Bedouin warrior by Cultural Collections, University of Newcastle on Flickr. This photograph is from an album created by Lt Thomas Gerald George Fahey who served in the Australian Light Horse in the Middle East during World War 1. The Bedouin are comprised of various Arabic tribes who were forced into a precarious nomadic lifestyle in the late 19th Century under Ottoman rule. Some Bedouin tribes fought alongside the Turks during the First World War. During the early 1960s, severe drought forced many Bedouin away from a herding lifestyle, and most now live in large cities such as Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Tunisia, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Syria.   

Bedouin warrior by Cultural Collections, University of Newcastle on Flickr.

This photograph is from an album created by Lt Thomas Gerald George Fahey who served in the Australian Light Horse in the Middle East during World War 1.

The Bedouin are comprised of various Arabic tribes who were forced into a precarious nomadic lifestyle in the late 19th Century under Ottoman rule. Some Bedouin tribes fought alongside the Turks during the First World War. During the early 1960s, severe drought forced many Bedouin away from a herding lifestyle, and most now live in large cities such as Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Tunisia, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Syria. 

 

Short video explaining Bourdieu’s Field Theory.  Uses football/soccer as a way to illustrate the concepts of habitus and doxa. Basic production but lovely example of visual sociology.

Kristen Schilt discusses how a more sophisticated understanding of transgender experiences have shaped sociology’s approach to sexuality and gender. She notes that in traditional sociology, such as in Harold Garfinkel’s Studies in Ethnomethodology, transgender people have been seen to be “over-doing gender… that they have to be 120% male or 120% female because they’re trying to show to the outside world this is real, this is valid.” Schilt’s study, Just One of the Guys, finds that transgender men are not welded to a dominant style of masculinity (also known as hegemonic masculinity). They are comfortable with representing their gender identities in diverse ways. Instead, it is transgender men’s cis-gender co-workers who are invested to policing gender in constrained ways (men don’t wear earrings, men cut their hair in particular ways and they wear particular styles of clothes).

We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character- that is the goal of true education.” - Dr Martin Luther King. Dr Martin Luther King Jr was born on the 15th of January 1929. Our American colleagues and others might know that King had a degree in sociology and theology (of course!). As the Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Sociology notes, King remains “a public sociologist par excellence.” In celebration of the passing birthday of this pre-eminent sociologist and progressive activist, I made you this, with one of my favourite quotes by King. Here, he argues that education is not simply about accumulating knowledge, but rather to develop a sense of morality based upon principles of social justice and then acting upon these values. As an applied and public sociologist, we can see how Luther’s sociological training influenced his “change management” leadership style, which David Frantz describes as: building a vision, networking, communicating powerfully, identifying and dealing with differences, creating leverage to motivate people, and conceptualizing alternative strategic paths. (p.157) If you’re still studying sociology and you wonder what you can do with a sociology degree, think about King as a model for what applied sociologists can achieve outside academia.  Read more on Sociology at Work. High-res

We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character- that is the goal of true education.”

- Dr Martin Luther King.

Dr Martin Luther King Jr was born on the 15th of January 1929. Our American colleagues and others might know that King had a degree in sociology and theology (of course!). As the Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Sociology notes, King remains “a public sociologist par excellence.” In celebration of the passing birthday of this pre-eminent sociologist and progressive activist, I made you this, with one of my favourite quotes by King. Here, he argues that education is not simply about accumulating knowledge, but rather to develop a sense of morality based upon principles of social justice and then acting upon these values.

As an applied and public sociologist, we can see how Luther’s sociological training influenced his “change management” leadership style, which David Frantz describes as:

building a vision, networking, communicating powerfully, identifying and dealing with differences, creating leverage to motivate people, and conceptualizing alternative strategic paths. (p.157)

If you’re still studying sociology and you wonder what you can do with a sociology degree, think about King as a model for what applied sociologists can achieve outside academia. 

Read more on Sociology at Work.

The “father of sociology,” Auguste Comte, features in the second animated video in the 60 Second Adventures in Religion series by Open University. Comte developed a theory positivism to argue that social phenomena could be studied through data collection and experiments fashioned on the practices of the natural sciences. His premise was that the philosophical development of science followed three stages:

1. Theological - nature has a will of it’s own. This stage is broken down into three stages of its own, including animism, polytheism, and monotheism.

2. Metaphysical state - though substituting ideas for a personal will.

3. Positive - a search for absolute knowledge. 

Link to video via Brain Pickings.

Open University puts the (animated) spotlight on two sociologists who were critical of organised religion. This one is on Karl Marx and his enduring dictum: “Religion is the opium of the people.” Marx used this phrase to argue that religion is a mechanism to entice poor and disadvantaged people to accept suffering and inequality as part of life (through the enticement of higher rewards in the afterlife). The original quote is drawn from the Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. In context, Marx’s original quote reads:

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

The video is from the series: Religion as Social Control - 60 Second Adventures in Religion.

Video link via: Brain Pickings.

Islamabad, October 2008: A dust storm in the countryside. Rawalpindi, March 2009: police officers protecting a man who was assaulted by an unknown assailant. Islamabad, February 2008: Supporters of PMLN party during the speech of one of their local leaders. Pakistan, Karachi, September 2010: people accourred to help a man that was apparently casually injured during the target killing of two journalists in Saddar. Pakistan Dec 2009, Peshawar: the neighbors of a 28 years old man who lost his life in a suicide blast accurred in a market near the district court are waiting to attend at the funeral. Pakistan, Abbottabad, May 2010: people in the Abbottabad central square during a protest caused by a prolonged and unsheduled electricity loadshedding.

picturedept:

Massimo Berruti, The Dusty Path
Recipient of the 2012 W. Eugene Smith Fellowship

Massimo Berruti has spent years working in and interpreting the challenging and complex world of Pakistan. With a population of 190 million people, a number of distinct languages and dialects, elaborate cultural variations, and an ongoing external and internal struggle between extremists, deeply conservative elements in society, moderates, and the military, Massimo’s photographs are powerful documents that illuminate the nuance and intrigue that perpetually manifest and animate this vast and little understood part of the world.

