The Global Sociology Blog

Remember how the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were really wars that liberated women from oppression? Well, I have already posted on the Taliban throwing acid in school girls’ faces in Afghanistan, and now this:

Hitmen charge $100 a victim as Basra honour killings rise | World news | The Observer via kwout

Totally unsurprisingly, the [...]

[Update: Mark Bahnisch, over at Larvatus Prodeo, as an interesting post on this topic as well on the conjunction of globalization, urban centers, states and violence.]

Mukul Devichand: It is Mumbai’s status as a global city that has made it a target for terrorists | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk via kwout

Are world-cities more likely to [...]

Manger des hamburgers favoriserait Alzheimer, Société – NouvelObs.com via kwout

More burgers, more salt, more fat and generally more fast food = higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease later.
So, on the vegan side, we have better health, better environment, better animal welfare. On the meat side, we have higher risk of a cohort of disease (especially [...]

I just discovered this group of criminologists, psychologists, sociologists and jounalists, specialized on criminal issues and the criminal underworld… oh, it’s in Portuguese (this is my second discovery in Portuguese, after Mozambican sociologist Carlos Serra , I hope to find more:

Nucleo de Psicologia Criminal

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Danny Boyle’s latest film, Slumdog Millionaire, was an eerily appropriate choice of a film after the attacks in Mumbai. The movie itself was very an interesting mix of City of God and Born Into Brothels with a bit more romance (too much romance in my view, but then, there is ALWAYS too much romance [...]

December 2nd is the International Day Against Slavery at the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade (website ). As the date nears, the UN reminds us that there are still roughly 27 million slaves around the world:

Encore 27 millions d’esclaves dans le monde, Société – NouvelObs.com via [...]

And Le Nouvel Observateur marks the occasion with a great special issue on Levi-Strauss.

Bon anniversaire quand même, monsieur Lévi-Strauss – Le Billet du jour via kwout

There is no disputing the fact that Levi-Strauss is the last of the great post-War public intellectuals that France has produced and an enormous influence on the social sciences. His [...]

Hat tip to VeganProf.

Op-Ed Contributor – A French Connection – NYTimes.com via kwout

But of course, no Thanksgiving story would be complete without some religious oppression…

Op-Ed Contributor – A French Connection – NYTimes.com via kwout

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Jay Livinston has a great post (based on an initial post over at Scatterplot, itself based on a post by Neil Buchanan). Livingston exposes the flaws in the law professor’s assumptions in norm change (although I think Livingston missed the fact that the post was authored by Buchanan at Dorf’s place, and not Dorf himself).
[...]

Via Le Monde, this is what comes out of a study by the French National Institute Statistics and Economic Studies (link to the English site of INSEE). This study shows that redistribution occurs mostly through social benefits rather than fiscal policy. According to INSEE, the richest categories have most benefited from the 2005 fiscal reform [...]

This time in England:

BBC NEWS | UK | England | South Yorkshire | Rapist father given life sentence via kwout

And yes, there is no doubt that patriarchal dominance is at the heart of this crime:

BBC NEWS | UK | England | South Yorkshire | Rapist father given life sentence via kwout

I love it when doctors [...]

Via Toban Black:

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David Korten opens his book, When Corporations Rule The World, with a reference to an episode of Star Trek – The Original Series, titled The Cloud Minders as a metaphor for the gross inequalities generated by the global capitalist system and the inability of the transnational capitalist class to understand the plight of the poorest:

This [...]

James Howard Kunstler, via Susie.

Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler : Zombie Economics via kwout

It’s a really great piece, so, just go read the whole thing.

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The Futurist has a very interesting overview of the links between globalization and criminal networks (sorry, no link, but you can cough up $3 for a PDF version of the article, $5 for the whole issue… or you can go to your closest library and grab a paper copy) by Stephen Aguilar-Millan, Joan E. Foltz, [...]