by paulabowles For criminologists and sociologists, prison has for many decades provided a fertile environment for research. In recent decades, the focus has been on overcrowding, together with attempts to identify the composition of the prison population. As at 25 September 2009, Her Majesty’s Prisons contain some 84,382 incarcerated men and women. On the same date the BBC reported that as many as 8,500 of these prisoners are former veterans of the British army, navy and air force. Moreover, this...
by Koyomiyoshi According to this article , the Obama administration has proposed a pay limit to financial firms which will be saved by government TARP plan. This plan clearly reflects public outrage towards financial firm‘s practice of paying tremendous bonus to CEOs, which have been saved by taxpayers. Outrage centres around the fact that these bonus are excessively high in comparison to CEOs performance. The article introduces one wall street veteran saying “I could put a monkey in that chair...
by Keri E. Iyall Smith Explore an emerging subfield in historical sociology, imperial-colonial studies, in Julian Go’s July 2009 article in the Political Sociology section of Sociology Compass. Growing out of the humanities and classical sociological theories, imperial-colonial studies present sociologists with both space to make new contributions and the opportunity to refine the sociological tradition. Imperial-colonial studies sociologizes the study of empire, colonial states, and colonial legacies. It also examines racial discourse and its connections to imperialism. Themes in...
By Rachael Liberman Everyone has an opinion on pornography. Some argue that it is a vital contributor to understanding sexuality, some assert that it is a vulgar practice that objectifies women, and some maintain that is a lucrative industry just like any other capitalistic enterprise. Of course, these three positions are not the only ones that pervade the cultural discussion of the pornography industry. For example, during the Value Voters Summit in Washington, D.C. this past weekend, Michael Schwartz, chief...
By Dena T. Smith Facebook announced that over the next few weeks, members will begin to be able to use voice capabilities that will be integrated into a variety of applications offered by the social networking site (see the article). If this is successful, it will open the door to new possibilities for increased connection between users. No longer would Skype or sites like Myspace be enough all on their own. Whether it’s texting, emailing, facebooking, IMing, or Tweeting, people...
by nathanjurgenson Recently, this blog has focused on the labor of the crowds. I have posted that the “prosumers of the world should unite” and have continued to write on the topic. Bmckernan expertly handled the topic when discussing “light” capitalism and more recently pj.rey convincingly demonstrated that prosumption is a structural force at play in the death of old media. This post is driven by the recent announcement that Facebook, now nearly the size of the United States, has...
by enteringthewhirlpool The juxtaposition of rail and romance is quite an old phenomenon, manifesting itself in films such as Brief Encounter and in popular songs such as “The Enchanted Train”, P.G.Wodehouse’s tribute to the Long Island Rail Road on which, apparently, he had courted his wife. Now it transpires that falling for people on trains has become rather popular on London’s public transport network and numerous websites and newspaper columns have come into existence with the goal of helping couples...
nmccoy1 Joe Wilson’s outburst “You Lie!” has been analyzed and instrumentalized for political purposes on all sides of the aisle. Yet very few of these analyses explore the ahistorical frames which are being used. The problem with ahistoricity is a decontextualized understanding of an event as a social form. When the comment is isolated and individualized as it has been, it is disembedded from the racialized society in which it takes form. As Kenan Malik argues in The Meaning of...
by ChristinaBlunt The Washington Post announced on Tuesday that between 2,000 and 4,000 military trainers would be required for the growth of the Afghan army in the coming years. This estimate comes from Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to the report, Mullen also suggested that additional troops would be needed in the short term to provide security while Afghan forces are being developed. This testimony was given before the Senate Armed Services Committee; a...
by NickieWild Politics often guides the course of technological development. One of the most obvious places that this has occurred, and continues to occur, is the United States’ NASA program. With the US essentially still fighting two wars, the looming health care, Medicare, and Social Security crises, and the general poor state of the economy, many question the relevance of space exploration in the world today. In order to keep NASA going, scientists and administrators are increasingly switching NASA’s mission...
Many thanks to all those of you who have already registered for the upcoming Compass Interdisciplinary Virtual Conference. We’ve very excited to see so many delegates from around the world and look forward to a truly global conversation during the conference. Why register? The conference website will of course be free and open to all, but registrants will receive a Virtual Delegates Pack, which will include the full conference schedule, details of the discounts available on Wiley-Blackwell publications as part...
by bmckernan A recent article in Time magazine entitled “Jay Leno is the Future of TV. Seriously” utilizes NBC’s “gamble” on Jay Leno’s primetime talk show as a backdrop to explore the recent history and current state of American television. The article touches upon many of the issues currently being discussed in the academic literature on mass media and is a must read for media sociologists.
by paulabowles The links between illegal drug use and crime, particularly acquisitive, have long been recognised as problematic. Recent statistics published in The Independent suggest that as few as ten percent of addicts commit 75 percent of all acquisitive crime. In spite of these consistently dispiriting figures, the familiar approach is one of punishment, with some attempt at rehabilitation. Moreover, all of these programmes have at their foundations an aim to ensure their clients maintain complete desistance from drug use....
by ESMinihan The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) has successfully negotiated a $116 million benefit sharing fund designed to facilitate biodiversity conservation efforts (see Feeding the future: agricultural biodiversity from CNN). The species targeted for protection are not majestic wild cats or giant panda bears, but rather household staples such as potatoes, wheat, rice and maize that provide half of the worlds calorie requirements. These efforts are an attempt to avoid potential disasters stemming...
by smteixeirapoit In 1962, economist Arthur Okun stated that when the economy expands, employment rises at a predictable rate and when the economy contracts, employment declines at a similar rate. Recently, Lawrence Summers, Director of President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, commented that “Okun’s Law” may be incorrect. In the United States, employment rates decreased faster than Okun’s law predicted. Although Okun’s law suggested that the unemployment rate should be around 8.5 percent, it is around 10.0 percent. A recent...
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