Tagged: sociology

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture

The Unachievable Body Ideal Revisited: Fitspiration and “Everyone is Beautiful” Campaigns and the Regulation of Women’s Bodies

When I really want to procrastinate doing my work, I like to visit some of my favorite websites and catch up on the latest trends and news. Recently, on one my favorite sites, I have noticed an increase in “Fitspiration Porn” right next to messages of pro-fat, pro- everybody type of images saying “Everyone is beautiful in their own way.” These also speak to the increase in celebrities with curvier bodies (e.g. Beyoncé, Iggy Azalea, Jennifer Lawrence, Nikki Minaj, and...

Class & Stratification / Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Organizations & Work

"No one likes being reduced to their genitals!" Positive discrimination, diversity and symbolic capital

“Scarlett?” My PhD compatriot, Jens* leans over to me, a glint in his eye and a bemused smile on his face that makes it difficult to work out whether this will be a joke, a statement, or something to deliberately challenge me. Past history tells me probably a combination of all three, but lets see. “Can I ask you a question, before you go?” (I am just on my way out of the PhD office** we share, coat on, mug...

Feminist Theory / Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

"F" is for Feminism: FCKH8's Feminism Video isn't so Fabulous

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/109573972[/vimeo] It’s all over my newsfeed: Little girls swearing up a storm in the name of feminism. On Tuesday, October 21st, tee-shirt company FCKH8 released the newest online video sensation, “F-Bombs for Feminism: Potty Mouthed Princesses Use Bad Word for Good Cause.” The video features five six to thirteen year old girls, dressed as princesses, dropping the f-bomb left and right, interspersed with factual information about women’s inequality including the pay gap and sexual assault. Not surprisingly, the video has...

Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Tech companies should employ more social scientists: here's why.

  I don’t want to stereotype computer scientists. I still cringe when I remember clumsily insulting a room of (mainly) computer scientists at a conference by showing the wallet inspector scene from The Simpsons. There are, however, some computer scientist communities who give all computer scientists a bad name. Witness, for example, the infamous kick-starter project to give a food substitute called Soylent to poor people (which for non-sci-fi fans took its name from the dystopian film called Soylent Green...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Only “Real” Women Need Apply: Defining Womanhood and Trans Inclusion at Women’s Colleges

If you read my last post about how women’s colleges are still relevant, you know that I am a large advocate for women’s colleges. There is a plethora of evidence that women’s college students experience (and gain) significant benefits compared to their coeducational peers. That does not mean, however, that sex segregation in education is always the answer. In fact, for some single-sex colleges, the gender-focused environment is in fact too exclusionary. Women’s colleges, by definition, are for women. But...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Who Needs the Boys?: On How Women’s Colleges Still Matter

As I received the invitation to join the Sociology Lens team as a News Editor, I spent a great deal of time reading archived articles, debating what could I possibly contribute to the discipline. As I came across Heidi Rademacher’s piece “Why We Definitely Need Feminism,” I realized that my experiences, research interests and questions I ask time and time again are relevant to a larger body of timely literature and understanding about women, gender, sexuality, feminism, education, human rights,...

Opinion

The Sociology of Web 3.0

This year the World Wide Web is 25 years old. Web 1.0 was made possible by Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s creation of the http protocol which enabled us to retrieve of a copy of a document by accessing its address on a network. Web 2.0 was made by us; the content providers. To realise the semantic web or Web 3.0 technologists envision everything (documents, data, inanimate objects, even us) having an address on a network and artificial intelligence having the ability...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture

"Women are bitches", and other obvious tales from the Sociological front line

  Words excite me. I can’t help it, words are all I have really: they are my bread and butter and what keeps the wolves from the door, and what gets me up in the morning. And a lot of the time that means that I have a propensity to use long words when short words would definitely do. (See, I did it there with propensity. ‘Tendency’ would have worked, ‘habit’ would have done, too. It’s a sickness really.) Every...

