Sociologic

January 2012

40 posts

“…[T]he relationship between social status and the likelihood of being targeted for harsh criminal sanctions is so strong that one can easily identify which social groups are subordinate within a social system by simply noting which groups are overrepresented in that society’s prisons, dungeons, or execution chambers.” —

Jim Sidanius, Michael Mitchell, Hillary Haley, and Carlos David Navarrete. 2006. Support for Harsh Criminal Sanctions and Criminal Justice Beliefs: A Social Dominance Perspective.

(via phototropix)

Jan 2, 201276 notes

“Sociology as a discipline investigates the conditions that lead to inequality and social injustice. To the degree that you believe these are “left-wing” issues, then you will find the entire discipline, along with its introductory textbooks, to be “left-wing propaganda.” —In reply to, “Sociology is just a bunch of left-wing dogma!” (via socmajor)

Jan 2, 201224 notes

“The thing is, it’s patriarchy that says men are stupid and monolithic and unchanging and incapable. It’s patriarchy that says men have animalistic instincts and just can’t stop themselves from harassing and assaulting. It’s patriarchy that says men can only be attracted by certain qualities, can only have particular kinds of responses, can only experience the world in narrow ways. Feminism holds that men are capable of more – are more than that.” —On claiming to be a stupid man who doesn’t know anything « Zero at the Bone (via grrlyboy)

Jan 2, 20126,541 notes

“Yet, functioning members of American and Canadian societies who are unaware of the goings-on in the world would rather actively avoid tough news than exercise effort to learn more. Ignorance is cyclical and conscious—and that’s as scary as any economic or environmental disaster.” —Ignorance Isn’t Bliss: The Danger of Avoiding Tough News - Culture - GOOD (via sociolab)

Jan 2, 20126 notes

“The conclusion to be drawn is thus that the problematic of multiculturalism - the hybrid coexistence of diverse cultural life-worlds - that imposes itself today is the form of appearance of its opposite, of the massive presence of capitalism as universal world system: it bears witness to the unprecedented homogenization of the contemporary world. It is effectively as if, since the horizon of social imagination no longer allows us to entertain the idea of an eventual demise of capitalism -since, as we might put it, everybody silently accepts that capitalism is here to stay- critical energy has found a substitute outlet in fighting for cultural differences, which leave the basic homogeneity of the capitalist world system intact. So we are fighting our PC battles for the rights of ethnic minorities, of gays and lesbians, of different lifestyles and so on, while capitalism pursues its triumphant march- and today’s critical theory, in the guise of ‘cultural studies’, is doing the ultimate service to the unrestrained development of capitalism by actively participating in the ideological effort to render its massive presence invisible: in a typical postmodern ‘cultural criticism’, the very mention of capitalism as world system tends to give rise to the accusation of ‘essentialism’, ‘fundamentalism’ and other crimes.” —the universal exception, zizek 2006 p.173 (via zizekianrevolution)

Jan 2, 201216 notes

#zizek

December 2011

21 posts

“Structures, in the sociological sense, constrain human agency. And for that reason, I see John Pike as a casualty of the system, too. Our police forces have enshrined a paradigm of protest policing that turns local cops into paramilitary forces. Let’s not pretend that Pike is an independent bad actor. Too many incidents around the country attest to the widespread deployment of these tactics. If we vilify Pike, we let the institutions off way too easy.” —Why I Feel Bad for the Pepper-Spraying Policeman, Lt. John Pike - Atlantic Mobile (via linzyxxxxx)

Dec 21, 20117 notes

#police state

“Undergraduates don’t have the same problems with writing that older people have. They write short essays they would not write of their own choice, in a few weeks, on subjects they know nothing about and aren’t interested in, for a reader, who as Shaughnessy says ‘would not choose to read it if he were not being paid to be an examiner’. They know that what they write in this one paper will not affect their lives much. Sociologists and other scholars, on the other hand, write about subjects they know a lot about and care about even more. They write for people they hope are equally interested, and they have no deadlines, other than those their professional situations impose on them. They know that their professional futures rest on how peers and superiors judge what they write. Students can distance themselves from the required writing scholars, novice or professional, can’t. They impose the task on themselves by entering their discipline and have to take it seriously. Being serious, writing scares them more than it does students, which makes the technical problems even harder to solve.” —

Writing For Social Scientists by Howard S. Becker (via sociolab)

I don’t find writing about Sociology scary, I find it necessary. It’s getting people to listen that’s the hard part.

