Tagged: Culture

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

Embracing Civility or Intensifying Deviance….A Dialectic?

As prior posts may express, my attention has been gripped by the motivations and experiences of those engaged in deviant activity. More specifically, it is not major crimes under consideration but rather the marginal acts of expression and resistance – tagging, unsanctioned extreme sports, controversial fashions, and the like. While trying to empathetically understand the ‘deviant’ perspective, it seems this perspective is often dismissed as delinquent and nothing more, void of any further value. As scholars have often noted, this...

Race & Ethnicity Studies

Why College Educators Who Care about Critical Thinking Need to Pay Attention to White Privilege and the Tucson Unified School District

“I don’t know if I should be saying this right now,” sophomore Allie stated, her eyes making a cautionary sweep of the room, even though except for us it was empty, and the door had long been shut. White and well-off, she held a prestigious academic scholarship and took many of her courses through a selective honors program. But not this course: “[The professor] was a nice lady, but she felt like she had to tie every single thing she...

Opinion

Words of the Year: Questions for "Assembled Experts" and Those Whose Expertise Those Assembled Experts Need…

“Oh, I hate that,” my colleague moaned, leaning on the hay- in “hate” with a weary sigh. The that in question was a grammatical construction I had not encountered in my previous TESOL experiences: from as a noun, linked to a country of origin on the other side of a being verb. My from is…Bolivia, El Salvador, Peru, Guatemala. “I don’t know where they get it from,” my colleague continued. “It’s not like they ever heard it from a native...

Sociology of Culture / Teaching & Learning Guide

College Students and Social Media: Making Meaning of Everyday Activities in the Classroom…

When Harrisburg University in Harrisburg, PA attempted a week-long social media “blackout” in September 2010, national news media swarmed the campus. A “smartly dressed correspondent from NPR stalk[ed] the staircase,” the Chronicle of Higher Education reported, and as soon as the Chronicle itself spirited away some students for an exclusive interview, a reporter from the Associated Press came barging in. “Oh no—not another one,” one student cried out. Another, weary, explained with a sigh that he had just finished begging...

Sociology of Culture

Engaging Sociologically with Students’ Facebook Usage

It’s the middle of class. Looking out into the classroom, a dim light reflects on students’ faces as they stare or type into the devices in front of them.  Walking up and down the aisles, blue-tinted Facebook pages on the students’ screens are usually the source of the reflected light. While such students might seem withdrawn from the class, this familiar scene holds a potential goldmine of sociological exploration and examples. If these students are already intently interested in, or...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Another Two Cents on England (and Crawley): Masculinity, Culture, and Tucson

As is often the case with graduate students, I just spent several months in a dissertation-induced haze and only recently had a chance to go through the latest issues of Gender & Society. Among these was the February 2011 issue that included a symposium on Paula England’s 2010 article on the “uneven/stalled gender revolution.” England’s over-reliance on the structural and institutional aspects of gender was underscored by several savvy pieces of Sociology, including a response by Sara Crawley that emphasizes...

Sociology of Culture

What Makes the College Classroom Relevant?

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...

Opinion

web 1.5: the web is not getting flatter

As media became truly massive in the middle of the 20th century, many theorists discussed the degree to which individuals are powerless -e.g., McLuhan’s famous “the medium is the message.” In the last decades, the pendulum of dystopian versus utopian thinking about technology has swung far into the other direction. Now, we hear much about the power of the individual, how “information wants to be free” and, opposed to powerful media structures, how the world has become “flat.” The story...

Sociology of Culture

The Social Construction of Drinking and Drunkeness

While Sociologists of Culture and feminist theorists among others, have long  emphasized the culturally contingent aspects of the construction of reality. A recent article about alcohol consumption in the New Yorker (see article below) illustrates not only this particular point but also draws attention to the ways in which these practices and seemingly “real” facts of social life are situated and structured.  In essence, we embody these practices in ways that (re)produce them as a reality that exists apart from...

Opinion

Virtual Conference Report: Day Eight (28 Oct, 2009)

By Paula Bowles Day eight of the conference was once again marked by some excellent contributions. The first paper ‘Cultural Sociology and Other Disciplines: Interdisciplinarity in the Cultural Sciences’ by Diane Crane (University of Pennsylvania) suggests that for many scholars ‘disciplinary isolation is the norm.’ However, Crane proposes that by utilising what she describes as ‘free‐floating paradigms’ such barriers can be removed. The second paper of the day by Christine Mallinson, (University of Maryland) entitled ‘Sociolinguistics and Sociology: Current Directions, Future...

Opinion

Virtual Conference Report: Day Seven (27 Oct, 2009)

The seventh day of the conference has continued with the key themes of ‘breaking down boundaries’ and interdisciplinarity. Roy Baumeister (Florida State University) began the day with his keynote lecture entitled ‘Human Nature and Culture: What is the Human Mind Designed for?’ By utilising the concepts of evolutionary and cultural psychology, Buameister is able to explore the intrinsic significance culture holds for humanity. Two other papers were also presented today. ‘Text as It Happens: Literary Geography’ by Sheila Hones (University...

Class & Stratification / Gender & Sexuality / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Science & Technology / Sociology of Culture

Veiled Beauty: Saudi Arabia and Plastic Surgery

by NickieWild As Westerners, it is difficult for us to imagine a situation where women are regarded as the mysterious “Other” more than in Saudi Arabia, where wearing the hijab is required and what we consider basic rights, such as full employment and driving privileges, are not universal. There, Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of a gendered hierarchy is unusually present. Thus, it might seem strange to learn that plastic surgery procedures in that country are on the rise for women....

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

Racist Language in the U.S.: Alive, But Not Well

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giS0382sFjw] by NickieWild Is racist language still acceptable in the United States? As with most things in social science, the answer depends on the situation and people involved. Recently, the television program on the CBS network “Big Brother” self-censored an episode where two contestants used a derogatory term to describe fellow contestants who were of Mexican descent, as well as making anti-gay remarks. Compare this incident with former Georgia Senator and Governor Zell Miller’s statement that President Obama should be...

Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

A Multi-Dimensional Approach to Game Studies

by bmckernan Towards the end of 2008, the PEW Internet & American Life Project released two studies on video games whose results were met with some shock by the mainstream media. The first PEW survey focused on youth and video games and found that 97% of the respondents (ages 12 to 17) play video games, including 99% of boys and 94% of girls. A few months later, the project followed this up with a second study which found that 53%...

Science & Technology / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Multiple Births as Media Spectacle

by theoryforthemasses In the past week considerable debate has emerged over the birth of a set of octuplets to a California woman. Controversy has surrounded both the doctors who facilitated the births as well as the mother herself, who is single, unemployed, and has six other children. The attention that is being paid to this family by both the media and ordinary people who are eager to share their opinions on fertility treatments and parental responsibility has created nothing short...

Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Culture

A "New" Economics 101

  by theoryforthemasses In a recent New York Times op-ed, columnist David Brooks questions whether the old, “rational,” Keynesian model of economics is truly useful for trying to understand the current economic crisis. He suggests that while economists have traditionally built elegant economic models of efficient markets based on rational actors, the process of making economic decisions is actually much more complex. Brooks explains that these complexities, which are informed by actors’ various strategies, memories, and intuitions, are what influences...