…“The Toothache” is excerpted from Marianne Paiva’s book Breathe: Essays from a Recovering Paramedic which tells of her life as a paramedic in rural areas of northern California in the 1990s. This particular story tells of the time she was called to take a man by ambulance with a toothache to the emergency room at 3 a.m. You’ll need to read the whole story to find out why this was the case!
Category: General Sociology
Yes, Feminism Has a Class Problem
From fieldnotes, October ninth, 2004: The Red Tent: A gathering of women
According to the program, it’s time for the final event at The Red Tent, titled: “Living our wholeness” with Donna Carlson-Todd, certified life coach. Before us is a petite blond woman in her fifties who is passing out business cards and telling us about herself and that we are here to celebrate what it is to be a woman.…
A Tale Within a Tale: The Dual Nature of Ebenezer Scrooge
By Guest Writer: David Van Huff
In passing, I met a hypothetical man some years back who laid claim to a tale within a tale, which has forever changed the way I think about a classic story from the past. For those of you who have heard the story the A Christmas Carol (Dickens, 1843) once, I’m sure you’ve heard it a thousand times again with little or no concern. True, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) has crafted a near magical piece of literature within the cover of this epic book; however, we now live in a culture that commercially assaults its inhabitants, all the while, converting timeless words, into mere recycled words for hire.…
Jackie Robinson, Curt Flood, and the Great American Past time
In college, the most fascinating class I had the pleasure of being part of was an undergraduate elective called Sport and Society (sorry Tony Waters). An Education professor by the name of Don Chu taught the class, and I took it because I thought it would be an easy A and I could harass all the jocks in the class for their misguided reverence for all things sports related (I’m a sociologist; we generally aren’t much for sports.…
R.I.P. Sociology
It’s the holidays and I’m feeling nostalgic, thinking about this time 14 years ago when I was just finishing up my first semester at CSU, Chico. I was a 34-year old college junior and a first generation college student. Today I was looking for a beef stew recipe in the Joy of Cooking and I came across a relic of some old school notes for a final exam that first semester I was back in school.…
Sociology, the Running Conversation, and the Murder of Marc Thompson
The Synthesis is a local weekly newspaper in small-town Chico, California, generally specialized in Entertainment news—stories of local bands, the bar scene, and arts.
Recently, the small paper is branching into more critical hard-hitting news analysis. Emilano Garcia-Sarnoff published “Heart on Fire: The Murder of Marc Thompson” on September 29, which is about the recent death of a Chico State Sociology major found in a burning car in a remote area.…
The Truth About Police
Another unarmed Black man died at the hands of law enforcement on Thursday night. The NYC Police Commissioner was quick in calling the incident an “unfortunate tragedy” at the same time that the mainstream press has included that the officer was a “rookie” in most of their headlines. Akai Gurley, the 28-year old Brooklyn victim and his girlfriend were leaving her apartment via the stairwell when they ran into two officer’s who were in the midst of conducting a vertical patrol and had just entered the stairwell on the floor above.…
Searching for Answers: Retracing a Hmong Heritage
Today’s post comes from Guest Ethnographer Dee Thao. This is a beautiful and honest film Dee directed and edited about her search for information and connection to her Hmong heritage and identity. Her “advisor extraordinaire” (and co-star) on this project was ethnography.com’s Tony Waters.
Dee Thao is a documentarian based out of northern California. Click this link to read her bio and view her most recent work.
Julie Garza-Withers, former award-winning community college Sociology instructor who’s currently using Sociology to organize and research for racial justice in rural northern California.
Privilege In Life, Privilege In Death
By: Tony Waters
To provide some broader context about Marc Thompson’s murder…Julie and I talked on the phone last night about two different cases that have been in the newspapers of Butte County, California, recently, where we live. Two years ago, a young man was tragically lost during the annual Labor Day river float–a fun-filled day of drinking and floating by privileged students and their friends from out-of-town, who celebrate the beginning of the school year in Chico. …
Resources, Resources, Resources!
We are updating our links and resources here on ethnography.com. Give this link a click, and check out what’s new. I’ve added some sociology into the mix but we’d love to hear from you, our readers. What kind of resources are you looking for on our website? Please give us your feedback and your links! Many thanks, Julie
Julie Garza-Withers, former award-winning community college Sociology instructor who’s currently using Sociology to organize and research for racial justice in rural northern California.
La Crueldad del Hombre
Is art ethnographic? Art and visual representation cut across the disciplines but is especially suited for sociological and anthropological inquiry. Art tells us a story about our practices and beliefs and we find ourselves in what we and others create. It also reflects us back to ourselves, sometimes we like it but if it’s really good, we feel it and in that brief, aesthetic moment in time we change.
I saw this video by Steve Cutts yesterday, shared by a friend on facebook the day after the mid-term elections in the U.S.…
Is Your Class in the Way?
By: N. Jeanne Burns
A few weeks ago at the YWCA Midtown I sat outside the gate to cool down from my run. I scrolled through Twitter posts about the Dunn trial and read about whites fearing blacks. Then I heard the desk clerk say, “You can only use your driver’s license three times. After the next two times, you won’t be admitted until you get a new YWCA ID.”…