-profit organization committed to academic freedom, excellence, and accountability at America’s colleges and universities” assigned letter grades A – F to universities nationwide. Johns Hopkins University received an F; St. John’s College of Annapolis, an A. The reasoning: Hopkins and many of its elite peers “don’t do a good job of providing their students with a coherent core,” ACTA President Anne Neal told The Washington Post. Students...
Deafness and hearing loss is a condition or state of being whose meaning is contested. The biomedical, or infirmity, understanding of deafness is that hearing loss is a disability that, in many cases, can be cured or ameliorated through advanced technological devices and procedures, including surgery and internal and external prostheses. The newest of these technologies, cochlear implants, can help a deaf infant hear and speak in almost the same way as a hearing person. As opposed to the biomedical...
The events in Egypt prompted renewed attention to the phenomenon scholar Ayesha Siddiqa refers to as milbus (military-business)— military ownership of property and businesses (the Pakistani military peddling cornflakes is a particularly vivid example). Siddiqa’s 2007 book, Military, Inc., provided an account of the Pakistani military’s involvement in the countries economy, including hotels, shopping malls, insurance companies, banks, farms and an airline (see a review here). She defines milbus as “military capital that is used for the personal benefit of...
After CBS released a statement (15 February) that their chief foreign correspondent, Lara Logan, had been, “surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers,” news of the unfortunate event (which occurred on 11 February, the day Mubarak stepped down) instantly spread to various mainstream news media outlets, including BBC News (“CBS’s Lara Logan attacked by Egyptian mob in Cairo”) to The Huffington Post...
Wayne Brekhus discusses his co-authored article, On the Contributions of Cognitive Sociology to the Sociological Study of Race In the interview, Dr. Brekhus answers questions such as: What is cognitive sociology? How did he become interested in the cognitive perspective? Why is it so critical that we study race using the cognitive model? To listen to the interview, CLICK HERE !! AND… After you watch the interview, read the article by clicking here!!
Sociology Lens and WIREs (Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews) are delighted to present a debate here around the following article: Climate change knowledge and social movement theory Andrew Jamison (Department of Development and Planning, Aalborg University) The following commentators will be discussing the issues raised in this article with the author using the comments thread below: Patrick Gilham (University of Idaho) Maria Kousis (University of Crete) Liam Leonard (Institute of Technology, Sligo) You can read the article under discussion for free here....
Bless your hearts, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, for calling on institutions of higher education to prioritize undergraduate learning. With Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press 2011), sociologists Arum and Roksa argue that undergraduate students seem to learn very little in college, and that in fact they (Arum and Roksa) can show just how much those undergraduates are learning by bringing their own quantitative data set Determinants of College Learning (DCL)—which surveys over 2,300 full...
Sociologists have known about the work and viewpoints of Francis Fox Piven throughout her career. She is a leader in the field; she has taught at CUNY’s Graduate Center since 1982, helping begin the careers of numerous sociologists; in 2006/07, Piven was the president of the American Sociological Association, and she has won the ASA’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Political Sociology. She is widely published and respected throughout the field, but her renown outside the field of sociology was scant...
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