The Dusty Path was awarded the 2012 W. Eugene Smith Fellowship, announced yesterday. The 2012 W. Eugene Smith Grant for Humanistic Photography was awarded to Peter Van Agtmael, for Disco Night September 11. For more information on the Eugene Smith Memorial Fund and its past award recipients, visit smithfund.org.

(via newsweek)

everydayhybridity:

Erasing Women

So over the last few weeks there has been a little bit of fuss surrounding Ikea as their culturally sensitive catalouge in Saudi Arabia has erased all traces of the female models apparent in the same catalouges in the rest of the world.

A similar thing happened to Hilary Clinton in an Isreali conservative newspaper which erased her from the Obama’s opertaion room when Bin Laden’s compund was raided. Just to show that it isn’t simply an anti-Hilary bias, the next photo shows the Isreali parliament with and without its female members in order to appease the ultra-orthodox. For parity we have a ‘girls only’ version of the Bin Laden opertaion’s monitoring room too.

The media in the UK are currently trying to come to terms with the blatant sexism that exists in the media. It has oddly taken a plethora of abuse claims against a dead BBC Radio personality for this introspection to occur. Women make up less than 30% of journalists yet women are ubiquitous on the covers of our magazines and newspapers argues the Guardian today.

The process of erasing women is actually entrenched. The very crude and obvious examples by Ikea and the conservative Israeli camp are actually upfront and obvious in comparison to the insidious erasing that has become endemic. This erasing is the photoshopping of women on magazine covers, removing blemishes, making limbs more slender, straightening natural curves. Creating an imagined femininity, which values no one and has no real role model.

At the very same time the promotion of women in purely glamorous and sensual ways continually erases the social progress that so many women have fought for. This erasing of value was brought in to sharp relief by the recent suicide of Amanda Todd. There is simply so much commentary about women’s appearance. Such is the pursuit of beauty that we have seen beauty clinics in Hong Kong offering expensive medically questionable procedures that have hospitalised 4 women and killed 1.

I think Ikea is the least of our problems.

A diminutive spider accompanied by its tiny shadow had me captivated as I pondered the #sociology of fear. Spiders inspire so much anxiety, including from me most of the time, and yet most people understand this is irrational as most spiders can’t harm humans. The small percentage that can are not usually found in our homes and they don’t specifically seek us out for attack. Our collective fear of spiders in urban areas is culturally determined, and it far outweighs the risk posed. Spiders feature as focus and metaphor for different types of fears in Western societies. Even amongst educated people, spiders are a source of disgust and anxiety. A study by American sociologist Andrew Knight finds that amongst people who support the conservation of endangered species, spiders (along with snakes and bats) inspire contempt and so people are less likely to care about spider protection due to this negative perception. In other cultures, spiders occupy a positive place in collective imagination. Take the example of David Zeitlyn’s ethnographic research amongst Southern Cameroonian cultures. The Mambila people rely on “benge” (oracles) who use a “ngam” (spider divination) to make decisions. This involves a ritual where the oracle interprets a person’s question or problem by reading a spider’s movements around specially placed cards and objects. Up until the mid-1990s these spider divinations were admissable in court (“the spider does not lie!”). It would be easy to dismiss this spritual practice without understanding its cultural significance… but does Western culture not place the same mythical power and danger on these small creatures crawling across the wall? The symbolic power of spiders works differently, but it nevertheless alters our behaviour and attitudes. #ethnography #visualsociology #culture #cameroon #socialscience (Taken with Instagram) High-res

A diminutive spider accompanied by its tiny shadow had me captivated as I pondered the #sociology of fear. Spiders inspire so much anxiety, including from me most of the time, and yet most people understand this is irrational as most spiders can’t harm humans. The small percentage that can are not usually found in our homes and they don’t specifically seek us out for attack. Our collective fear of spiders in urban areas is culturally determined, and it far outweighs the risk posed. Spiders feature as focus and metaphor for different types of fears in Western societies. Even amongst educated people, spiders are a source of disgust and anxiety. A study by American sociologist Andrew Knight finds that amongst people who support the conservation of endangered species, spiders (along with snakes and bats) inspire contempt and so people are less likely to care about spider protection due to this negative perception. In other cultures, spiders occupy a positive place in collective imagination. Take the example of David Zeitlyn’s ethnographic research amongst Southern Cameroonian cultures. The Mambila people rely on “benge” (oracles) who use a “ngam” (spider divination) to make decisions. This involves a ritual where the oracle interprets a person’s question or problem by reading a spider’s movements around specially placed cards and objects. Up until the mid-1990s these spider divinations were admissable in court (“the spider does not lie!”). It would be easy to dismiss this spritual practice without understanding its cultural significance… but does Western culture not place the same mythical power and danger on these small creatures crawling across the wall? The symbolic power of spiders works differently, but it nevertheless alters our behaviour and attitudes. #ethnography #visualsociology #culture #cameroon #socialscience (Taken with Instagram)

doctorswithoutborders:

Watch and share this animation of how MSF responded in the Haiti 2010 earthquake. Our teams, already on ground, launched the biggest emergency response in its history. Including an inflatable hospital on a football field to treat all the injuries.