Latest articles from sociology lens

Gender & Sexuality / Political & Economic Sociology / Science & Technology / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Religion, Abortion, and the Law in the United States

  If one’s religion teaches that abortion is murder, is the believer then obligated to stop abortions from happening, by any means necessary? Today, a Kansas judge decided that this is not a viable defense strategy under the law. On May 31, Kansas resident Scott Roeder is accused of shooting and killing Dr. George Tiller. Roeder had wished to use something that has been termed the “necessity defense,” which would justify using lethal force. Although the judge’s reasoning for not...

Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Economic Growth Despite Global Downturn

China aims to experience 8% economic growth in 2010, even after accounting for the global downturn. Since Beijing has targeted 8% economic growth in the past several years and has reached its goal each year, analysts consider China’s target as reasonable. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects China to exceed its goal, experiencing at least 9% economic growth in 2010. Meanwhile, the IMF only expects India to grow by 6.4%, Canada by 2.1%, Japan by 1.7%, the United States by...

Opinion

facebook's message of empowerment

Users logged into Facebook this week to find various messages from the company telling them of changes in the way they will share their information. While the company frames all of this as putting users in “control” of their own data, it strikes me that this is more about empowering the company than the users. Users are given more opportunity to share more information with more people, creating more of the data that Facebook profits from. Whether you care if...

Sociology of Culture

Indigeneous Authenticity and Video Cameras

Notions of authenticity and modernity are often challenged by indigenous groups.  The Ya’kuana and the Sanema of Venezuela (see article below) use microphones to record birdsongs, the Yanomami of Brazil have learned how to use video equipment to document their own cultural traditions and ceremonies, and the Runakuna of the Peruvian Highlands adopt Western urban clothing in their ventures into the cities.  Often with indigenous groups there is an underlying current of Edward Said’s Orientalism, the Other.  The traditions, languages,...

Class & Stratification / Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Organizations & Work

The New Faces of Welfare: Overcoming the Stigma of State Assistance

Despite last week’s promising government figures showing a decline in the American unemployment rate, “Welfare and Citizenship: The Effects of Government Assistance on Young Adults’ Civic Participation,” serves as a reminder to social scientists that with every great social shift (such as the global economic downturn) we must re-examine our premises. The article, which relies heavily on data collected between 1996 and 2000, argues that declining civic participation can be causally linked to welfare participation. The authors echoed the concern...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change

Protesters Challenge Skeptics: The Earth is Round and Climate Change is Real

The United Nations Climate Change Conference is taking place in Copenhagen from December 7th to 18th. Prior to the start of the conference, members of an action group, Stop Climate Chaos, organized demonstrations encouraging world leaders to advance a world climate change agreement. Around the world, people participated in these demonstrations including 40,000 people in London, 7,000 people in Glasgow, and many more in Belfast. Members of another action group, Camp for Climate Change, organized a 48-hour-long protest in Trafalgar...

Opinion

George Ritzer Guest Post – Consuming America: What Have We Done to Ourselves?

By: George Ritzer Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland (Note: The Following comments were prepared for a symposium sponsored by the Center on Religion and Culture, September 15, 2009.) Let me begin by quarreling with the title of this discussion. I think it is certainly a good idea to focus on consumption because: (1) of its enormous importance in the developed world; (2) it is not going away even with the current recession; and (3) it reflects a willingness to...

Class & Stratification / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Dangerous Dogs Revisited

Following the recent sad news of the death of 4 year old John Paul Massey, after he had been attacked by his uncle’s American bull mastiff, media attention has refocused on the ownership of ‘dangerous’ dogs. As part of the BBC ‘Pledge Watch’ series of articles, Justin Parkinson has taken the opportunity to revisit the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. Following a spate of dog attacks on children in the early 1990s, media coverage focused on various breeds of dogs as...

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

Don't blame the Internet: Reevaluating the decline in American journalism

By Rachael Liberman In a recent article from The Nation, heavyweight media scholars John Nichols and Robert McChesney remind readers that the current crisis in American journalism does not necessarily mean that the industry is fated to fail. Rather, Nichols and McChesney optimistically open the article with the news that the Federal Trade Commission is planning to hold (they are holding it right now) a hearing to “assess the radical downsizing and outright elimination of newspaper newsrooms and to consider...

Class & Stratification / Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Telling the Truth: Immigrants and their communities

Today, December 2, Maryland pastor Lennox Abrigo will be at the White House to discuss immigration reform. According to the New York Times, Abrigo and other pastors across the state have witnessed increases in the number of immigrants in their congregations as well as increases in the problems that these individuals face. Abrigo told the paper, “Members of our church have been deported… Families are disrupted.” Despite such challenges, the Times reports that immigration reform activism is on the rise...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Psychology & Lifecourse

When Emotions Stall Political Change: The case of abortion and health care reform

While abortion is certainly a hot-button issue on the American Political Scene, the fervent debate over the topic – mostly fueled by a clash between liberal and conservative, predominately religiously-oriented moral entrepreneurs – faded into the background after the presidential election season. In short, abortion is an issue that, while always central for some, tends to become peripheral outside of election seasons, during which candidates of both parties accuse one another of either caring too little for life or of obstructing a...

Opinion

information wants to be expensive

My previous post centered on the implications of Google’s dominance in internet search. However, subsequent major news provides the possibility of a major restructuring of the internet search market. It also has implications on how “flat” and “open” the web really is. One of the basic things all users of the internet do is search. Search is what makes the abundance of information usable. We assume that our search engine has access to the relevant information on the web. Most...

Class & Stratification / Gender & Sexuality / Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Science & Technology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Cyborg Systems: Sociology's Proper Unit of Analysis

The increasing centrality of the Internet in our daily lives has precipitated a spate of theorizing about how we – as humans and as a society – are changing (or not) due to the constant technological mediation of our most basic interactions and activities.  Let’s face it: This sort of theorizing is populated mostly by men of considerable privilege (with some very notable exceptions).  A cynic might hold that the problems concerning human techno-social interactions are relatively insignificant compared to...

Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

The Presentation of Self…in Dating

Eva Illouz, in Cold Intimacies asks us to consider how technology changes notions of the body and of emotions.  One of the forced rearticulations occurs in the realm of the presentation of self.  As Illouz notes, when technology (specifically in the form of the Internet) mediates relationships we are simultaneously displaying our innermost private selves in an extremely public way.  The subjects of our own experiences and author of what we choose to reveal yet increasingly vulnerable to the scrutiny...

Sociology of Media & Communication

Editor's Highlights: Reality Television as Small Screen Documentary?

This fall’s lineup in the United States featured fewer reality programs, but they are still a dominant part of network TV.  Jelle Mast’s September 2009 article in the Communication and Media section of Sociology Compass challenges sociologists to think about the form and function of reality television programming.  Beginning with a critique of the academic community’s acceptance of the term “reality television,” Mast then compares this form to documentary television.  Whereas documentary television seeks to inform, educate, or connect viewers,...

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

Muslim Identity, Cultural Trauma, and the Racialized Backlash

Jeffrey Alexander writes that “cultural trauma occurs when members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways” (2004). With this basic definition in mind, can we call the shootings that took place at the Fort Hood army base a “cultural trauma”? In this case, the identity of the United States military may have been...