Tagged: politics

Social Movements / Social Change

Enemies of the State: untangling anarchism from the government shutdown

  At the time of this posting, the government shutdown drags on, the debt default is on the horizon, and Democrats and Republicans are waging the battle of blame. Spin is, of course, business-as-usual in politics. Figuring prominently into this fight is the question of who is acting responsibly. What stands out to me, as a student of social movement studies, is one particular strategy to smear opponents as irresponsible and therefore dangerous: the recent persistent use of the term...

Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Media & Communication

Crime as a Mechanism for Governing

Whether flipping through channels, listening to the radio, or reading the newspaper, it is evident that crime has secured a mainstay position in today’s media. In order to achieve high ratings, television networks and news outlets must fill their allotted time slots with only those headlines sure to popular attention (see Best, 2004). Oftentimes, those stories and reports are generated by sensationalizing criminal events. However, the seemingly overrepresentation of crime and delinquency is not the focus for this essay. Rather,...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change

Cannabis Legalization on the Ballot: Framing the Debate in Three States

There is something curious happening this election season, and it has nothing to do with 47% or Obamacare. Voters in three states – Washington, Oregon, and Colorado – will be casting ballots on whether or not to legalize cannabis. Whether or not these measures ultimately pass, they amount to the most direct challenge to the legitimacy of US drug policy since the War on Drugs began over 40 years ago. Of particular interest here are the similarities between the proposed...

Class & Stratification / Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Yes, You Are a Statistic

I can no longer stomach certain clichés.  Last night at the Democratic National Convention, I heard one of these.  A university student, who introduced Dr. Jill Biden, wife of the Vice-President, noted that she “shouldn’t be here” and was “almost a statistic.”  My immediate response, to my computer screen, was “You still are a statistic and you don’t understand what statistics are.”  I know that she was just rehashing a cliché, but it is a cliché that privileges “self-help culture”...

Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Culture

Vote. Seriously, go vote.

Four years ago, President Obama was elected, at least in part, because he was able to generate excitement among young voters. In fact, in 2008, some 84% of young people who were registered to vote actually did vote. But recently, I’ve noticed growing apathy among some in my social media circle. While I can’t be certain that my facebook “friends” are representative of today’s young people, this trend on my newsfeed has caused me some concern. Gallup polls also indicate...

Class & Stratification / Political & Economic Sociology / Science & Technology / Social Movements / Social Change

Sustainability, social progress, environmental protection, economic growth and energy

Sustainability, social progress, environmental protection, economic growth and energy are discussed using the sustainability framework in Figure 1, where sustainability is at the confluence of social progress, environmental protection and economic growth. Figure 1 Sustainability framework (Source: IUCN 2006) There are designs being made toward Ecological Civilization and welcome moves to address the shortcomings of GDP in Completing the picture – environmental accounting in practice by the Australian Bureau of Statistics .  Extending the national accounts to include degradation of natural resources makes a measurable target...

Opinion

What's missing from the debate over higher education funding?

For many people, from the first-year students traipsing around campus in search of the correct lecture hall to the senior faculty preparing to teach courses for the nth time, the beginning of the academic year tends to be frantic and exciting time. This year, when back-to-school coincides with a heated Presidential race, education and politics are bound to mix. President Obama has made access to higher education – measured primarily by greater access to grants and student loans while trying...

Class & Stratification / Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Media & Communication

The Political Value of Welfare

One of the latest Romney ads attacks President Obama for removing work provisions from Welfare Reform.  In the ad, disappointed-in-himself Obama (pictured left) sneakily gutted welfare reform by dropping the work requirements, so that as the ad states, “They just send you your welfare check.”  The ad’s claims are false or, as the fact-checking website Politifact put it, pants-on-fire.  What Obama has actually done is allow states to develop their own welfare-to-work programs.  The changes provide states with some flexibility regarding...

Opinion

On Civil Litigation, Part 2 of 2: Tort Reform

Author’s Note: This post is the second of a two-part series (read part 1 here) that looks at various narratives about civil lawsuits. Originally intended to be a longer series, it became apparent to the author that bi-weekly posts are a less than ideal way to write a series and makes it difficult for readers to follow. Mea culpa. Coincidentally, two weeks since my previous post, the Missouri Supreme Court struck down a 2005 tort reform law. The law in...

Class & Stratification / Political & Economic Sociology

Middle-Class Poverty

“Somebody who’s fallen from the middle class to poverty, in my opinion is still middle class.”  Mitt Romney, Republican presidential candidate, made this statement on a talk show a few weeks ago.   Bloggers ridiculed the comment as nonsensical.  I admit I too was tempted to just call Romney an idiot (again) and move on.  But, as I’ve been watching politicians in a society of growing inequality and high unemployment struggle with the concept of class while desperately trying not to...

Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change

Immigration and Racialized Politics

If you asked Americans to pick which political party they considered pro-immigration and which one they considered anti-immigration most would agree that the Republican Party is anti-immigration and the Democratic Party is pro-immigration.  Like abortion politics, this does not mean that every Democrat is pro-immigration and every Republican anti-immigration.  Still, the divide between the parties appears to be growing starker as voters either sort themselves into parties due to their stance on immigration or solidify their stances on immigration as...

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

Immigration and the Limits of the Criminal Justice System

Candidate Barack Obama promised to enact immigration reform in his first term.  That promise is almost certain to go unfulfilled.  The result of years of heated debate has been deadlock between two seemingly irreconcilable positions.  On one hand, many in congress support a “path to citizenship” for undocumented workers and increased legal immigration.  On the other, a substantial number argue for greater border enforcement, mass deportation, and decreased immigration.  While the status quo has virtually no vocal support, systems create...

Books and arts

Book Review – Academically Adrift by Arum and Roksa

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...