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Two of the best in the game.
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Daphne Joy
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Daphne Joy.
There is just something about this woman. -
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“In patriarchy, however, every man is diminished if he can’t sustain a self-image in which somewhere, in someone’s eyes, he’s seen as triumphant, a...”
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There are some people who, having been born on third base, stand there believing they hit a triple. Donald Trump was born on third base and thinks...
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thinking.
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“privileged kids go to counseling, poor kids go to jail.”
Online video is being used by sociology instructors at the University of Maryland to teach basic concepts and accompany lectures in a concept called The Sociological Cinema.
This clip shows comedian Anita Renfroe condensing the phrases a typical mother says to her children in the course of a day to the duration of the William Tell Overture. In the classroom, sociology students can first list role expectations of mothers, and then discuss the roles mothers have and also focus on gender role expectations of fathers.
- Video: Sociology Cinema Gathers Videoclips for Lecture Topics
A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation
William H. Sewell, Jr.
The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 98, No. 1. (Jul., 1992), pp. 1-29.
(via massadaydone)
(via thepovertyoftheory)
The unequal distribution of global wealth by individuals (not countries) should give us pause. Even the Wall Street Journal is impressed:
Here’s another stat that the Occupy Wall Streeters can hoist on their placards: The world’s millionaires and billionaires now control 38.5% of the world’s wealth.
How do we know? Because Credit Suisse has just published the second edition of its Global Wealth Report, in which they calculate the distribution of the world’s total wealth.
As readers can see above, the figures for mid-2011 indicate that 29.7 million adults, about 1/2 of one percent of the world’s population, own more than one third of global household wealth. Of this group, they estimate that 85,000 individuals are worth more than $50 million, 29,000 are worth more than $100 million, and 2,700 have assets above $500 million. Compare this to the bottom of the pyramid: 3.054 billion people, 67.6 percent of the world’s population, with assets of less than $10,000, who own a mere 3.3 percent of the world’s wealth. Add another billion people with assets between $10,000 and $100,000 and we have 91.2 percent of the world’s population that owns something on the order of 17.8 percent of total world wealth.
Clearly, global capitalism has enriched a tiny minority while leaving the vast majority at the bottom of the global wealth pyramid.
via http://anticap.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/the-global-wealth-pyramid/
tetw:
by Malcolm Gladwell
My cousins, Rosie and Noel, are from Jamaica. They don’t consider themselves black at all.
Gladwell’s take on the difference between African-Americans, Caribbean-Americans and Black Caribbeans - and how they are perceived by others.
There’s some good pop sociology in this and i def think it makes for good talking points
(via liberationfrequency)
Clever, tongue-in-cheek by Yves Smith
“What would you identify as the central insights of Academic Choice theory?
The theory begins by identifying three principal ways in which economists try to maximize their utility. First, they receive salaries from universities, which can be increased if their course enrollment increases. Course enrollment is primarily driven by students with future careers in business and the financial sector, so an economist has an incentive to propound theories that CEOs and financial institutions find attractive. Even if adoption of these theories leads to substantial public costs, these costs will not be shouldered by the economist personally. Second, by developing such theories an economist can open the door to future wealth as a lobbyist or consultant. Third, the support of economists is critical to creating and maintaining special privileges for the financial services industry and for top corporate officers. By threatening to withdraw this support, economists can engage in rent-seeking. I call this last practice academic entrepreneurship.”
“This paper reports on a study of Facebook in Trinidad recently published in the book Tales from Facebook (Polity 2011). This suggests that previous arguments about the internet need to be re-thought since in some ways Facebook represents the opposite, rather than a continuity, with the prior internet. The focus of this paper is on the global and older population as opposed to earlier literature on US students.
The paper then goes beyond that publication to open up three more extreme possibilities. That Facebook flies in the face of foundational assumptions within social science with regard to the nature of modern sociality. Secondly that Facebook is a way in which people attempt to create a relationship to God. Thirdly that Facebook runs parallel to one of the best known anthropological theories of culture, based on the Kula ring, and seems to suggest that Strathern’s characterisation of Melanesian personhood actually applies much more widely.”
How did you decide which one ( socio or anthro) to choose? i am most interested in social inequality. doing research of those that get less attention ( immigrants, women, "lower class" etc)
Thank you for your time
AMY
rumagin Said:
Hi Amy,
Good to hear from you. I like your blog too : )
I dont really have a simple answer to your question. I was always anthropologically orientated and sort of fell into working as a sociologist at the University of the West Indies cus they didnt have an Anthropology program. My grad training was also very interdisciplinary so that helped me bridge the differences and now i work as both an anthropologist and a sociologist, or rather what i describe as cultural sociology.
There are some basic differences i think between the two that might affect your decision making. For example, sociology is the social SCIENCE while anthropology is the SOCIAL science.
Sociologist are very hung up on the scientific validity and logical nature of their research and its relationship to structure and agency. Anthropologists while also believers in rigorous methodological practice are less hung up on the pursuit of scientific validity and more interested in the politics and power relations human society is built on.
Sociology has a tendency to deal in numbers and stats looking for the causality of variables. Whereas anthropology is more often concerned with describing phenomena. Although both subjects flip between quantitative and qualitative methodology the former is more often found in sociology, the latter in anthropology. Hence the joke anthropologists are sociologists who can’t do math. There is probably a little truth in that.
For me anthropology is more suited to what you mention are your interests. In criticism, analysis and outlook anthropology seeks to intervene on the side of the oppressed and powerless. It is an enterprise in the analysis of power relations and it seeks to make policy contributions from such a vista. As such the meat of what you study will often have overlaps with social justice ideas and forms of difference-making.
Another difference is between macro and micro analysis. Sociology is often much more about the macro situation - extrapolating findings to large groups. Anthropology is often much more about the micro situation - providing holistic descriptions about smaller groups that often can’t be taken out of context.
Both subjects do research into social inequality however anthropology i believe would more overtly have as its subject matter those who get less attention - ie the groups you mention.
All in all though different grad skools and departments will have different research clusters and their own ideas on what is sociology and what is anthropology - and also how much they overlap or should be kept apart. That means you should factor in the department itself into your decision-making on doing soci or anthro.
If it were me, interested in the areas you mention - i would do anthropology over sociology, but im biased already. I think anthropologists are cooler than sociologists lol
I hope that was helpful answer. I have a little bit of a hangover this morning.
What do you think you might decide?
Hit me up if you wanna chat more about it.
Dylan
