General Sociology – Page 7

La Crueldad del Hombre

Posted on November 6, 2014November 9, 2014 by Julie Garza-Withers

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?

Posted on November 4, 2014January 21, 2015 by Julie Garza-Withers

By: N. Jeanne Burns

Fortune cookie image

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.”…

How Working at a Community College is Like Working Retail

Posted on October 29, 2014October 27, 2015 by Julie Garza-Withers

Originally published at classism.org in October 2011

Expectations are a pain in the ass. There’s an old saying, “plant an expectation, reap a disappointment.” Yep I did it, planted and am now disappointed. I teach Sociology at a rural community college; I love teaching, but I don’t love that adjunct teachers like me are temporary, at-will employees.

Who knew that the working conditions at a community college would be the same as they were when I was a bookseller, housekeeper, caregiver, fast food worker, and waitress?…

Money Changes Everything: The Ascent of Walter White

Posted on October 28, 2014October 29, 2014 by Julie Garza-Withers

“I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it, and I was alive.” –W.W.

I had to wait until the finale of Breaking Bad but at last, Walter White admitted that he was in to the meth cooking for the money. I’ve been frustrated since season 3, by that time the whole, “I’m doing it for the family” thing seemed like a bunch of baloney, the manipulative excuse of a mediocre middle class guy in the throes of power grabbing; a chance to feel “alive” after a lifetime of playing it safe for fear of what “might happen, might not happen.”…

White-trash Beaner (to my 11-year old confused self)

Posted on October 27, 2014November 1, 2014 by Julie Garza-Withers

Grama says I’m Indian.

Mama says my dad was “A Mexican” and that if he really loved me like

“Mexican daddies do,”

he woulda found me by now.

Grama says we’re Indian, mama says ‘no.’

Sis calls me a “wetback” and a “beaner” (“mom said it all the time”)

brother teases me about getting pregnant and dropping out of high school.

Grama and mama don’t speak to each other for a year

because of the Indian/Mexican fiasco.…

Max Weber for Geneticists: Why the UC Davis Genetics Folks thinks they are better than UC Berkeley’s Genetics Folks (and Harvard’s)

Posted on March 16, 2013October 29, 2014 by Tony Waters

I’m pretty happy about my post about Max Weber, and Luigi Cavalli-Sforza. Getting geneticists to at least acknowledge the existence of the patron saint of Sociology is big thing!

From an academic standpoint, Weber is one of my favorite topics, even though no one else seems to agree with me. I’ve been writing about the Old Dead German for years, usually to piss and moan about people from UC Berkeley. …