(via lawsonry)

Dec 21, 201119 notes

#sociology #writing

“Social reality is ultimately contingent: human beings make (and re-make) the economic world and therefore can change the rules of the game to which they are, at any given time, collectively and individually subject. No political economy is forever. Feudal economics preceded capitalist economies, and capitalist economies, in all their variations, will one day be superseded by different ways of organizing social life. If economics seem natural and inevitable, they are, in fact, ultimately political and social, contingent and changeable” —Elaine Coburn

Dec 15, 201112 notes

#capitalism

Dec 15, 201112,639 notes

“As soon as we begin to look at this, we see how curiously limited is the vision of human excellence that has got built into our society and that we have made do with up to now. It is a vision that is inextricably linked with the market society. And the sad truth is that it is a vision of inertia. It is almost incredible, until you come to think of it, that a society whose key word is enterprise, which certainly sounds active, is in fact based on the assumption that human beings are so inert, so averse to activity, that is, to expenditure of energy, that every expenditure of energy is to be considered painful, to be, in the economist’s term, a disutility.” —C.B. Macpherson, The Real World of Democracy

Dec 14, 20113 notes

#c.b. macpherson #democracy #liberal democracy #capitalism #market society

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most.” —Maryanne Williamson (via girlwithoutwings)

Dec 14, 20111,936 notes

#Social Movements #fear

“News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.” —Lord Northcliffe, British publisher 1865-1922

Dec 13, 20116 notes

#news #critical thinking #advertising #capitalism

Sociology tumblrs. → sociolab.tumblr.com

sociolab:

The master list I created.  If I missed someone or you want to be on the list, let me know.

Dec 12, 201164 notes

Play

Dec 9, 2011

Play

Dec 9, 2011

“First, if the environment is defined as the substrate of human culture, materiality is a term that applies more evenly to humans and non-humans. I am a material configuration, the pigeons in the park are material configurations, the pigeons in the park are material compositions, the viruses, parasites, and heavy metals in my flesh and in pigeon flesh are materialities, as are neurochemicals, hurricane winds, E. coli, and the dust on the floor. Materiality is a rubric that tends to horizontalize the relations between humans, biota, and abiota. It draws human attention sideways, away from an ontology ranked Great Chain of Being and toward a greater appreciation of the complex entanglements of humans and nonhumans” —Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (2010, p. 112)

Dec 8, 201119 notes

#Environment #materialism #materiality #bennett

“When thinking sociologically, one attempts to make sense of the human condition through analyzing the manifold webs of human interdependency—that toughest of realities which explains both our motives and the effects of their activation.” —Zygmunt Bauman, Thinking sociologically (1990)

Dec 8, 201121 notes

#zygmunt bauman #sociology

Play

Dec 8, 20115 notes

#crisis #finance #capitalism #richard wolff

“I see men assassinated around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead; men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas. Kennedy himself was 9/10ths the way around the clock or he wouldn’t have accepted such an enervating and enfeebling job — meaning President of the United States of America. How can I be concerned with the murder of one man when almost all men, plus females, are taken from cribs as babies and almost immediately thrown into the masher?” —Charles Bukowski (Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews and Encounters)

Dec 8, 2011433 notes

#social formation #capitalism #wage labour #wage slavery

“How much of my brain is willfully my own? How much is not a rubber stamp of what I have read and heard and lived?” —Sylvia Plath (via mirroir)

Dec 8, 20114,745 notes

#social self #social consciousness