~ a group blog on a variety of topics related to anthropology, sociology, and ordinary people ~
Warning: The post you are about to read is about offensive words. It seeks to throw a spotlight on the social construction of offensive language, and illustrate how society’s interpretation of those words gives them power. In the course of this essay, some words you may find offensive may be used. And finally, any link that takes you to George Carlin will contain an entire dictionary of offensive words. Enter with caution.…
This morning, I walked to the beach before sunrise. Its only 4 or 5 minutes from the 3-story condo complex we are staying at, and still within the gated community of Cabo Bello, so I felt safe enough to leave my husband sleeping in the pre-dawn darkness, leave a note on the kitchen counter, At the beach- be back around 9? and slip through the salted air to the cliff that overlooks Calinda Beach.…
Occasionally I break into song, particularly when teaching my Classical Sociology class. Classical sociologists Max Weber, and W. E. B. DuBois wrote about the importance of music in defining group boundaries. In the case of Max Weber, he noted that dominant groups typically have myths and stories which glorify a past of some sort. A great way to illustrate the importance of these songs is to break into song in a fashion that illustrates the the stories that separate the dominant from the subordinate.…
Our legal system in the United States is a wondrous thing. If you are arrested and charged with a crime, you have the option to a jury trial. Theoretically, we pick a representative sample of 12 of your peers to sit in judgment of you. Except if you are already a felon, or disabled, work in a profession where serving on a jury would be a hardship for you, are self-employed, or are the primary caregiver for another human.…
We rented a car at the airport and have been using it to explore the city and surrounding areas, and each day that we have driven outside of the area of our condo complex, I have become overwhelmed, feeling hypocritical and guilty.
One of the residents in our condo complex mentioned to me that there was only one paved road in Cabo San Lucas 20 years ago, but its difficult to believe if you stay on or around the Tourist Corridor?,…
Max Weber is today known for his sharp sociological pen in which he created word pictures of processes like bureaucracy, politics, capitalism, power, and inequality which underlie not only his society, but ours today. He was also known as a proponent of “value free” sociology, in which the sociologist would analyze without respect to personal political views.
But Weber was not only a sociologist, he was also an active politician who through the force of his words, access to German power-brokers, and prolific pen brought him renown as an advocate for the German war cause in general, and his own German Democratic Party (DDP) in particular.…
Have you been watching the Breaking Bad prequel, Better Call Saul? I have and I love it. I swear, Vince Gilligan is a modern-day Rod Serling, nobody since Serling’s Twilight Zone has been able to create a morality play like Mr. Gilligan and his crew (the general theme: “be careful what you wish for, you just might get it”). I’ve been a fan of Gilligan’s since the nineties, when X-Files was the go-to show for weekly weirdness and cultural commentary.…
The Best Carnitas Ever was originally published at www.norcalblogs.com.
We are in search of authentic? Mexican cuisine without the upset digestive track that we have been warned of multiple times before arriving in Cabo. The last few evenings, we grilled steak and giant red and yellow bell peppers on the oversized grill by the pool; the Costco down the road makes it relatively inexpensive to cook for ourselves. But we have heard of a local eatery that specializes in carnitas and have been assured by Miguel that the food is safe to eat, despite being outside of the tourist zone.…
Re-posted from a blog by Julie here at e.com last fall, 2014. Thanks to Les Back at The Sociological Review for the inspiration.
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.…
Yesterday was the six-month anniversary of my friend Marc Thompson’s murder. Marc was a good friend of mine and a former Sociology student. A few years ago, we made a documentary together called If These Halls Could Talk. The movie also starred our mutual friend Joe Rogers. Like Marc, Joe is a Soc major and in addition to everything else he does writes for The Orion, the independent student newspaper at CSU, Chico; Marc would’ve graduated from there this last December with a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology.…
Education is an inherent paradox. At its most explicit, it assumes that students are trained for a fair, meritocratic, and competitive labor market in which learning is valued without reference to who they are or their social connections. This is why fair markets are “anonymous”….
But schools do not operate in anonymous markets. Schools emphasizing the visible honors of academic achievement, teacher-student relationships, are often the opposite. The tensions between the utility of skills in an anonymous labor market while monopolizing the distribution of visible status honors in the broader community is at the heart of the educational enterprise (see Weber 1920/2010).…
My mother would have called me a picky eater, if the term had been popular when I was a kid in the early 1980s; instead, people often said I was spoiled. I turned my nose up to onions, didn’t care for orange juice, and had a physical aversion to ground meat (that was my mother’s fault, though; she brainwashed me to believe, from a very young age, that ground meat was dirty).…