Tagged: sociology

Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Prison: An Unlikely "Beacon of Hope"?

by paulabowles The Longford Prize for outstanding work in the area of social and penal reform has recently been announced. Although the award has been running since 2002, honouring diverse organisations and individuals, this year is the first time the prize has been awarded to a prison. HMP Grendon was chosen for its unique approach to tackling recidivism, described by the Longford Trust as offering a “beacon of hope”’ for its inmates. Since its creation in 1962 the prison has...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

WhoseTube?

by ishein1 Two years ago, Google paid a copious, $1.65 billion to acquire the incipiently profitless Web site, YouTube.  This video sharing website’s meteoric rise was in part due to its software’s facileness and accessibility.  In this light, anyone with access to a computer and some gumption could post their own video.  In an effort to transform their costly addition into a revenue-producing agent, Google announced that it would begin selling space to advertisers on YouTube’s search results pages.  As...

Political & Economic Sociology

Politics and the Professor

by theoryforthemasses In his 2004 American Sociological Association Presidential Address, sociologist Michael Burawoy suggested that the discipline of sociology moved politically leftward in recent years, whereas the United States generally moved to the right. This perpetuated the perception of sociology as a left-leaning, liberal discipline. Moreover, it has long been a contention of the politically conservative (and many general sociology students) that the liberal bent of academic professors, particularly in the humanities, is both too obvious and influential in the...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change

"You'll get moved on here"

(by kiddingthecity) The other day I came across a great piece of ruin, an other fragment of this incredible city: a London based charity invites people sleeping rough to author a ‘Homeless City Guide’ by drawing listed signs on the wall in order ‘to help others to read the city’. By scrolling down the list of symbols, I felt a sense of hollowness reading tags like ‘an attack happened here’, or ‘strong police presence’, and ‘unfriendly place’. Risk is a...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture

Can You Vote?

by ishein1 After the complications arising from the 2000 election the Help America Vote Act was passed in 2002. States in an attempt to follow the guidelines of this act have found themselves in a precarious position. The provisions have created the unintended consequences of tens of thousands of potential voters being purged from voting rolls in nine states, six of which are key battleground swing states. As a result, federal law has been violated in two ways: voters have...

History of Sociology / Opinion

The Berkley History Project

by Feistyle Since 1991 Berkley have conducted interviews with their faculty. The 31 videos are an archive of notable and fascinating thinkers in Sociology. These videos have been collected into the film Public Sociologies at Berkley.     See more   Barrie Thorne on Year Round Schools and the Politics of Time

Race & Ethnicity Studies

Assimilative Success

by: brianchung The success and integration of immigrant minority groups in North American labour markets have always been quite futile in comparison to their North-American and European-born counterparts. Recent findings from the 2006 census, released by Statistics Canada, show that the children of Chinese and South Asian immigrants to Canada fare much better over time than children of Blacks, Filipinos and Latin Americans. Second- and third-generation Chinese and Japanese Canadians have surpassed the income of all other groups of newcomers,...

Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Sudhir Venkatesh on Gang Leader for a Day

By Feistyle In a video speech, Sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh talks about his time spent studying and living with a Chicago gang called the Black Kings in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  His study was made famous in the book Freakonomics and has been documented in more detail in his book Gang Leader for a Day.  He discusses urban poverty and his methods for research and how these changed as his study went on. Read More   Bryan Hogeveen on Youth (and) Violence   James F....