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Cosmo’s 28 Not-So-Sexy Tips for “Lady-Lovers”

**Please note that this post has illustrations of sexual acts.** Recently, and for the first time ever, Cosmopolitan Magazine published a list of sex tips and positions for “lesbians, bisexuals, pansexuals, queers- all lady-loving ladies in the crowd.” At first, as a member of the LGBTQQIAA community, I was shocked and excited at the seemingly legitimate public recognition of my sexual practices by the “sex gurus” themselves over at Cosmo. At a closer glance however, this list is a comical...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change

The Necessity of Disorder in a Soft City: De Certeau vs Foucault (Part 2)

 This is the second in a two-part guest post by Bea Moyes, who is an independent researcher based in East London. Having completed a Masters in Research at the London Consortium, Bea is working on ongoing research into the history of East London since the 1970s. Her work has often considered histories and narratives of urban space, particularly through the act of walking the city, and with dynamic and creative interactions which are generated in public spaces. She tweets @BeaMoyes The first post can be found...

Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

How About "Just Don't Rape?": On the Invention of Date Rape Nail Polish, Preventive Advice, and Women's Subordination (or Men's Empowerment)

It is the same old tale, just spun with a different color thread: “Women: don’t get raped.” Recently, four students (note that they are all male) invented Undercover Colors, a nail polish for women that changes color (like a mood ring) when it touches rape drugs commonly slipped into drinks. Now,  I do applaud the men for recognizing the all-too-common issue of rape and taking the initiative to do something about it. Only, what they did still places the blame...

Opinion

Researching Young People and the Social Construction of Youth

Next time you read research about young people ask why is it focussing specifically on their age. It is still taken for granted that the process of maturing from a child to adolescent to adult unfolds as a series of naturally occurring stages, that there is a right age at which children should develop certain competencies and acquire certain freedoms and responsibilities (Scott, 1999). Contemporary sociological research, however, has “highlighted the blurring of boundaries between youth and adulthood and the...

Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Is The Sociology Finished Yet?

This is a guest post from Guy Sanders.  Guy is a freelance graphic artist living and working in London. He specialises in promotional design and branding for theatre and entertainment companies. He holds a BSc in Sociology and Political Science from the University of Bristol. Guy’s interests include cultural criticism and the deconstruction of nation making. He tweets @GuyJSanders Is The Sociology Finished Yet? I completed a BSc in Sociology and Political Science in 2011. What followed immediately was a period of...

Gender & Sexuality / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Investigating misogyny on Twitter: sociology’s role.

There are now free tools available, such as Node XL, which, at unprecedented speeds and scales allow us access, harvest, and analyse the traces of people’s (often transgressive) thoughts, opinions and behaviours on Twitter. Since it combines the grand scale and generalisability of methods such as national surveys with the granularity and detail of close textual analysis, ethnography, or participant observation (Driscoll & Walker, 2014, p1746), Twitter analysis seemingly represents the holy grail of research methods. Existing research into misogyny...

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

Smart phones, Simulacra, Prince and The Matrix: Why I (also) don't want to be a Digital Witness

Avid Sociology Lens readers (as I am sure you all are) will have already read Roger Tyler’s piece this week; “Digital Witness: Memory vs. Experience”. In it, he discusses his experiences of attending Glastonbury Festival and the summer solstice at Stonehenge, and how in both cases he felt showed examples of how obsessed we have become with the need to document and record our experiences as they are happening. Even as the fireworks go off or the sun comes up,...

Class & Stratification / Political & Economic Sociology

Is England's World Cup failure symptomatic of Capitalism's malfunction?

Football is England’s national sport. It’s played in every city, town and school in the country. The English Premier League is the richest league in the world. For millions of English fans who contribute this wealth, watching football either live or on TV is effectively a costly tax on their devotion to their club. Why then does England lose to smaller nations with fewer players and less money to invest in talent?